Figure Skating: My Mind in New York

Competitions have recently been in short supply. To prepare for the World Cup, the pair runners come up with something.

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Berlin. It sounds like a fairy tale, almost too good to be true. The pair of Olympic champions, at least half of them, have comeback ambitions and dreams of the 2022 Olympics in Beijing. Aljona Savchenko (37) is considered to be extremely ambitious, maybe she could even be trusted. But Bruno Massot (32) has his back, the two have not competed in three years. Nevertheless, the idea of ​​seeing her on the ice again illuminates many a face in the German association these days.

The reality in pair skating is unfortunately far less radiant than Savchenko’s smile after a successful death spiral. It should just start again after a number of figure skating competitions were canceled due to the corona pandemic. But with the start of direct preparation for the World Cup in Stockholm (March 22nd to 27th), Minerva-Fabienne Hase (21) tore his syndesmosis ribbon after a failed landing of a triple twist. The current top German couple, which she forms with Nolan Seegert (28), is canceled for the World Cup.

The loss of Hase / Seegert due to injury hurts

Annika Hocke (20) and Robert Kunkel (21) have to try alone to win a starting place for the Olympic Games. “At first it is a very stupid story for Minerva. But unfortunately we don’t have a replacement either, that makes it so bitter. We are working to ensure that more couples advance to the world class level, ”says pair skating national coach Alexander König, who led Savchenko / Massot to Olympic gold in 2018, but who does not consider their return to be realistic.

The burden for Hocke / Kunkel is not small, the last international competition was the EM in January 2020, where both finished seventh. Since then, the sporting experiences have been limited almost without exception to training. This not only had disadvantages, deficits could be better dealt with, strengths even more pronounced. “We had the opportunity to work in a more diverse way,” said the national coach. Hase / Seegert tried their hand at a new freestyle, in which the focus of optimization was on the presentation of the fifth place in the European Championship, especially at Seegert. So they wanted to collect more points in the artistic note. Hocke and Kunkel fine-tuned the solo jumps a lot.

There is finally a real competition next week in The Hague

Overall, König likes the development, both couples have been more harmonious recently. “The synchronicity has been increased, the timing in the top elements is better, the stability has increased,” he says happily. But figure skating has a lot to do with pressure, with strong nerves, the smallest mistakes quickly end in falls. Here the difference in the mental stress on the athletes in training and competition is enormous. With all the positive effects of the past few months, this can now be a delicate matter, especially for Hocke / Kunkel. “We couldn’t practice handling the adrenaline,” said the national coach. Other nations such as Russia, which has a whole host of top pairs, could often let the athletes compete against each other in internal competitions.

König tried a few sizes smaller, in a test at the Hohenschönhausen Sports Forum, where everyone is practicing, he recently had the announcement designed as if it were being run in Madison Square Garden in New York: “We give the athletes a framework should. ”With this he wants to create a competition-like atmosphere in preparation for Stockholm. Next week in The Hague at the Challenge Cup, the framework will be more realistic again, there some couples should take the rare opportunity shortly before the World Cup to check their performance. Perhaps then it will already be possible to see what you can really dream of at the German association.

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