Fernandez nabs 5th straight Euro title
Javier Fernandez won his fifth straight European figure skating championship even with a fall yesterday in Ostrava, Czech Republic.
Holding an almost 10-point lead after the short program, the Spaniard opened the free skate with a perfect quad toe loop, but landed a quad salchow shakily, and fell in an attempt to nail another quad salchow.
“Everything in my body hurts right now,” Fernandez said. “Everything hurts so bad.”
Even so, he ended up winning the free skate, extending his lead, and finishing more than 28 points ahead of second-place Maxim Kovtun.
Fernadez’ total of 294.84 was well short of his personal best of 314.93, a warning before he tailors his training to retain his world championship title in Helsinki in late March.
Kovtun executed well a quad salchow and a quad toe loop in his best free skate score of 172.27 for a total of 266.80. New Russian champion Mikhail Kolyada took bronze. Earlier, Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France rebounded from third place after the short dance to retain their ice dance title.
The duo produced the best free dance to triumph for the third straight year.
“We work a lot,” Papadakis said. “And that’s the beautiful part of the sport, that we have to make it beautiful.”
Papadakis and Cizeron scored 114.19 points to move to the top with a total of 189.67.
They beat the 186.64 of the 2014 European and world champions Anna Cappellini and Luca Lanotte. The Italians finished second overall for the third consecutive time.
Skiing: Vonn crashes again
Defending overall World Cup champion Lara Gut won her first downhill of the season in Cortina D’Ampezzo, Italy, while Lindsey Vonn crashed for the second consecutive day.
Gut finished 0.05 seconds ahead of Sofia Goggia of Italy and 0.47 in front of Ilka Stuhec of Slovenia. … In Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, Hannes
Reichelt led from the start to win a downhill race for his first World Cup victory of the season.
The Austrian went first and completed the Kandahar course in 1 minute, 53.83 seconds, beating Italy’s
Peter Fill by 0.16 and Switzerland’s Beat Feuz by 0.52.
Names: Holland officially a Rockie
The Colorado Rockies made their deal with Greg
Holland official, signing the right-handed reliever coming off reconstructive elbow surgery to a one-year, $7 million contract.
Holland injured his right elbow in late 2015 and missed all of last season with Kansas City while recovering from Tommy John surgery. …
Liverpool was embarrassed in the FA Cup by Wolverhampton Wanderers, 2-1, ending a week of misery for the team.
Liverpool was shocked 4-3 by Swansea in the Premier League last Saturday and was denied a place in the League Cup final by Southampton on Wednesday. …
In Mobile, Ala., California’s Davis Webb directed scoring drives on all three of his possessions to lead the South to a 16-15 Senior Bowl victory over the North, which couldn’t hit a final two-point attempt.