Minerva-Fabienne Hase (above) and Nikita Wolodin won two Grand Prix this winter.
Foto: imago/Naoki Nishimura
The group of delegates from the German Ice Skating Union is manageable. Starting this Wednesday, eight figure skaters will be turning and turning at the World Championships at the Center Bell in Montreal. Germany is represented by Kristina Isaev for the women, Nikita Starostin for the men, the ice dancers Jennifer van Rensburg and Benjamin Steffan as well as the two Berlin couples Minerva-Fabienne Hase/Nikita Wolodin and Annika Hocke/Robert Kunkel. While there are hardly any medals to be expected for women, men and ice dancers, things are looking hopeful again for couples after six years of stagnation.
In particular, the 24-year-old Berliner Hase and her partner Nikita Wolodin, who was born in St. Peterburg, made people sit up and take notice with their Grand Prix victory last December. The couple only found each other a little over a year ago on the advice of Russian coach Dmitri Savin. However, the German trainers Rico Rex and Knut Schubert took over the training in the corrugated iron palace in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen – of course according to Sawin’s plans. Which apparently worked, as the couple’s successes first in Osaka and then at the Grand Prix final in Beijing in November and December demonstrated. With two freestyle performances of more than 130 points each, the Berliners have established themselves in the world class.
Afterwards, Hare and Volodin worked on the final details in the “Welli” until the beginning of March. The lifts with alternating positions, the triple throw rittberger or the twist worked perfectly during training. »We are athletic and also in a good mood when it comes to the freestyle and the short program. We crammed quite a bit with Mr. Schubert. We usually ran the freestyle or short program twice a day. Then there’s the athletic training and dance lessons,” reported Hase in the nd interview on site.
A good two weeks ago, the psychology student and her Russian partner said goodbye to Schubert and traveled to Oberstdorf for direct World Cup preparation, where their main coach Sawin took over. He had come especially from Sochi and, in addition to Hase/Wolodin, was preparing a Polish, a Hungarian and a Dutch couple for the World Cup in Bavaria. The Berliners can live well with the arrangement: “Nobody will take away what we learned from Mr. Schubert,” said Hase. In Oberstdorf, every jump and every step was examined again. “We don’t want to be accused of not trying everything at the World Cup,” said the 2022 Olympian – who was still with Nolan Seegert at the time.
The new couple’s long-term goal is the 2026 Winter Games. “That’s why after the World Championships in Montreal we’re going straight to Toronto to see our choreographer to prepare the free program for next year,” said Volodin. The couple wants to compete for Germany again in Milan in two years. There’s just one catch: In order to be eligible to compete at the Olympics, Volodin, like Bruno Massot once did alongside Alyona Savtschenko before their legendary Olympic gold medal in 2018, still needs German citizenship, and for this he has to have a reasonable command of the German language. “That’s why I’m taking intensive courses from April to learn German after English,” he revealed.
The competition also comes from within the company with Annika Hocke and Robert Kunkel. These two Berliners recently trained in Bergamo with the Italo-Czech Ondřej Hotárek. They were enthusiastic about their coach and the conditions in northern Italy, even though they fell short of expectations in seventh place at the European Championships, as did Hase/Woldin (5th), far behind the Italian European champions Lucrezia Beccari and Matteo Guarise. However, the following two months without competition were used, Hocke assures: “We had very good preparation. And through the shows in between, we maintained the feeling of walking in front of an audience.«
That will be necessary because Canadians are enthusiastic about ice skating and the competition is fierce. The home team Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps are likely to be the gold favorites. The two Berlin couples will still hope to continue a pair skating tradition. After all, a German duo has been at the top of the World Cup winners’ podium 18 times.
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