Bulgarian Albena Denkova and her partner Maxim Staviski won gold at the World Figure Skating Championships in Tokyo, Japan.

In this way they proved the worth of their 2006 crown from Calgary, Canada, reported Bulgarian-language Dnes.bg on March 23. With their final, third dance during the free programme, they performed a wonderful interpretation of “The Seven Deadly Sins” and succeeded to increase the lead they had after the original dance. They obtained the gold with 201.61 points in total. The ice couple also has a silver medal from Dortmund, Germany, in 2004 and a bronze from Washington, US, in 2003.

The two started to dance together in 1996. Currently their trainers are former Olympic ice dancing champions Natalia Linichuk and Gennadi Karponosov.

Denkova and Staviski were the first Bulgarian ice dancing couple to head the International Skating Union’s list and won two golden, three silver and two bronze medals at world and European championships.

This season Denkova and Staviski won the Grand Prix tournaments in the US and France, as well as the final in St Petersburg, Russia. Before the most recent competition in Tokyo, they obtained a bronze medal at the European championships in Warsaw.

They are expected to return to Bulgaria on April 1. During the last week of their stay in Japan, they were to perform for audiences in Osaka, Sapporo and Nagano.

“The support of the Japanese fans during the championship was incredible. To show them respect, we owe them these shows, though we are both very tired,” Denkova said.

Darik radio reported that in the middle of April the two bladed champions are planning to stage a show for fans in Sofia as well.

Denkova and Staviski were asked to become trainers after the championship in Tokyo, but so far they said they preferred to promote development of Bulgarian figure skating as a whole.