MILAN, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Italy's figure skaters remained confident about their medal prospects in the team event at the Milano Cortina Olympics after the men's short programme and free dance session ensured the host nation maintained third place on Saturday.
Dance pair Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri ended second in their segment after Daniel Grassl finished fifth in the men's short programme to ensure Italy stayed ahead of rivals Canada and Georgia before the free skates.
With three competitions left in the team event, leaders the United States appear to be locked in a battle for gold with second-placed Japan, who hold a two-point advantage over Italy.
"It wasn’t easy, because with this team‑event format you only really find out at the last moment whether you will skate or not", said Fabbri.
"Once the men’s event ended, we relaxed for a moment and said, ‘OK, now let’s focus only on our performance,’ and we tried to enter our own parallel world. We did it - we managed to deliver the programme we wanted to skate", he added.
Guignard and Fabbri captured silver at last month's European Championships, signalling they are a medal threat in Milan. They scored 124.22 points to place second in their segment.
"We’re happy to have contributed some points for Italy tonight. We did our part. Tomorrow we’re sure the other members of the Italian team will do theirs as well", he said, adding a medal was feasible.
"This is such a difficult sport, where mistakes are so easy to make. It's unpredictable, but we are confident about that."
An almost full arena gave strong support to the home skaters.“Competing in Italy is a unique emotion," said Grassl. "I honestly didn’t expect so many people ... today it felt packed. It was wonderful to skate here.
“What was new was being the crowd favourite, even though there were many Americans in the stands — and when (U.S. skater) Ilia (Malinin) came in, the crowd reacted as well,” he said.
“It was very difficult to compete today after seeing my teammates do so well. Replicating that was really tough, but I’m happy to have given my best,” Grassl told reporters.
(Reporting by Elvira Pollina, editing by Ken Ferris and Diane Craft)
