TALLINN, Estonia — Adam Siao Him Fa’s bid to win the European men’s figure skating title three years running ended with a bronze medal after Lukas Britschgi produced a stunning upset to take gold on Saturday.
The second surprise champion in two days after Niina Petrokina of Estonia won the women’s event, Britschgi had been eighth after the short program. He’s the first European men’s champion from Switzerland since 1947.
“Thank you for this unforgettable night,” he told the crowd, and apologized for not having prepared a speech. Asked what his next goal would be, he said simply, “Celebrating.”
Despite his troubled short program on Thursday, Britschgi’s clean skate on Saturday, with two quadruple jumps, gave him a total of 267.09 points. It proved enough for gold amid a succession of mishaps for other contenders.
Like Petrokina on Friday, France’s Siao was skating to the soundtrack of the movie “Dune,” but without the same success. Siao fell on his opening quad toeloop, missing what would have been a high-scoring combination, and was marked down for shaky landings on other jumps.
Nikolaj Memola of Italy had been fifth in the short program but improved to take the silver medal on 262.61, ahead of Siao on 257.99.
Also, Italian ice dancers Charlène Guignard and Marco Fabbri won their event for the third year in a row.
Skating in their 13th Europeans together, Guignard and Fabbri had the lead from Friday’s rhythm dance and delivered an assured free dance with a robot theme to score a total of 212.12 points and stay clear of a close contest for the other medals.
The next target for the Italians is the world championships in Boston in March as they aim to improve on their best result of a silver medal in 2023.
“Some time off and then back again at work,” Fabbri said.
Barely a point separated second from fourth place. France’s Evgeniia Lopareva and Geoffrey Brissaud won their first European medal with silver on 206.76 to beat Britain’s Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson, who danced to a Beyoncé medley, on 206.06. Finland’s Juulia Turkkila and Matthias Versluis missed the podium by just .33.
The European figure skating championships, which began on Wednesday, have been overshadowed by the deaths of skaters, coaches and their families in a mid-air collision between a passenger jet and military helicopter near Washington, D.C.
