TURIN, Italy — Pang Qing and Tong Jian have a world title to go with their Olympic silver medal.
Runners-up at the Vancouver Olympics last month, Pang and Tong easily won their second title Wednesday at the World Figure Skating Championships. The Chinese pair finished with 211.39 points, more than six points ahead of two-time defending world champs Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy of Germany.
“For us, it’s the impossible dream because . . . there are so few people who can be here in the rink for such high-level competition. Skating at this level is our dream, the big dream,” Tong said.
Russia’s Yuko Kavaguti and Alexander Smirnov, second after the short program, settled for a second straight bronze after she fell on their throw quadruple salchow — the hardest element attempted by any of the pairs.
U.S. champions Caydee Denney and Jeremy Barrett were seventh, while Amanda Evora and Mark Ladwig finished ninth.
Earlier, Olympic bronze medalist Daisuke Takahashi took the lead in the men’s competition, dazzling the judges with huge jumps and speedy steps in his short program. Canada’s Patrick Chan was second at 87.8, 1.5 points behind Takahashi, followed by France’s Brian Joubert (87.7).
“I did a good performance, even if I did not skate as fast as I could,” said Takahashi, who scored 89.3 points. “I know that I can also do better.”
Jeremy Abbott, the two-time U.S. champion from Aspen, is sixth at 81.05 and two-time world junior champion Adam Rippon is seventh at 80.11 heading into today’s free skate. The top two Americans need to finish with a combined placement of 13 or better — sixth and seventh, for example — to secure three spots at next year’s worlds.
“I wanted to come here and take a different approach than I did at the Olympics,” said Abbott, who was a dismal 15th in the short program in Vancouver. “I wasn’t focusing on the outcome or the placement. The goal was to just take each element one at a time. I really allowed myself to have fun with the program.”
