– Kimmy Repond shines and comes fifth
The 17-year-old from Basel shows her best freestyle in Montreal and is among the best in the world – Livia Kaiser can also improve.
Published: March 23, 2024, 08:21
With a lot of passion right in the middle of the world‘s best: Kimmy Repond (17).
Photo: Minas Panagiotakis (Getty Images)
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Two Swiss women in the top ten at a World Cup? This has never happened before in Swiss figure skating. That’s why what 17-year-old Kimmy Repond from Basel and 19-year-old Livia Kaiser from Frauenfeld achieved on Friday evening in Montreal is something very special.
Repond only managed a moderate short program on Wednesday and was twelfth after part 1 of the competition. But now she showed an inspiring freestyle – a best performance in her young career, for which she was rewarded with 133.38 points. This increased her to a total of 196.02 points and an excellent 5th place. Another eight points would have been necessary for the bronze medal.
Repond, who surprisingly won bronze at the European Championships in 2023 and was then eighth at the World Championships, was slowed down by back problems at the start of the season. It wasn’t until the national championships in December that she was able to run again without any symptoms. The lack of training was still noticeable at the European Championships when she came seventh. But now Repond, who completed her high school diploma in the summer, is back – right at the top of the world. To top it off, she was named Newcomer of the Year.
Ninth at her first World Cup: Livia Kaiser (19).
Photo: Minas Panagiotakis (Getty Images)
And Livia Kaiser was also able to improve herself again by coming tenth after the short program: in the free program she didn’t quite match her performance at the European Championships in January, when she surprisingly came fourth. But with a total of 187.94 points, she immediately came ninth at her first elite World Championships.
The Japanese Kaori Sakamoto became world champion for the third time in a row (222.96 points), the last time the American Peggy Fleming achieved this was from 1966 to 1968.
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