Niina Petrokina: “At the start of the season, I didn’t know if I’d make it to any major championships, or if I’d even be able to jump off my right leg. Now I understand that anything is possible, and I’m, like everyone says, Ms. Unstoppable.”
After a challenging season, Estonian skater Niina Petrokina reflects on her seventh-place finish at Worlds, her resilience, and her belief that anything is possible with determination.
original source: sport.err.ee dd. 30th March 2026 by Anu Saartis
Niina Petrokina, who finished seventh at the World Figure Skating Championships in Prague, returned home on Monday. After a difficult season, the two-time European champion believes that with enough determination, anything is possible. Here’s a translation of her comments posted on ERR.
“My emotions are very positive! I’m very happy that I ended the season on a good note. You can always hope for the best, and I know how well I can skate. This time [at Worlds], I didn’t have full strength, but I still performed my programs very well and didn’t make any major mistakes. There were only small errors – nothing serious happened,” Petrokina told ERR.
“We’re already thinking about how to prepare for next season, because we see that anything is possible. If you skate excellently and cleanly, a medal is within reach. You just have to work even harder – not just physically, but mentally too, because after the Olympics I had an emotional slump. And a physical one as well, so it was very hard to pull myself together,” Petrokina explained.
“Next year there’s no Olympics, so I have to pull myself together for Worlds and skate as well as I did at the Olympics. This season was both a good and bad experience, because I used to have only two major championships, but now there were three. My body didn’t understand what was happening before Worlds, since I’d already done two competitions. It was hard to communicate with my body and tell it we still had to work,” she added.
High results and new records came in a season where Petrokina had surgery on her right leg as recently as October. Now, she faces the task of working on new programs.
“My life is like a roller coaster. You never know what will happen. At the start of the season, I didn’t know if I’d make it to any major championships, or if I’d even be able to jump off my right leg. Now I understand that anything is possible, and I am unstoppable – like everyone says, Ms. Unstoppable. I really like that. If I feel something is going wrong or I can’t do something, I just put that song in my head: anything is possible. Nothing and no one can stop me,” said Petrokina.
What was the highlight of the season for her? “The Olympics, because at Europeans I didn’t know how I’d skate, since there was still a bit of drama in the air. But I went to the Olympics already knowing what I could do. I’m very happy that I managed at the Olympics and showed what I needed to show.”
Related topics: Niina Petrokina
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