After seven years of climbing as high as a bronze medal, Vanessa James and Morgan Cipres from France won the pairs’ title at the European Championships on Thursday in Minsk, Belarus.
James and Cipres built on a 2.65-point lead after the short program to tally 149.11 points in the free skate and 225.66 overall points.
Russian rivals Yevgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov, two-time European champions themselves, were relegated to silver by an overall margin of 6.84 points.
Another Russian pair, Aleksandra Boikova and Dmitrii Kozlovsii took the bronze medal with 205.