Ksenia Stolbova is one of the brightest athletes in pairs figure skating. The black-eyed petite brunette has a sharp explosive temper and a real champion character, which, together with Fedor Klimov, has allowed her to stay at the top of the rating for the past five years.
The start of the journey
Ksenia Stolbova was born in St. Petersburg in 1992. She started figure skating at the age of 6, and for the first years the coaches tried to make her a single skater. However, by the age of 14, she decided to retrain and try her hand at pair skating.
The first partner of Ksenia Stolbova was the Ukrainian Artur Minchuk, with whom they achieved some success in junior competitions. In 2009, her coach Lyudmila Velikova paired her with Fedor Klimov, who skates with her to this day.
The guys have never been able to win serious trophies at the junior level, always finishing second or third in the biggest tournaments. However, they painlessly moved intoadult figure skating, taking silver medals at the Russian Championship in the first season.
Since the two strongest pairs of the country did not participate in this tournament, Ksenia Stolbova and her partner went to the European Championship only as substitutes, but the Kawaguchi-Smirnov pair withdrew from the tournament, and yesterday's juniors got their chance. They took advantage of it and took the bronze medals of the continental championship.
Olympic champion
By 2014, Ksenia Stolbova managed to pull a partner along with her, and they deserved the title of the country's second couple, having won a ticket to the Olympic Games in Sochi. Here they played in the team tournament and made a great contribution to the final victory of the national team. Thus, in two years, a native of St. Petersburg has gone from an unknown debutante to an Olympic champion. Photos of Ksenia Stolbova flashed on the covers of leading sports publications.
A few days later, the guys consolidated their success by winning silver in the individual championship among sports couples, losing only to Tatyana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov.
After the first couple of the country took a break from their amateur career, Ksenia Stolbova, along with Fedor Klimov, got a chance to dominate the world of figure skating. However, in the following seasons, the guys were pursued by constant failures. At the peak of his form, Fedor Klimov received an unfortunate injury, which put him out of action for four months.
No sooner had the skaters returned to the ice than a leg injury overtook Ksenia Stolbova. Returning to duty, she began to stubbornly prepare for the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang. On a waybefore the main tournament, together with her partner, she became the silver medalist of the European Championship in Moscow.
However, by the decision of the IOC, the girl was suspended from participation in the Olympics. Ksenia and Fedor have already announced that the 2018 World Championship will be their last tournament.
Personal life of Ksenia Stolbova
As is often the case in such cases, Ksenia is credited with an affair with her partner on ice, Fedor Klimov. However, the guys categorically state that they are just friends. During the preparatory period for the Olympics in Sochi, a beautiful brunette met with figure skater Dmitry Solovyov. However, the windy dancer switched to another athlete and left Xenia.
Later Stolbova's young man was the Italian figure skater Ivan Bariev, but they did not meet for long. When a girl got a leg injury, he didn't pay attention to her, and she threw him out of her life.
After leaving the sport, Ksenia Stolbova does not plan to stay in figure skating, but is going to build a career as a designer or actress.
