Aussie figure skaters win world juniors

Figure skating pair Harley Windsor and Ekaterina Alexandrovskaya have become Australia's first junior world champions.

Australia's surge in winter sports has continued - this time away from the slopes - 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 to capture gold after ranking third in the short program.

The Australians outperformed the fancied pairs from more dominant skating nations including Russians Aleksandra Boikova and Dimitrii Kozlovskii and China's Yumeng Gao and Zhong Xie who were 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.

Indigenous skater Harley, from Western Sydney, and his Moscow-born partner 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 throw salchow.

They pulled off a clean throw triple flip and side by side triple jump combos in what was their skate of the season.

"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.

The pair split their training between Canterbury Ice Rink in Sydney and Moscow with their Sydney-based coaches Andrei and Galina Pachin and will return to Russia for two weeks' training before competing at the world championships in Helsinki.

Here they'll vie 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.


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Source: AAP


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