City ice skating pair strike gold

Talented skaters Mark Hanretty, from Scotland, and Christina Chitwood, from Colorado in the United States, landed first place with their Austrian Waltz in the Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships.

They also came second in the Yankee Polka round of the competition, to return to Sheffield with two medals for Great Britain.

Mark, aged 22, said: “It’s the first time we’ve competed in the United States together and it’s a really big event over there, with top contestants and top judges so it was really great to do so well.

“It was nice to see we have improved as much as we thought we had – to come first and second was confirmation of that.”

The pair have been skating together for just over a year, since they both uprooted from their home towns – Christina from Colorado Springs and Mark from Glasgow.

Training four hours a day at iceSheffield under Olympic level coach Jimmy Young, they are both looking forward to representing the UK again at future competitions.

Mark, who lives in the city centre and coaches young skaters in his spare time, said: “It was great to hear those words ‘representing the UK’ as we skated out onto the ice – we definitely want to hear that again!”