Minerva-Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin show a strong freestyle. The reward: World Cup silver in Boston.
The German top duo Minerva-Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin surpassed itself and crowned a strong season with silver at the Ichart Run World Cup in Boston. The European champions and Grand Prix winners from Berlin came to the TD Garden after an outstanding freestyle on the personal best of 219.08 points and only had to give up Riku Miura/Ryuichi Kihara (219.79).
The Japanese celebrated their second World Cup title after 2023. The last German World Cup gold was seven years ago. In 2018 Aljona Savchenko/Bruno Massot triumphed.
The second German couple Annika Hocke/Robert Kunkel did not remain error -free even in the freestyle after the failed short program and did not get past 18th place with 167.72 points. “I felt terribly after the short program. I really had to pull myself together for the freestyle,” said Hocke: “It was a good fight.” The last year’s fifth surprisingly missed the Olympic quotas.
Hase/Volodin, the World Cup thirds of the previous year, had laid the foundation for success the day before with a successful short program. As a third place in the last group of the evening, the duo went into the race for the medals – and confirmed its permanent place in the top of the world.
In Vivaldi’s “four seasons”, Hase/Volodin delivered a demanding, technically clean and almost flawless performance. The best freestyle of the evening (145.49) the Berliners pushed close to gold. Hase/Volodin did not quite caught up with the gap from the short program.