European Figure Skating Championships
Malmö, Sweden

24 January

Ice Dancing, Free Dance

Roxane Petetin/Mathieu Jost (FRA), 2003 National silver medalists
Petetin: I’m so sad and disappointed.
Jost: We wanted too much. We had planned to skate perfect. But in the twizzle Roxane forgot the steps and lost her concentration. It could have been worse. After such an incident you have to continue as fast as possible or else you loose a lot more marks. Now we’re looking forward and our goal is to be one of the two French couples competing at the Worlds.

Nora Hoffmann/Attila Elek (HUN), 2003 Junior GP Final silver medalists Hoffmann: It’s amazing to skate amongst the best skaters. It’s so different from junior competitions. There are more people who support you and carry you through the program. And we had to add one minute at the beginning of the program. Then we continued with our Junior Free Program and thought now we have to skate our whole Junior Program. We are looking forward to compete at the Europeans next year in Budapest, but first we have to concentrate on Junior Worlds.

Oksana Domnina/Maxim Shabalin (RUS), 2003 Junior GP Final Champions
Domnina: When went out, I saw the full arena, the cameras, and it was a shock! But of course, the audience was great, they supported us so much during the performance.
Shabalin: We learned at our first Europeans that we have to stay calmer. We weren’t used to the hype during the warm up, the shouting, the noise. That’s the biggest difference to junior competitions. We didn’t pay too much attention to the other couples in practice, we focused on ourselves. It doesn’t matter to us that the World Champions were there. If you only watch the others, you don’t have time to practice yourself!

Sylwia Nowak/Sebastian Kolasinski (POL), 2003 National Champions
Nowak: We are happy with our performance. We almost skated like planned.  We had only a tiny mistake in the diagonal step sequence because the ice was quite bad, with a lot of traces. But the audience was great, we had a warm welcome. We want to try to improve our speed before Worlds.
Kolasinski: We are disappointed with our low marks as the Italian couple made a serious mistake during a lift (fall).

Galit Chait/Sergei Sakhnovski (ISR), 2002 World bronze medalists
Chait: Today it felt really good with our skating. It’s very helpful with the nice audience. Of course we can skate better but we’re very satisfied. We hope to be in top three at Worlds.
Sakhnovski: Today I was more happy with our performance. We tried to show our best and we hope that the next competition will be better. Now we just have to work harder on our program. We changed one lift because the judges didn’t like it, so now we have another lift instead that is clear and OK with the judges.

Isabelle Delobel/Olivier Schoenfelder (FRA), 2003 National Champions
Delobel: Our ordinals showed that we got really close to the Israeli couple. We had four first place ordinals. They show that we progressed. It makes us even more eager to give it all at Worlds in Washington.
Schoenfelder: We achieved our goal here, that is to skate well tonight, maybe even better than in practice. We had a lot of energy until the end. It was nice to have the support of the French fan club. 

Albena Denkova/Maxim Staviski (BUL), 2002 Bofrost Cup Champions
Denkova: We like to skate first because it’s not so much pressure as if we skated last in the group. For us it’s perfect to skate in this order but maybe it’s not the best if you think about the judges and how they judge the performance. We’re satisfied with our program today and we really fought for a medal. But if you are close to the podium, it puts a lot of pressure on your performance.

Kati Winkler/Rene Lohse (GER), 2003 National Champions
Winkler: It’s a consolation that the audience enjoyed our program in spite of the fall. I think we’re on the right track. We felt that the audience liked us a lot, and that helps. Now we’re looking forward to the Grand Prix Final. We have to forget about that fall as quickly as possible.
Lohse: It looks like we remain in fifth place, which was a goal for us.  A fall can happen. We had good practices and performed well in competition. It was a mistake from which we can learn.

Irina Lobacheva/Ilia Averbukh (RUS), 2002 World Champions
Averbukh: It was wonderful. The audience carried us throughout the whole program. We worked a lot, because we didn’t skate so well in our last two competitions. We still have a lot to improve. We want to have more speed and to skate cleaner. It’s hard to do all these steps at high speed. As World Champions, we’re the leaders of the sport. We want ice dancing to be more dancing again. Ice dancers should do things that single skaters can’t do. Of course, it’s a risk for us to change our style. But we think it’s important to do something different every year.

Elena Grushina/Ruslan Goncharov (UKR), winners of 3 Grand Prix events
Goncharov: I felt a bit tense, but it was still easy to skate. It’s easier if you’re not in the lead, but, of course, I want to be in the lead. The season isn’t over yet, and we’ll fight again for higher placements at the Grand Prix Final and Worlds.

Tatiana Navka/Roman Kostomarov (RUS), 2003 National Champions
Kostomarov: I feel tired right now. Too bad that I had this problem with my costume. I think we would have had chances to finish second if not for that. It’s stupid, just because of a minor thing like this. But we’ll go for a higher placement at our next events.