KAUNAS, Lithuania (AP) — Loena Hendrickx took the lead at the European figure skating championships in the women’s short program on Thursday as fellow Belgian skater Nina Pinzarrone followed close behind.
Hendrickx led the way with 74.66 points after landing a triple flip, double axel and a triple lutz-triple toeloop combination. The 17-year-old Pinzarrone is second on 69.70 and last year’s winner Anastasiia Gubanova of Georgia is third on 68.96.
In Saturday’s free skate, Hendrickx will be aiming for her first major championship title after finishing second to Gubanova at last year’s European championships and winning silver and bronze world championship medals.
“I had a very good preparation and I felt very confident,” Hendrickx said.
Italy’s Lucrezia Beccari and Matteo Guarise won the pairs title Thursday after their closest rivals to the title fell. Beccari and Guarise were third after the short program but won with a total 199.19 points after Georgia’s Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava slipped off the top spot thanks to a fall on a triple salchow.
It’s the first major championship medal for Beccari and Guarise. For Guarise, it comes after nine previous top-10 finishes at the European championships without reaching the podium, both with Beccari and his former partner Nicole Della Monica.
Metelina and Berulava took silver on 196.14 and there was bronze for another Italian pair, Rebecca Ghilardi and Filippo Ambrosini, who climbed from fifth after the short program to third overall on 195.68.
Germany’s Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin had been in contention for gold but ended up fifth after a fall and a failed lift in the free skate. Last year’s winners Sara Conti and Niccolo Macii were sixth.
Russia and Belarus are not competing at the European Championships because they remain barred from International Skating Union events following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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