Can you dance behind the music? Unfortunately possible, confirmed Nicole Schott with a smile, and she didn’t mean it figuratively, but literally: on runners, with tango. From the first second of her short freestyle she felt out of step, an exclusively subjective feeling that remained hidden from the audience. “Ideally,” she said, “I would have started all over again.” Rewind, everything to zero, that’s not what figure skating provides, especially not at German championships. So she ran her program to the end, and it speaks for Schott that she still came first. The following day she managed a brilliant freestyle; and harmoniously, in the pulse of the music, she danced towards the championship in the ice rink in Neuss.
Schott has now collected six national titles. “Not so many have managed that in the last hundred years,” said the 25-year-old with satisfaction. In the yellowed picture books of her sport, one could turn back to the black and white photos of Ellen Brockhöft from the Berlin ice skating club, seven-time champion in the wide-swinging pleated skirt of the 1920s. In order to catch up with the GDR stars, Katarina Witt (eight titles) or record champion Gabriele Seyfert (ten titles), Schott would have to add a few more years.
For the time being, she continues to set the standard in this country with her precision and elegance in style. The second, Kristina Isaev from Mannheim, also explained that Schott is a quality role model for her in many ways, for example in pirouettes. In the second season Isaev, 20, is now training in a group with Schott (178.75 points) in Oberstdorf with Michael Huth; and she was the only one who could stand up to her, even if the gap after the freestyle was 20.54 points. The 17-year-old Aya Hatakawa, who had become champion in the absence of the series winner last year, was absent from Neuss this time.
Pair skating victory for Minerva Hase and Nolan Seegert
At the top of the world, Schott has known for a long time, they will lose every jumping competition against the phenomenal young guard from Russia who turn four times on its own axis. “The level,” she says, “has risen brutally in recent years”. Your own goals are geared towards the perfection of your individual skills. She had already proven the qualification requirements for the Olympic Games before the German championship.
Participation in European Championships and World Championships, but missed the norm for the Olympics: Paul Fentz is German champion.
(Photo: Rolf Vennenbernd / dpa)
Paul Fentz, 29, from Berlin, who won his fourth title in the men’s competition, missed the Beijing norm in September and then lost the management status in the DEU association. He was the only one who demonstrated a quadruple toe loop in the freestyle to the spectators in Neuss at the weekend; with the win (206.84 points) he has at least created the conditions for participation in the European Championship and World Cup.
In pair skating, Minerva Hase and Nolan Seegert, fifth in the 2020 European Championships, achieved the third success after 2019 and 2020. Only one other duo competed: Alisa Efimowa, who grew up in Finland and Russia, and Ruben Bloemmaert have been training together in Oberstdorf for two years. they are still blocked for international appearances. The Neuss audience experienced their promising competition debut.
Only in ice dancing did the favorites not triumph at the weekend: Katharina Müller / Tim Dieck from Dortmund had to be satisfied with 177.11 points and second place. Jennifer Janse van Rensburg and Benjamin Steffan from Oberstdorf slid elegantly past them with 179.07 points both in rhythm dance and in the freestyle. For them, unlike Nicole Schott, the award ceremony was actually a premiere feeling.