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Sport
By Simon Smale
Topic:Figure Skating
Hektor Giotopoulos Moore and Anastasiia Golubeva won Australia's first ISU senior World Cup medal. (Supplied: ISU Figure Skating)
Anastasiia Golubeva and Hektor Giotopoulos Moore have claimed bronze at the ISU World Cup event in Halifax, Canada.
The medal is Australia's first of any colour in a senior International Skating Union World Cup event.
The pair will next compete at the Finlandia Trophy ISU Grand Prix event in Helsinki, Finland, on November 15-17.
Australian figure skaters Anastasiia Golubeva and Hektor Giotopoulos Moore have made history by claiming a bronze medal at the International Skating Union (ISU) Grand Prix in Halifax, Canada.
It is Australia's first medal at a senior ISU Grand Prix event.
"It's been really, really fun," Giotopoulos Moore told ABC News Breakfast on Monday.
"We had a really, really great time. It was a tough competition. It was quite a challenging one for us, but we came out with a pretty decent result.
"We're quite happy with it."
The pair recorded a career-best score of 64.81 points in the opening short program, which put them in third place after the opening round, before backing that up with a score of 121.33 points in the free skate event.
Hektor Giotopoulos Moore and Anastasiia Golubeva are two-time junior world championship medallists. (Supplied: ISU Figure Skating)
It was the pair's first competition of the season due to a back injury that has hampered Giotopoulos Moore.
Golubeva, 18, and Giotopoulos Moore, 22, recorded two fourth-place finishes last season, marking out this bronze as a significant breakthrough at senior level.
"The atmosphere was very friendly and we enjoyed to show our performance," Golubeva said.
As is often the case with Australian figure-skaters, Golubeva and Giotopoulos Moore's road to the World Cup circuit has been a testing one.
The Sydney-born and based Giotopoulos Moore trawled the world to find a suitable partner, before joining with young Russian soloist, Golubeva on a recommendation from his coaches Galina Pachina and Andrei Pachin.
"I was told: 'Warm-up and wait. A boy will come,'" Golubeva told Russian-language website Sport24 in 2023.
"I didn't know what he looked like, only that he doesn't speak Russian.
"I can't say he knew our language very well, only the basic things like 'hello', 'how are you.' You don't need much more for training, But now we speak only Russian. He has learnt it all."
Anastasiia Golubeva made a huge move to Australia aged just 15. (Supplied: OWIA/Chris Hocking)
Trapped in Russia during the COVID pandemic, the pair resorted to training off the ice in any space they could find during lockdown, even in a restaurant.
They briefly relocated to Belarus before making the move to Sydney when Golubeva was just 15, the young teen moving in with Giotopoulos Moore's family.
Golubeva settled into Sydney though, describing Giotopoulos Moore's mother as "like a second mum" to her.
"We have been almost living together for the last four years," Giotopoulos Moore said.
"So we have become very close."
The pair spent time training in Australia but are now based in Montreal, Canada.
"There aren't many international competitions in Australia," Giotopoulos Moore told ABC News.
"But, you know, if anybody is willing to put in the work, anybody can do it."
Hektor Giotopoulos Moore and Anastasiia Golubeva have a bright future in the sport. (Supplied: ISU Figure Skating)
There may be few competitions in Australia, but inspiration can come from the most unlikely of places, even Will Ferrell's Blades of Glory.
"I take all of [my inspiration from] it," Giotopoulos Moore said.
"I remember when I was younger in Canterbury, that we had a few people there who used to call me the Young Chazz.
Golubeva reciprocated Giotopoulos Moore's enthusiasm for the film, saying: "[It's] my favourite movie.
"I'm always laughing."
Harley Windsor and Ekaterina Alexandrovskaya's figure skating pairing provided one of Australia's most unlikely sporting stories — and one of its most tragic.
Despite this being Australia's first ISU World Cup medal, the future looks incredibly bright for Giotopoulos Moore and Golubeva, given their impressive record on the world stage.
In 2022 they became the third Australian pairing to win a World Junior medal by claiming silver at the Championships in Tallinn, Estonia, which they repeated in 2023.
In doing so, the pairing followed in the footsteps of Liz and Peter Cain, who won bronze in 1976, and Katya Alexandrovskaya and Harley Windsor, who were crowned world junior champions in 2017.
The pair finished 10th in last year's senior world championships, following an eighth-place finish the year prior.
Following from this success, Golubeva and Giotopoulos Moore will next compete at the Finlandia Trophy ISU Grand Prix event in Helsinki, Finland, on November 15-17.
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