Spain's Javier Fernandez claimed a third successive European men's figure skating title on Friday despite almost falling asleep as the competition reached its conclusion.
Fernandez added the title to his two world bronze medals thanks to a score of 173.25 in the free programme for a total score of 262.49 points.
The 23-year-old Spaniard, performing to "The Barber of Seville", became the first three-in-a-row champion since Russia's Alexander Fadeev in the 1980s.
Russia's Maxim Kovtun finished on 235.68 while fellow Russian Sergei Voronov scored 233.05.
The only blemish for Fernandez was his failure to land a quadruple jump, falling on the second leap and pulling out of the third.
"I have never experienced a competition this tiring before. I don't know why, but I couldn't even bow to the audience at the end. I was so exhausted," said the champion.
"Somebody said maybe it's because the air was a little bit dry. I don't know what the reason was but I felt like I was ready to go to sleep."
On his historic performance, Fernandez added: "This medal is more important than a regular European medal because it's three times in a row.
"Maybe I didn't do my best performance ever but it's a little bit more special than other medals as since 1989 nobody has won three European medals in a row. I'm making a little history in my country."
Russia's Ksenia Stolbova and Fedor Klimov, the Olympic and world silver medallists in 2014, edged closer to the pairs title.
Stolbova and Klimov, who were also runners-up at last year's European championships, scored 71.38 points to finish ahead of compatriots, Yuko Kavaguti and Alexander Smirnov.
"Today was a good performance for us, we did almost everything clean and we are glad about it. We hope that we can do it again in the free skating (on Sunday," said Klimov who has been with his partner for five seasons.
He admitted it was a challenge skating to their drum-based programme.
"It's not so easy to skate to the music because we're looking for the rhythm and there's just a drum and the choreography is different because of that of that.
"It suits our fast skating style though and we feel comfortable with happy with it."
French pair Vanessa James and Morgan Cipres, in their fourth year as a team, are third with 60.13 points.
Two points behind are Italy's Valentina Marchei and Ondrej Hotarek.
Marchei, 28, had spent all her career in the individual events until last season after a 2014 campaign which had seen her finish in 11th place at the Sochi Olympics.
Source: AFP