One month after giving up a lead at the Olympics, Germans Minerva Hase and Nikita Volodin didn’t let go at the World Championships.
Hase and Volodin topped both Wednesday’s short program and Thursday’s free skate for their first world title in Prague, Czechia.
Hase and Volodin took bronze then silver at the last two worlds, then bronze at the Milan Cortina Games. They led after the Olympic short program by 4.55 points, then had the fourth-best free skate to drop behind gold medalists Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Japan and Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava of Georgia.
At worlds, they had just one significant error in the free skate — on side-by-side triple Salchows, Volodin doubled his and Hase spun out of her landing. But unlike the Olympics, where Hase singled her Salchow, the Germans had no other issues in Thursday’s free.
FIGURE SKATING WORLDS: Full Results | Broadcast Schedule
They totaled 228.33 points and won by 9.92 over Metelkina and Berulava after the Georgians had a fall on a throw triple loop in their free skate. Hase and Volodin led Metelkina and Berulava by 33 hundredths after the short.
“You go to bed and you’re always like, oh, it would be so nice to wake up the next day as the world champion, so it’s always in your mind,” Hase said. “You try not to think about it too much, but now it’s happened, so tomorrow I will wake up very, very happy.”
Hase and Volodin began competing together for the 2023-24 season and haven’t missed the podium in 13 starts across the Olympics, worlds and Grand Prix Series.
Metelkina and Berulava earned Georgia’s first world medal in any figure skating discipline, one month after winning Georgia’s first Winter Olympic medal in any sport.
“I am so glad the season is finally over,” Metelkina said, according to the International Skating Union (ISU). “It was such a hard season. We are so tired. Of course we made mistakes, some serious ones, but mentally am drained 100%, and I can only think of the vacation now. I need a mental and physical rest to gain power for the next season.”
Canadians Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud took bronze, their first world medal. At the Olympics, they were a surprisingly high third in the short program, then were 10th in the free skate to place eighth overall.
“We don’t focus on the act of getting on the podium, but on what we can control and that is skating the best that we can,” Pereira said, according to the ISU. “We did that today and now we get to be where we want to stand.”
Miura and Kihara, the 2025 World champions, opted not to compete at worlds. It’s common for Olympic medalists to skip post-Olympic worlds due to off-ice opportunities and/or fatigue.
U.S. pairs finished sixth (national champions Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov), 12th (Katie McBeath and Daniil Parkman in their worlds debut together) and 16th (Emily Chan and Spencer Howe, who were seventh at the Olympics).
The top two U.S. pairs’ results needed to add up to no more than 13 to retain the maximum three spots for the 2027 Worlds.
They were right on 13 after Wednesday’s short program, where Chan and Howe were sixth and Efimova and Mitrofanov were seventh.
But Chan and Howe had the lowest-scoring free skate of all 20 pairs to drop 10 places. Chan fell on three elements in the middle of their program — two throws and then a death spiral.
Chan and Howe were late adds to the world field, replacing Olympic teammates Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea, who announced their withdrawal due to injury on March 16.
“It doesn’t matter how well trained you are, mistakes can happen,” Howe said. “Even though we got the call on short notice, I didn’t really feel like we were out of shape. I think that today just wasn’t our day.”
Worlds continue Friday with the rhythm dance and the women’s free skate, live on Peacock.
