Taipei City / Chinese Taipei

The ISU World Junior Figure Skating Championships 2017 continued Friday evening in Taipei City, Chinese Taipei, with the Pairs Free Skating.

Alexandrovskaya/Windsor (AUS) take historic Pairs gold

Ekaterina Alexandrovskaya/Harley Windsor of Australia made history when they took the pairs title, the first ISU Championship title for their country. Aleksandra Boikova/Dmitrii Kozlovskii of Russia settled for the silver medal and the bronze went to China’s Yumeng Gao/Zhong Xie.

Alexandrovskaya/Windsor completed a triple twist, triple Salchow, triple toe-double toe-double toe combination and throw triple flip in their routine to the “W.E.” soundtrack. The only error came when she fell on the throw triple Salchow. The ISU Junior Grand Prix Finalists achieved a new personal best with 104.16 points and were ranked second in the Free Skating. Overall the team accumulated 163.98 points to move up from third to first place. “It’s still slowly sinking in. It’s overwhelming for both of us. We came in this competition very confident, in our training and coaches. In the performance we just took one element at a time and just tried to focus. We made a little mistake, but in the end it sort of worked out for us”, Windsor said.

Boikova/Kozlovskii landed a triple Salchow, triple toe-double toe-double toe, triple twist and level-four lifts and spins, but Boikova stepped out of the throw triple Salchow and two-footed the throw triple loop. The ISU Junior Grand Prix Final bronze medalists earned 100.66 points and slipped from first to second at 161.93 points. “We wanted to skate better than that obviously and we made some errors. But what happened, happened. We know that we have a lot of work ahead of us and we are confident that we can be more successful next time”, Kozlovskii commented.

Gao/Xie’s program to the “Crunchy Granola Suite” by Neil Diamond included a triple twist, throw triple toe and Salchow as well as three level-four elements. The Chinese team achieved a personal best with 101.12 points and dropped from second to third at 161.09 points. “We are pretty satisfied with today’s performance. I made a mistake on the jump (Salchow) and I am not too satisfied with myself”, Xie told the press.

Amina Atakhanova/Ilia Spiridonov (RUS) won the Free Skating with a strong performance to pull up from eighth to fourth at 157.76 points. Evelyn Walsh/Trennt Michaud (CAN) came fifth (150.74 points) while Alina Ustimkina/Nikita Volodin (RUS) slipped from fourth to sixth place (145.69 points).

The ISU World Junior Figure Skating Championships continue Saturday with the Free Dance and the Ladies Free Skating. For more information, full entry lists and results please see: www.isu.org and http://www.wjc2017.com/. #WorldJFigure