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| - Russia's Dmitri Aliev clinched the men's crown at the European figure skating championships on Thursday, taking the title vacated by retired Spanish star Javier Fernandez. Dancing to "The Sound of Silence", the 20-year-old Aliev, second after Wednesday's short program, finished on 272.89 points, a distance clear of compatriot Artur Danielian on 246.74. Morisi Kvitelashvili of Georgia pocketed bronze with 246.71 pts while Czech skater Michal Brezina dropped to seventh after posting the top score in the short program. Fernandez, an Olympic bronze medallist at Pyeongchang, had won the European title seven years in a row from 2013 to 2019 before calling time on his career. French duo Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron made a strong start to their bid for a sixth consecutive European ice dance title by taking a narrow lead after the rhythm dance. Their reign as European champions is under threat, though, as Papadakis and Cizeron's score of 88.78 pts only put them 0.05 clear of Russians Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov heading into Saturday's free dance. "We did a great performance, we are happy about it, we are almost the same points as Nikita and Viktoria. We are not really surprised. We did a good program, we skated well, I'm sure they deserve to be there, too and we'll see on Saturday what happens," Cizeron said. Papadakis and Cizeron, who secured Olympic silver in 2018 despite Papadakis suffering a wardrobe malfunction, produced a vibrant display in Graz. But Sinitsina and Katsalapov kept their hopes of denying the French pair a record-equalling sixth gold medal alive. They bounced back from the disappointment of finishing sixth and last in December's Grand Prix Final with an excellent routine to "Singin' In The Rain", posting 88.73 pts. Italians Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri sit third, 4.07 pts further adrift. Lyudmila Pakhomova and Aleksandr Gorshkov are the only duo to have won six European ice dance titles, between 1970 and 1976 for the Soviet Union. es-jc/mw/dj
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