"This is our most valuable result of our entire career," said a delighted Davide and Maja the morning after their 7th place at the World Championships Ten Dance in Portugal. Immediately after the competition, they were still sad that they had narrowly missed their ambitious goal of reaching the final of the top 6 couples. As world number one, they could confidently set themselves this goal - and it was certainly realistic.

The competition: After a flawless first round and a confidently danced quarter-final, they initially positioned themselves in 5th place in the semi-final after the Latin dances, which meant they were on course for the final as hoped. Then the air became thinner and thinner from dance to dance in the standard until the Latvians Dobrecovs/Levchenko squeezed past the Swiss champions in the quickstep and snatched the last place in the final. A blink of an eye decided; 322.580 points for the Latvians compared to 332.250 points for Corrodi/Kucharczyk - brutal.

Today, the pain has faded and pride rightly prevails. "We were full of energy all day, were in a good mood and had a lot of fun," says Corrodi, looking back on the competition day, and Kucharczyk adds: "We improved from round to round, everything was just right." The TSCZ couple have been dancing together since summer 2017. Their career progression is promising, and in Portugal they took another step towards their ultimate goal of one day winning a world title in the ten-dance category. Their 22nd, 19th, 12th and 7th places at the last four world championships show a clear trend. And if you look at the World Championship results from 2019, when Corrodi/Kucharczyk competed for the first time, you can see that this year's medallists were ranked 5th, 7th and 12th at the time. In other words, if you keep working hard and don't lose sight of your goal, you will eventually be rewarded. "If we also compare ourselves with the 6 best pairs, we are the youngest in the field," says Maja, providing another argument that could speak in their favour at some point.

That is still a long way off. Corrodi/Kucharczyk will be competing for another national championship in a week's time; they will be defending their Latin title from last year in Felben-Wellhausen on 18 November. If they succeed, it will be their 11th SM gold medal and - which should make them even prouder - their first SM triple after this year's SM victories in standard and ten-dance.