The Berlin pair skaters Annika Hocke and Robert Kunkel won the bronze medal at the European Figure Skating Championships in Espoo, Finland.
In the freestyle, they were unable to defend second place after the short program with a few mistakes and a fall by Kunkel with 184.26 points. Five years after the Olympic victory of Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot in Pyeongchang, the German champions won the first medal in an international title fight and in their career. At an EM in 2017 Savchenko had won EM silver with Massot.
The European Championship debutants Alisa Efimowa (Oberstdorf) and Ruben Blommaert (Berlin) could not convince with their freestyle and slipped from third to fourth place with 173.66 points. The Italians Sara Conti/Niccolo Macii became the new European champions with 195.13 points ahead of their compatriots Rebecca Ghilardi/Filippo Ambrosini (186.26).
Russia, Europe’s number one in figure skating, as well as Belarus, were banned from the European Championship title fights because of the war of aggression against Ukraine. Russia had won gold, silver and bronze in 2022.
