The tournament part of the Russian Figure Skating Championship ended on Saturday in Chelyabinsk. The culmination was a dramatic fight for awards in women's single skating. Adelia Petrosyan won gold for the first time, and Olympic champion Kamila Valieva, who was in the lead after the short program, remained third, unable to perform a quadruple jump in her free program.
Despite the fact that during the current season at the stages of the Russian Grand Prix only one figure skater – namely Adelia Petrosyan – performed ultra-difficult elements, and there were only two successful attempts, before the free program at the Russian Championship it became obvious that it was the four jumps and three and a half turns will be key in the fight for medals at the main start of the season. Moreover, the difference in points between Kamila Valieva, Petrosyan and Sofia Muravyova – in this order the girls were ranked after short skates – was so insignificant that the fate of gold could be decided by one successful or unsuccessful attempt.
But on this day, not only the figure skaters performing ultra-c elements shone. In the group of the strongest there were also those who rely on the artistic side of figure skating – and they were good. Anna Frolova, who took the intermediate sixth place, was especially loudly applauded. And deservedly so – the athlete competed at the Russian Championships with a severe cold and was not even able to conduct a full training session in the morning. But she performed her free skate in one breath, thanks to which she rose to the final fifth place, ahead of Veronica Yametova, who stood higher after the short program.
Ksenia Sinitsyna also gave a clean performance. She, like Frolova, is now also placing her main emphasis on the second assessment – that is, the components of the program. Performing with the most accurate performance of all musical and choreographic nuances allowed Sinitsina to take fourth place, which, according to her, for her, given the current competition, is like first. “I’ll give myself a chocolate medal,” the figure skater joked.
Among the main contenders for real medals, Muravyova was the first to take to the ice. The day before, she succeeded in all the jumps in the short program, including the three-and-a-half-turn Axel – but the step sequence failed, while performing which, Evgenia Plushenko's student fell. In the free skate, Sophia was scheduled to have two triple axels, but, having completed the first of them, she abandoned the second. Muravyova was confidently ahead of all the athletes who competed before her. But she left the opportunity to beat herself to two students of Eteri Tutberidze.
Petrosyan was the first of them to enter the ice – and fell on landing from the starting quadruple flip. However, Adelia’s application included two more sheepskin coats with four turns – and in a situation where she no longer had the right to make another mistake, she managed both. Petrosyan was ahead of Muravyova by a little over seven points, and it became clear that Valieva would not be able to do without a quadruple jump to win, which she had not yet achieved in competition this season. Just as it didn’t work out at the morning training session before the free program in Chelyabinsk.
Most likely, Kamila herself, who was completing the tournament program of the Russian Championship with her performance, understood that she had little chance of success in this situation, because already in the quadruple jump there was a feeling of some doom. As a result, the sheepskin coat did not submit to her again. Valieva performed the rest of the program without errors, but without fire – it is unlikely that at that moment she still hoped for gold. As a result, the Olympic champion was left without silver, losing not only to Petrosyan, but also to Muravyova.
“”For me, this is the fourth Russian championship, the second in Chelyabinsk. There are a lot of flashbacks. If you compare the first championship in Kazan and the one now, then this is a little less than half a step forward, but still forward. All I could do was It was, however, not very good. But there are difficulties, both height and weight. It happens that weight does not interfere much, but at the moment it was putting pressure on me,” the Olympic champion admitted at a press conference.
Valieva was also asked what kind of mysterious admirer gave her huge bouquets of flowers for the second day in a row. “This is my fan group,” Kamila smiled. “I am very grateful to my fans, today again so many toys flew, so many posters, so much support. This is incredibly nice. So for now the flowers are not from “someone”, but from fans -groups. But for me it’s something familiar and very pleasant.”
Petrosyan admitted that she was glad to rehabilitate herself for her failure at the last Russian Championship, where she came fifth. “After the last Russian Championship, I didn’t have a festive mood for the New Year, it went into the negative. I hope now I can spend the New Year calmly with my family,” said the gold medal winner.
Kozlovsky's “Silver” Birthday Before the end of the Russian Championship in women's single skating, the winners of the awards in the pairs competition were determined. Alena Kostornaya and Georgiy Kunitsa dropped out of the medal contenders after the short program – the ex-European champion in women's single skating fell on the first day of the tournament from a throwout and ended up with her partner and husband only in ninth place.
