Tatiana Navka, Roman Kostomarov win figure skating world championship

Russians Tatiana Navka and Roman Kostomarov won the ice dancing competition at the World Figure Skating Championship in Dortmund.

Russians held the leading positions in the tournament table by the competitions' final day. The figure skaters took first place in their group after the compulsory dance and received the highest marks for the original dance.

The free dance finally distributed the prizes of the world championship now underway in Dortmund, Germany. Trained by Alexander Zhulin, Navka and Kostomarov, as usual, were perfect in their program. They received especially high marks for artistry, including nine sixes.

Navka/Kostomarov won the main events of the season. They won the Grand Prix series finals, became Europe's champions and finished the 2004 season unrivaled, winning world champions' titles for the first time.

The Bulgarian duo Albena Denkova/Maxim Staviski will leave Dortmund as the world championship's vice champions.

German pair Kati Winkler/Rene Lohse took the third place.

The second numbers of the Russian national team, Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin took the tenth place in the final tournament table. World championship debutants, Russians Svetlana Kulikova and Vitaly Novikov took the thirteenth place.

Russians won the best prizes in three types of the world championship program. Yevgeny Plyushchenko won single skating competitions the day before; Tatiana Totmyanina and Maxim Marinin won the first gold medals in sports pairs' competitions.