PAOLINO / TUBA (ITA) | Ice Dance Free Dance | 2025 – Beijing

And now to the Italian team of Giulia Isabella Paulino and Andrea Duba, 12th after the rhythm dance. Into the wonderful gladiator soundtrack with the track Now We Are Free. Just such incredibly rousing music and the small audience that is here reacting to that and the performance of the Italian team Giulia Isabella Paulino and Andrea Duba. You know, as I watched this team, I wondered, you know, the drama of the music and the buildup, the crescendo. Is it possible to obviously it's possible to underdo that as a performance or is it possible to overdo that as a performance? Because it requires a certain amount. You hear it in the voices of the singers and you can see it in the bodies of the skaters. It doesn't match. Yeah. And with Giulia and Andrea, for me, this team, they've had the pressure, as we saw perhaps in the American Pairs event, for being the coveted team to get this spot to represent the nation and fight. And for Giulia and Andrea, they have deserved their spot here representing Italy at the Skates to Milano event. And now they want to go on as this season progresses to get the second spot for Italy at Europeans and Worlds as this ice dance event unfolds and the Olympic spots look likely out of their grasp. Now, their objective is to still be the Italian team selected for the championship level events. Yeah. And I want to be clear. I didn't meet this in relationship to this team. I heard the music was so powerful, so emotional, so powerful. And you saw that in their dance for sure. You saw it all. And actually that, you know, the passion that we see in Giulia and Andrea right here. Unsurprising when you have and Stefania De Luca as the coaching staff and Italian dancers so renowned for their passion. But there are lots of ice dance teams in Italy currently with that level of brilliance. And I think for Andrea, just keeping working on his range of movement, his flexibility so that he can match the line and shape that Giulia makes in terms of the extensions and shape through the back of the body. Now, their personal best 96.42. We'll see how close they come to that. But I thought that was the, that was a pretty strong performance for them, for them. Absolutely. Freedance score. We had Massimo Scali as well for the quarter for this year, the Italians out in force. 98.48. That's first for the Freedance. And even Volter's nodding his head going, yeah, that's pretty good. With a 158.52 total score for the competition. And that'll put them currently in the first place.