Australia's surge in winter sports continues, as Harley Windsor and Ekaterina Alexandrovskaya became the country's first junior world figure skating champions
The pair delivered a stunning free program skate in Taipei City, Taiwan, that captured gold after ranking third in the short program.
"I'm shocked that we got first place, it's crazy to put Australia in the scene for skating and we're over the moon about the gold medal, I can't put it into words," Harley said.
Katia scored a personal best for their free skate of 104.16 for a final score of 163.98, another personal best, despite a fall on their salchow jump, a complex move that involves jumping from the backward inside edge of one skate to the backward outside edge of the other, with one or more full turns mid-air.
Source: EPA/RITCHIE B. TONGO
They pulled off a clean throw triple flip and side by side triple jump combos in what was their skate of the season.
The Australians outperformed the fancied pairs from more dominant skating nations, including Russia’s Aleksandra Boikova and Dimitrii Kozlovskii and China's Yumeng Gao and Zhong Xie, who came in second and third respectively.
Windsor and Alexandrovskaya's victory follows their ground-breaking gold medal at a junior grand prix in Estonia last year, another first for Australian figure skating.
The pair split their training between Canterbury Ice Rink in Sydney and Moscow with their Sydney-based coaches Andrei and Galina Pachin. They will return to Russia for two weeks' training before competing at the world championships in Helsinki.
There, they'll compete for an Olympic Qualification spot for Australia in the 2018 PyeongChang Olympic Winter Games in February.
The win caps a golden run for the Australia in winter sports with freestyle skiers and snowboarders picking up five medals at the ongoing world championships in Spain.\
Source: EPA/RITCHIE B. TONGO
