European Figure Skating Championships: Nailbiting final ahead as Scottish skaters in silver medal spot

The pair are just 1.5 points below leaders Guillaume Cizeron, with new partner Laurence Fournier-Beaudry, from France.

They will now compete for the top spot in the free dance final on Saturday. No British team has won European gold since Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean in 1994.

This came as Dundee skaters Anastasia Vaipan-Law and Luke Digby said they have made “memories for a lifetime” as they competed in the pairs final.

Gibson and Fear, eight-time British champions, have previously medalled at the European Championships three times.

The bronze medal spot is currently being held by Italians Marco Fabbri and Charlene Guignard, with Lithuanians Allison Reed and Saulius Ambrulevicius and France’s Evgeniia Lopareva and Geoffrey Brissaud close behind.

Skating to a Spice Girls medley, in a Union Jack dress, Ms Fear said the home crowd had been “even more than we could have hoped for”.

She said: “I think the good sign is even when I was warming up backstage with headphones at top volume, I could still hear the crowd, so I thought ‘it’s going to be fun out there’. It was just electric and a true joy.”

She worked as a flower girl - picking up gifts thrown to skaters on the ice - at the last European Championships to be held in Sheffield in 2012.

She said: “I was just in awe of all these amazing skaters and I thought ‘one day maybe I could do that’, so it is very surreal to be here and see the flower girls and hopefully pass the baton to them in the future.”

The pair are just 1.5 points behind 2022 Olympic champion Cizeron and his partner Fournier Beaudry.

Ms Fear said the couple will try to start the final, on Saturday night, with clear minds.

She said: “We still have our job to do now. We always start from scratch.”

Mr Gibson, from Prestwick, added: “We just really wanted to enjoy this opportunity. It doesn’t come round a lot in a skater’s career to have a home championships.

“We were really proud of how we skated today. It is how we wanted to skate from training to competition so we’re really proud of that.”

Great Britain’s second ice dance team, Phebe Bekker and James Hernandez, finished 11th after the rhythm dance.

Speaking after their skate, Hernandez, who trains in Guildford, said of Fear and Gibson’s Winter Olympic hopes: “They are where we want to be in a few years. It’s inspiring to see that that’s possible and hopefully in a few weeks in Milan, they’ll make history.”

Vaipan-Law and Digby, who came ninth in last year’s European championships, were lying in fifth place after Wednesday’s short programme.

They scored 109.54 in the short programme on Thursday and 173.52 points overall.

Vaipan-Law said of the chance to skate in front of a British crowd: “It’s just incredible. It’s something we don’t get experience of very often and I’m grateful we were able to experience this in our careers. It’s something I will remember for sure.”

Digby said: “It’s been a chance to make memories for a lifetime. This home support, you can’t beat it.”