European champion Lukas Britschgi falls back from 11th to 12th place in the freestyle at the World Figure Skating Championships in Boston. Too much does not fit.
30.03.2025, 07:57
30.03.2025, 08:10
SDA
Britschgi failed a few things in his free skate. He fell in the triple Lutz/triple toeloop combination, he only added a double to the quadruple toeloop, he only performed one triple Axel instead of two, and in the end the flip was only a double. With a total of 158.36 points, the 27-year-old from Schaffhausen remained well below his freestyle best of 184.19 points, which he set at the beginning of February when he won the title at the European Championships in Tallinn.
In Estonia, Britschgi had stormed from 8th place to the top. It was somehow logical that he did not manage to catch up this time. During Art und Ice after the European Championships, he suffered a cut and after a week the wound became infected, resulting in an emergency operation. Then the knee problems that he had under control before the European Championships returned, having previously cost him some training time. To make matters worse, he also caught a cold in Boston. All of this was too much for him to deliver a top performance. At least he achieved the minimum goal of securing a quota place for the Olympic Games next February in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo.
"I couldn't show my potential, I didn't feel 100 percent ready," said Britschgi. He skied immediately after the local Jason Brown. "That gave me goosebumps. I tried to take the energy with me, but it wasn't easy to run after him." All in all, however, he was satisfied.
Ilia Malinin, who became world champion for the second time in a row, ran in a league of his own. The 20-year-old American performed six quadruple jumps in the freestyle. With a total of 318.56 points, he distanced second-placed Kazakh Mikhail Shaidorov (287.47) by an incredible 31.09 points. Bronze went to Yuma Kagiyama from Japan (278.19).
