SOCHI, February 09, 1:31 /ITAR-TASS/. Russian figure skaters Ksenia Stolbova and Fedor Klimov said their successful performance in team pairs’ free program on Saturday owed to previous outstanding programs of their teammates at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi.
The Russian team currently leads in figure skating team competition with 47 points and are followed by the Canadian team (41 points) and the United States with 34 points.
“We believe in our teammates and now look what a wide margin we have,” Stolbova said after her performance with Klimov on Saturday. “Everything will be all right.”
“This was our task and we have achieved it,” the 22-year-old skater said. “We are happy and engulfed with outstanding emotions. We tried not to let down our team and we managed to do it.”
Stolbova added that she and Klimov were also inspired for the good result by preceding performance of Yulia Lipnitskaya in team ladies’ short program. Lipnitskaya, 15, skated to “You don’t give up on my love” music to eventually be awarded by judges with 72.90 points and finish in the first place out of 10 skaters, leaving behind Italy’s Carolina Kostner and Japan’s Mao Asada.
“Moreover, Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov passed us the baton, tuned us up, told us about the skating arena and gave us good advice,” Stolbova said adding that it was “a secret” what kind of advice they received.
Volosozhar and Trankov finished on Thursday in team pairs short program at the top of the list of competitors leaving behind their strong contenders Meagan Duhamel/Eric Radford of Canada and Cheng Peng/Hao Zhang of China.
Klimov, 23, attributed his successful performance with Stolbova to the support of the fans at the Iceberg Skating Palace.
“[Spectator’s] emotions at the arena were more like at an ice hockey or football match,” Klimov said. “This is very rare to experience such emotions in figure skating.”
Nina Mozer, the coach of Stolbova and Klimov, said it turned out to be the right decision to put the pair for the free skating program following the performance of Vlosozhar/Trankov.
“The decision to put up Ksenia and Fedor for the free program was logical and as it later turned out to be the right one,” she said. “They always skate well in free programs.”
The coach said the pair made a slight mistake, but attributed it to their “nervousness,” adding that on the whole their performance in team’s event would greatly contribute to their upcoming competition in pairs individual.
“They are young and are full of physical strength,” Mozer said.
The team figure skating competition at the Sochi Olympics, which run between February 7 and 23, will be rounded up on Sunday by men’s free program, ladies’ free program and pairs ice dance.