France’s Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron took gold at the World Figure Skating Championships ice dance event in Shanghai yesterday, the high point of a remarkable breakthrough season for the duo.
The pair gave a rousing performance to score 112.34 points in the final free dance and finish with 184.28 overall, marking another milestone following their European Championships victory in January.
The win in Shanghai represents an incredible achievement for Papadakis, 19, and Cizeron, 20, who are the youngest world champions for 49 years.
Photo: EPA
They finished 13th in the World Championships last year — their first season in senior competition. The pair emerged as a force in ice dance at the Grand Prix Final in December, when they came third.
“We are still very young and we feel like we want to go so much further now, not for the medals, but for ourselves,” Cizeron said. “I think that is what we have always done. We want to improve. We want to get better at what we do and what we love to do.”
“I think that is what makes us strong,” he said. “We don’t really run after medals. We just want to have fun and take a lot of pleasure.”
Photo: EPA
They finished fourth in Shanghai on Wednesday at the opening short program, but captivated the audience at Shanghai’s Oriental Sports Center with their finale.
To the music of Mozart’s Concerto No. 23, Papadakis and Cizeron confidently swept through their program before bringing the crowd to their feet with a passionate choreographed spin.
Papadakis said the pair were “disappointed” with their performance on Wednesday, adding “it gave us a lot of strength — we wanted to fight.”
“It is a big surprise to be here right now,” she said following the win. “Our goal at the beginning of the season was to be in the top 10.”
It was an emphatic display from the pair, who finished almost six points ahead of US champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates, who took second place with a score of 106.87 and 181.34 overall.
Pretournament favorites Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje of Canada — who won at both the Grand Prix Final and Four Continents championships in Seoul last month — finished third with 106.74 points, 179.42 overall.
“We gave everything that we could and that is our ultimate goal and what we trained for,” Weaver said.
“Unfortunately the marks did not come out in our favor, but we are not going to mark this season off as a loss. We had an incredible year,” she added.
“We have to be very happy with ourselves and are going to use this — as always — as a learning experience,” Weaver said.
Anna Capelliini and Luca Lanotte of Italy, and Maia Shibutani and Alex Shibutani of the US were fourth and fifth respectively in both the free dance and the final standings.
Inter’s defense of their Italian Serie A title was hit with a setback on Sunday as they lost 1-0 at home to AS Roma, while Scott McTominay netted a brace as SSC Napoli beat Torino 2-0 to go top of the table. No fixtures were played on Friday or Saturday because of the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome, meaning the full round of Serie A matches took place on Sunday and yesterday. Matias Soule’s first-half strike for Roma knocked Inter off top spot earlier in the day before new Napoli opened up a three-point buffer with victory in Sunday’s
FOCUS: ‘We came out here with a goal in mind ... to keep our foot on their throat and on their neck, and continue to play 48 minutes of basketball,’ Donovan Mitchell said The Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday thrashed the Miami Heat to cruise into the next round of the NBA playoffs as the Golden State Warriors battled past the Houston Rockets 109-106 to move to the brink of a series victory. After pounding Miami 124-87 in game three on Saturday, No.1 Eastern Conference seeds Cleveland once again piled on the misery for their outclassed opponents with a crushing 138-83 victory to complete a 4-0 series win. The 55-point drubbing was the largest series-clinching victory in NBA playoff history and sets up a series against either the Indiana Pacers or Milwaukee Bucks in
Freddie Freeman homered and drove in four runs, Shohei Ohtani also went deep and Roki Sasaki earned his first major league win as the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Atlanta Braves 10-3 on Saturday night for their seventh straight victory. The Dodgers have won the first two games of the series to improve to 5-0 against Atlanta this year. Los Angeles’ three-game sweep at home early in the season left the Braves 0-7. Sasaki allowed three runs and six hits over five innings. The 23-year-old right-hander gave up a home run to Ozzie Albies, but received plenty of offensive support in his
Shuttler Lin Chun-yi yesterday kept Taiwan on the board as they faced their first major challenge of the group stage after marching into the last eight at the Sudirman Cup Finals in Xiamen, China. Taiwan were losing 3-1 to South Korea as of press time last night, with only the men’s doubles match remaining. Taiwan and four-time champions South Korea have already progressed to the quarter-finals, after Taiwan on Monday blanked the Czech Republic 5-0 without giving up a single game. Before last night’s tie, Taiwan were undefeated in Group B, with a 9-1 match record, ahead of South Korea, who, although also
RSS