KAUNAS, Lithuania (AP) – Roena Hendricks took the lead in the women’s short program at the European Figure Skating Championships on Thursday, with fellow Belgian skater Nina Pinzarone following close behind.
Hendricks landed a triple flip, double axel, and triple Lutz-triple toe loop combination to take the lead with 74.66 points. Pinzarone, 17, took second place with a score of 69.70, and last year’s winner Anastasia Gubanova of Georgia came in third with a score of 68.96.
In Saturday’s free skate, Hendrix will be aiming for her first major championship title after finishing second to Gubanova at last year’s European Championships and winning silver and bronze medals at the World Championships.
“I felt very well prepared and very confident,” Hendrix said.
Italy’s Lucrezia Beccari and Matteo Guarese won the pairs title on Thursday after their closest rivals for the title were eliminated. Beccari and Guarese took third place after the short program, but Georgia’s Anastasia Metelkina and Luka Berlava fell out of the lead after falling on the triple Salchow, and won with a total of 199.19 points.
This is the first major championship medal for Beccari and Gualidze. For Gualidze, this is the first time since the last nine times he finished in the top 10 without reaching the podium at the European Championships, along with Beccari and his former partner Nicole Della Monica.
Metellina and Berlava won the silver medal with 196.14 points, and another Italian pair, Rebecca Ghirardi and Filippo Ambrosini, also won the bronze medal, moving from fifth place after the short program to third overall with 195.68 points. Raised.
Germany’s Minerva Fabienne Haase and Nikita Volodin were competing for gold, but a fall and a failed lift in the free skate resulted in them finishing fifth. Last year’s winners Sara Conti and Niccolò Macchi finished sixth.
Russia and Belarus are not competing at the European Championships because they are still barred from International Skating Union events following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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