Estonia’s Niina Petrõkina retained her European championship title on Friday in Sheffield, England, three months after Achilles tendon surgery, proving her skeptics wrong.

Petrõkina landed seven triple jumps in a clean, personal-best free skate to music from the movie “Dune” to score 216.14 points, a score that ranks the Estonian among some of the world’s best ahead of next month’s Winter Olympics.

With that, Petrõkina successfully defended the European gold she won in Tallinn last year in the women’s free skate program, where she scored 208.18 points on home ice.

“I don’t know how I did it, but I know I’m unstoppable! I love what I do. I needed everything that has happened to me in order to be here right now,” she said after her victory at the European Figure Skating Championships.

The Estonian had competed only in second-tier events and her national championships since surgery in October, the Associated Press wrote. She’d struggled with pain for much of 2025 since her breakthrough European championship last year.

Petrõkina is the first skater to win back-to-back European women’s titles since Russia’s Evgenia Medvedeva in 2017. 

Impossible to win twice

“I don’t have many emotions right now. Throughout the program, I just tried to stay focused and forget that this was the European Championships — to treat it like just another training session,” Petrõkina said after her win.

“It was really tough, but I pulled through, and I hope I’ll be able to do it again someday. I already knew at the end of the program that it would be enough to win,” she continued.

“The audience was so loud when I started. I felt like I was in Tallinn – exactly the same energy. The first European title was a shock. This time, I came to win and to prove I could do it. Some people in Estonia said it was impossible to win twice — I wanted to prove the opposite.”

Niina Petrõkina wins gold at the European Figure Skating Championships in Sheffield, UK. Source: SCANPIX/AFP

Langerbaur 10th

Estonia’s Nataly Langerbaur, who was tenth after the short program, began Friday’s free skate with a solid combination jump but made mistakes on two jumps and dropped out of the top ten.

She earned 95.40 points in the free skate and a combined total of 151.61 points, placing 19th overall.

“It didn’t go the way I had hoped, and I think I’m capable of much more. But this time it went the way it did, and I guess I needed this kind of experience too,” Langerbaur said of her performance

Nataly Langerbaur Source: SCANPIX/AP

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