Tuesday, February 17
Yesterday evening, Minerva Hase and Nikita Volodin won the bronze medal in figure skating at the Olympic Winter Games in Italy. They started as leaders with 80.01 points in a personal-best performance, but lost some momentum during the freestyle and fell back to third place with 219.09 points.
After the optimal start in the competition, Hase had said they felt “very happy” but saved the “great emotions” for the final. Another Berlin duo, Annika Hocke and Robert Kunkel, ranked in tenth place with a season’s best performance of 194.11 points.
Hase was born in Berlin in 1999 and began figure skating in 2004 in Schmargendorf. Volodin was born in Russia and has a German passport. Together they trained in the Sportforum Berlin-Hohenschönhausen under Dmitri Sawin and Knut Schubert.
In Beijing in 2022, Volodin came last in freestyle with her former partner Nolan Seegert. Three years ago, her now coach Dmitri Savin contacted her in what was the start of her journey to success.
They have both been compared to Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot who won the gold medal for Germany in figure skating eight years ago in Pyeongchang. But Hase stated before the final, “We don’t look, we don’t hear. We’re all in our bubble. Therefore, we did not get any influence from the outside.”
