Australian figure skaters Anastasiia Golubeva and Hektor Giotopoulos Moore made history by winning a bronze medal at the International Skating Union (ISU) Grand Prix in Halifax, Canada.

This is Australia’s first medal at a senior ISU Grand Prix event.

“It’s been really, really fun,” Giotopoulos Moore told ABC News Breakfast on Monday.

“We had a really, really good time. It was a tough competition. It was a pretty tough competition for us, but we got a pretty decent result.

“We are very happy with it.”

The duo recorded a career-best score of 64.81 points in the opening short program, which put them in third place after the first round, before backing that up with a score of 121.33 points in the free skating event.

It was the duo’s first competition of the season due to a back injury that hampered Giotopoulos Moore.

Golubeva, 18, and Giotopoulos Moore, 22, recorded two fourth-place finishes last season, making the bronze medal a significant breakthrough at senior level.

“The atmosphere was very friendly and we enjoyed showing our performance,” Golubeva said.

As is often the case for Australian figure skaters, Golubeva and Giotopoulos Moore’s journey to the World Cup circuit has been a grueling one.

Giotopoulos Moore, born and based in Sydney, traveled the world to find a suitable partner, before joining young Russian soloist Golubeva on the recommendation of her coaches Galina Pachina and Andrei Pachin.

“I was told: ‘Warm up and wait. A boy will come,'” Golubeva told Russian website Sport24 in 2023.

“I didn’t know what he looked like, only that he didn’t speak Russian.

“I can’t say he knew our language very well, just basic things like ‘hello’, ‘how are you’. It doesn’t take much more to practice, but now we don’t speak that Russian. He learned everything.

Stuck in Russia during the COVID pandemic, the pair resorted to off-ice training in any space they could find during the lockdown, even a restaurant.

They briefly moved to Belarus before moving to Sydney when Golubeva was just 15, with the young teenager moving in with Giotopoulos Moore’s family. Golubeva describes Giotopoulos Moore as “like a second mother.”

“We’ve been living together almost for four years,” Giotopoulos Moore said.

“So we became very close.”

The duo spent time training in Australia but are now based in Montreal, Canada.

“There aren’t a lot of international competitions in Australia,” Giotopoulos Moore told ABC News.

“But, you know, if someone is willing to work, anyone can.”

There may be few competitions in Australia, but inspiration can come from the most unlikely places, even Will Ferrell’s Blades of Glory.

“I get all my inspiration from that,” Giotopoulos Moore said.

“I remember when I was younger in Canterbury we had a few people there who called me the Young Chazz.

“(It’s) my favorite movie.

“I always laugh.”

Although this is Australia’s first ISU World Cup medal, the future looks incredibly bright for Giotopoulos Moore and Golubeva, given their impressive track record on the world stage.

In 2022, they became the third Australian duo to win a World Junior medal when they won silver at the Championships in Tallinn, Estonia, which they repeated in 2023.

In doing so, the duo followed in the footsteps of Liz and Peter Cain, who won bronze in 1976, and Katya Alexandrovskaya and Harley Windsor, who were crowned junior world champions in 2017.

The duo finished 10th at last year’s Senior World Championships, after finishing eighth the year before.

Building on this success, Golubeva and Giotopoulos Moore will next compete in the ISU Grand Prix of the Finlandia Trophy in Helsinki, Finland, November 15-17.