Skaters who changed nationalities for Oly gold

Gangneung ( South Korea): The happy couple mount the Olympic podium with “Germany” emblazoned on the back of their jackets, yet one is Ukrainian and the other French.

Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot’s record- breaking figure skating Olympic triumph on Thursday is a story of skill, but also of crossing borders and heartache.

When 34- year- old Savchenko, the Kiev- born grand dame of pairs skating, cast her eye around for a new partner in 2014, she chose Massot.

For the skater from the French city of Caen, the chance was too good to miss for Massot. But his national federation had other ideas and played hard ball, refusing to release him.

For a year and a half he found himself stranded in a skating no- man’s land — ineligible to compete, with no funding, until finally he got the call he’d been praying for from French skating rulers to say they had relented.

Massot, who only received German citizenship in November, said back in 2016: “I’m French and I love skating for France. Yes, I skate for Germany because I’m thinking of my career above anything else.”

It was a career- defining move which on Thursday at the Pyeongchang Games was rewarded with Olympic glory, and their adopted homeland’s first pairs title since 1932.

Savchenko said: “The blood in you doesn’t know what nationality you are. We are happy we can do this for Germany, the country that took us in and supported us, this is the main thing.”

Savchenko represented Ukraine in her first Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002.

She then united with Robin Szolkowy to represent Germany for the last three Games, coming away with bronze from Vancouver and Sochi. With Szolkowy leaving the stage she spied in Massot a potential prize partner, and her intuition proved spot- on.