Charlene Guignard & Marco Fabbri defend Ice Dance European title, GB's Lilah Fear & Lewis Gibson take silver

BySportsbeat

Updated 13/01/2024 at 22:47 GMT

The Italian duo cruised to gold with a stunning performance on the ice to round off the Ice Dance competition. The Italian duo were challenged by Great Britain's Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson skating to "Rocky" but held their nerve to finish on a total score of 214.38. The British pair ended on 210.82 for silver, keeping out Lithuania's Allison Reed and Saulius Ambrulevicius, who took bronze.

Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri of Italy compete in the Ice Dance Rhythm Dance during the ISU European Figure Skating Championships

Image credit: Getty Images

Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri defended their Ice Dance title in Kaunas at the ISU European Figure Skating Championships in the last event of the day.

The Italian duo were challenged by Great Britain's Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson skating to "Rocky" but held their nerve to finish on a total score of 214.38.

The British pair ended on 210.82 for silver, keeping out Lithuania's Allison Reed and Saulius Ambrulevicius, who took bronze in front of a home crowd with 203.37 points.

World Championships

Adam Siao Him Fa wows with stunning backflip to secure bronze in style

00:08:11

25/03/2024 at 08:42

In the women's, Loena Hedrickx created history for Belgium after picking up her country's first ISU European Figure skating title since 1947.

Her win also marked Belgium's first-ever single Skating title as she shone on the ice to beat defending champion Anastasiia Gubanova.

The Georgian settled for second after Hendrickx set the bar with Madonna and Beyonce's "Break My Soul", scoring 138.59 to win with 213.25 points overall.

Fellow Belgian Nina Pinzarrone came third with 202.29 points following a routine to "Spartacus", behind Gubanova on 206.52.

Last night, Adam Siao Him Fa soared to gold again, his second European Championship, 20 points ahead of Estonia's Aleksandr Selevko in silver.

Siao Him Fa skated second to last and racked up 276.17 in total to defend his title with ease.

The French skater even gambled with a points deduction, performing an illegal backflip and incurring a two-point deduction during his free skate as he let go of his concerns around defending his title.

He said, "In the beginning of the program I was stressed because I wanted to defend my title.

"But along the program, I started to enjoy skating more for the audience.

"I lived every moment of this program from start to finish and I executed element after element."

In the pairs, Italian duo Lucrezia Beccari and Matteo Guarise took gold in a stacked field.

Beccari and Guarise were third after the short program but stormed to gold as the leaders at the halfway mark, Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava of Georgie only posted the fifth-best score in the free skate to finish second.

The podium was completed by another Italian pairing as Rebecca Ghilardi and Filippo Ambrosini claimed bronze by just 1.66 points.

- - -

Stream top winter sports action live on discovery+, the Eurosport app and at eurosport.com.

Figure Skating