Italy wins bronze at World Team Trophy figure skating in Tokyo

The Italian season ends in the best possible way figure skating. Italy, at the Metropolitan Gymnasium in Tokyo, achieved a historic third place in the ninth edition of the World Team Trophy. The race, a biennial team competition, also represents a testing ground for the team event that will take place at Milan Cortina Olympic Games. Our colors, present with six other nations, took to the ice with the Milanese dance couple, composed of Charlène Guignard and Marco Fabbri, with the Lombard duo Sara Conti and Niccolò Macii.

Completing the team were Daniel Grassl, the Brianza native and European silver medalist Nikolaj Memola, Lara Naki Gutmann and Anna Pezzetta, from Bolzano, from the IceLab in Bergamo. On Friday, Italy had finished the competition in third place, after six of the eight segments. On Saturday, the certainty of the podium, the first ever, came after the superb performance of Conti and Macii (pictured). The two ranked second with a score of 142.46. This is the highest score ever scored by an Italian artistic pair. Gutmann was no less, also on the last day, sixth with a personal best (133.13) and Pezzetta eleventh (98.41). The national team finished with 86 total points that were worth the bronze behind the United States (126) and Japan (110), but ahead of France (78), Canada (72) and Georgia (68). The Japanese effort closes the pre-Olympic season. During the year the movement collected 12 podiums between Grand Prix, World Championships and World Team Trophy, in addition to the three medals (one gold and two silver) obtained in the European Championships.

Giuliana Lorenzo