Ice skating: Gritshuk and Platov reign

Saturday 22 March 1997 00:02 GMT
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

Oksana Gritshuk and Evgeny Platov blended a spectacular interpretation of Arab culture with the special demands of ice dancing to win their fourth successive world title in Lausanne, Switzerland yesterday.

The Russian couple, invincible since they captured the 1994 Olympic crown, gleaned two perfect scores of 6.0 for artistic merit as they again beat their team-mates, Anjelika Krylova and Oleg Ovsiannikov, into second. They also had a 6.0 in their tango on Thursday to give them three for the week. They garnered 12 during the Europeans in January but perfect scores are harder to acquire at world level.

Tara Lipinski narrowly won the short program to raise her hopes of becoming the youngest women's world champion in history.

France's Vanessa Gusmeroli was second with Maria Butyrskaya, of Russia, third. The American defending champion, Michelle Kwan, was fourth after faltering in a combination jump.

"It felt great after having a bad short last year and being able to do a clean short this year gave me a lot of confidence," said Lipinski, who was 23rd after the short last year and was 15th after the free programme.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in