Georgian figure skaters win pairs and lead men's event at European championships

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SHEFFIELD, England (AP) — It was Georgia's day at the European figure skating championships Thursday.

Skaters representing the former Soviet nation won the pairs gold medal and took the lead in the men's event at the championships, a key warmup for next month's Winter Olympics.

Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava recovered from a fall to win their first European title after silver in 2024 and bronze last year.

The Georgians had the lead from Wednesday's short program and, even though Metelkina fell on a triple toeloop, the rest of their free skate was strong to score 139.80 for a total 215.76.

The two skaters laid on their backs on the ice in relief after finishing their free skate, as Berulava pumped his fists and made a snow angel gesture.

The title defense of Germany's Minerva Hase and Nikita Volodin ended with an erratic free skate. Hase fell on a throw triple loop and tumbled to the ice again when Volodin tried to lower her down from their final lift.

Hase seemed in pain as she waited for the scores, and then stunned to see that she and Volodin had scored enough to stay ahead overall of third-place Maria Pavlova and Alexei Sviatchenko of Hungary, 203.87 to 202.56.

Georgian figure skater Nika Egadze edged ahead of two Estonian brothers to take the lead in the men's short program.

Egadze scored 91.28 points for the lead after starting his program with a bang, following up a quadruple salchow-triple toeloop combination with a quad toeloop.

That was enough to beat last year's silver medalist Aleksandr Selevko on 88.71 and his younger brother Mihhail on 88.28. Defending champion Lukas Britschgi was sixth for Switzerland.

Estonia is on track for more medals as Niina Petrokina leads the women's event ahead of Friday's free skate.

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