Figure SkatingEM missed Berlin Ice Blockade

Two good Georgian couples with Russian passports are absent from the figure skating championship because of the Berlin ice blockade. This should be shared responsibility of the German association.

All titles will be changed at the European Figure Skating Championships this week in Espoo, a suburb of the Finnish capital Helsinki. The current junior world champions, Karina Safina and Luka Berulava, will compete at the 2022 World Championships in Montpellier. Photo by imago. No defending champions are present at the beginning, which has less to do with the post-Olympic season and more to do with Russia's exclusion from sporting events.

Russia has been so dominant in figure skating in Europe that last year, Russian athletes took home all four titles, three silver, and two bronze medals. However, there are only 13 pairs competing in pair skating, compared to the strong starting fields and deserving title contenders in women's, men's, and ice dancing, even in the post-Olympic year and without Russia.

Both of the Italian couples, Sara Conti/Nicolo Macii and Rebecca Ghilardi/Filippo Ambrosini, as well as the German couples, Annika Hocke/Robert Kunkel and Alisa Efimova/Ruben Blommaert, have a chance of taking home the medals. The German Ice Skating Union, according to their former national coach Alexander König, is a contributing factor in the fact that there are no longer any European couples at the top.

Two Georgian couples that were among the best in Europe but did not compete in Finland were trained by him in Berlin in the autumn. The current junior world champions, Karina Safina/Luka Berulava, finished fourth in the battle for the European title the previous year.

In order to join the top European couples, Anastasia Metelkina/Daniil Parkmann and the other couple have significantly improved with König this season. However, according to König, a DEU blockade prevented both couples from applying for visas in time, so they were forced to discontinue their training in Berlin in December.

König claims that they arrived back in Russia in December, where they had been residing and undergoing training up until the partial mobilization in September 2022. There, both couples allegedly split up, according to König.

The athletes are trying to find a new teammate. All four of the men hold dual citizenship in Russia and Georgia, raising the possibility that they may be required to perform military service there.

However, they are unable to practice on an ice rink in Georgia. As a result, the Georgian Skating Federation sought to provide all of its athletes with training opportunities outside of Russia following the partial mobilization in Russia at the end of September.

This is revealed in a letter that the taz has access to that was written by the Georgian association. The top two pairs received training from Alexander König in Berlin as per the wishes of the Georgian federation.

The ice rink in Berlin cannot be made available to the couples if they train with König, according to the german skating union (DEU), which forbade them in a letter to the Georgian association on October 12 and which the taz has access to. This is because the DEU has no contract with König, who currently has no training group, and who does not have a training group, the letter states. Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot, two Olympic champions, were trained by Alexander König.

However, there was a rift between the ice skating association and their former national coach a good year ago. The Georgians and I had to look for another training site in Oberstdorf after being kicked out of Berlin's frequently deserted ice rink, according to Alexander König.

The athletes, however, resided in vacation apartments there. As a result, it was impossible to submit a visa application because they would have required housing at the training site.

They had an apartment in Berlin, on the other hand. Only on November 7th did DEU finally relent and permit König and the couples to retrain in Berlin.

While all of this was going on, the DEU elected a new board that might not have preferred the conflict. Prior to this encounter, however, the Georgian association forbade its couples from applying for the visa to Germany that they would have needed beginning at the end of December.

as a support. Even with enough time left over, the bureaucratic procedure would not have been able to be completed.

Both couples went back to Russia. They had significantly influenced the Berlin junior couples' daily training by being extremely diligent and having exceptional athletic ability.

Since that time, the couples' sizeable ice use and coaching fees have ceased to flow to Berlin and are now a welcome source of income for Russia, which is being negatively impacted by international economic sanctions. The DEU has done Germany a disservice as a training location if word of the DEU's behavior spreads among international ice skating associations, which is to be assumed.

However, DEU disputes "the described facts" in contrast to the Taz. We can confirm that two pairs of pairs are beginning their international careers, says DEU.

The ice rink in Berlin cannot be made available to the couples if they train with König, according to the German Skating Union (DEU), which forbade them in a letter to the Georgian association on October 12 and which the taz has access to.