Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Russian women sweep European Figure Skating Championships medals; Papadakis, Cizeron upset

FSKATE-PRIX-ITA-FINAL-ISU

Winner of the Ladies Free Skating program Russia’s Alena Kostornaia (C) pose for a picture with second-placed Russia’s Anna Shcherbakova (L) and third-placed Russia’s Alexandra Trusova at the ISU Grand Prix of figure skating Final 2019 on December 7, 2019 in Turin. (Photo by MARCO BERTORELLO / AFP) (Photo by MARCO BERTORELLO/AFP via Getty Images)

AFP via Getty Images

Russia dominated the European Figure Skating Championships, winning every gold medal and sweeping the medals in the women’s and pairs’ events.

Alena Kostornaia, Anna Shcherbakova and Alexandra Trusova went gold-silver-bronze, just as they did at the Grand Prix Final in December against the world’s other top female skaters.

The Russian Troika, all 15 or 16 and in their first senior international seasons, each fell in the free skate. No matter, no other skater was within 32 points of them. That’s because of their technical content. Kostornaia landed two triple Axels; Shcherbakova a quadruple Lutz and quad flip and Trusova a quad toe.

They go into March’s world championships favored to give Russia the first medal sweep at that event since the U.S. did it in 1991 with Kristi Yamaguchi, Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan

Earlier, Dmitry Aliev won the men’s title and Aleksandra Boikova and Dmitriy Kozlovskiy topped the pairs’ event.

A stunner happened in ice dance. French Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron lost to a couple other than retired Canadians Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir for the first time since December 2014.

Russians Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov overtook them in Saturday’s free dance, winning by .14 of a point.

Papadakis and Cizeron are the Olympic silver medalists and two-time reigning world champions. Sinitsina and Katsalopov, last year’s world silver medalists, ended the French couple’s record streak of five straight European titles. A rematch is on top for worlds in Montreal in March.

It’s the first time one nation swept the men’s, women’s, pairs’ and ice dance titles at Europeans since Russia in 2006.

OlympicTalk is on Apple News. Favorite us!

U.S. NATIONALS: TV Schedule | Full Results

As a reminder, you can watch the events from the 2019-20 figure skating season live and on-demand with the ‘Figure Skating Pass’ on NBC Sports Gold. Go to NBCsports.com/gold/figure-skating to sign up for access to every ISU Grand Prix and championship event, as well as domestic U.S. Figure Skating events throughout the season. NBC Sports Gold gives subscribers an unprecedented level of access on more platforms and devices than ever before.