Minerva Hase, Nikita Volodin win World Figure Skating Championships pairs' title for Germany

One month after squandering a lead at the Olympics, Germans Minerva Hase and Nikita Volodin didn't let go at the World Championships. Hase and Volodin topped both Wednesday's short program and Thursday's free skate for their first world title in Prague, Czechia. Hase and Volodin took bronze then silver at the last two worlds, then bronze at the Milan Cortina Games.

They led after the Olympic short program by 4. 55 points, then had the fourth-best free skate to drop behind gold medalists Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Japan and Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava of Georgia. At worlds, they had just one significant error in the free skate — on side-by-side triple Salchows, Volodin doubled his and Hase spun out of her landing.

But the mistake was not as glaring as at the Olympics, where Hase singled her Salchow. FIGURE SKATING WORLDS: Full Results | Broadcast Schedule The Germans totaled 228. 33 points and won by 9.

92 over Metelkina and Berulava after the Georgians had a fall on a throw triple loop in their free skate. "You go to bed and you're always like, oh, it would be so nice to wake up the next day as the world champion, so it's always in your mind," Hase said. "You try not to think about it too much, but now it's happened, so tomorrow I will wake up very, very happy.