Kostornaya and Kunitsa failed to rise higher in the final protocol, although the skaters performed their free skate very well. “Let’s give ourselves a five,” Kunitsa told reporters, assessing the result. “Out of ten,” Kostornaya added. “There were a lot of factors that got in the way.”
“The athletes also responded to the criticism of those who regret the loss of Alena Kostornaya, who used to shine in single skating. “I read a lot of comments that there is no old Alena. But where are the girls with whom Alena competed in singles skating? The old Alena will no longer be. She is different,” stated Kunitsa. “I’ve seen a lot of criticism from those who are close to figure skating, but don’t understand anything about it,” Kostornaya herself noted. “Even the previous juniors with whom I skated are no longer there. People grow and people change.”
The drama of the sports couples tournament can be called the situation that happened to Artem Gritsaenko, performing with Elizaveta Osokina. Right after the first jump, the lace on the skater’s shoe broke. Realizing that he would not be able to skate further, Gritsaenko took a three-minute break in order to put his equipment in order, but the chance to compete for bronze was irretrievably lost – the pair were given five penalty points for stopping. Osokina and Gritsaenko took the final eighth place.
Bronze went to Ekaterina Chikmareva and Matvey Yanchenkov. As for silver and gold, the most likely situation was the one that emerged after the short program, and it could only be changed by an extremely unsuccessful performance of one of the leaders. It didn't happen. Dmitry Kozlovsky, together with Alexandra Boykova, became a silver medalist on his birthday, and Anastasia Mishina and Alexander Gallyamov won the Russian Championship, having not made a single mistake in two programs.
In dance and among men – triumph of favorites The first two sets of medals of the Russian Championship found out their owners on Friday. In ice dancing, Alexandra Stepanova and Ivan Bukin won a convincing victory, for whom this gold was the third in their careers. Silver went to last year's winners of the national championship Elizaveta Khudaiberdieva and Yegor Bazin, bronze to Irina Khavronina and David Narizhny.
“However, on the first day of the tournament after the rhythmic dance, there was no talk of the convincing superiority of Stepanova and Bukin, who had returned after a year’s break. Athletes in the mixed zone were surprised that they did not score as many points as in previous competitions. “Everyone is progressing, everyone is working, but I don’t want the competition to be somewhat artificial,” said Bukin. “That’s why I want to find out what was wrong so that we would go to training and work 300 times harder.”
At the same time, the closest pursuers of the multiple European Championship winners were also not delighted with the scores after the rhythm dance. “I can say something now, of course,” admitted Khudayberdieva, answering a question about the judging. “But Egor is already pinching me in every possible way. Therefore, it seems, you want to express something, and then you think, “Yes *** ** (why) is it necessary?”
“But at the final press conference it turned out that the journalists understood everything wrong. “We talk a lot, but the excerpts are short, which appear in the headlines, they are a little taken out of context… No one talked about judging. We compared exclusively our skating with our skating,” said Bukin. “If you remember, I said that the judging was excellent. But Lisa refused to discuss it. And yet it came up in such terms. It’s funny for you now, but then it’s not funny for us to read all this,” Bazin noted, in turn.
Intrigue arose in the fight for bronze on the first day of the tournament. The intermediate third place after the rhythmic dance was taken by the debutants of the adult Russian championship Sofya Leontyeva and Daniil Gorelkin. However, the students of Alexander Svinin and Irina Zhuk failed to retain the prize position: after the free dance, they were ahead of not only Khavronina and Narizhny, but also Elizaveta Shanaeva and Pavel Drozd.
In the men's single skating in the short program, there was, as they sometimes rudely joke in such cases, a “death”. Only four out of 18 skaters performed their skates without making serious mistakes. Many favorites were not included in their number. Olympic champion Mark Kondratyuk, Roman Savosin and Daniil Samsonov fell from the quadruple Salchow, Andrey Mozalev and Matvey Vetlugin – from the sheepskin coat, Makar Ignatov and Petr Gumennik – from the triple Axel.
Among those who fell, it was Gumennik who came closest to the top three. But the gap still turned out to be significant. Vladislav Dikidzhi, who took the intermediate first place, scored 102.70 points, last year's Russian champion Evgeniy Semenenko, who was second, scored 101.19, and 2020 European champion Dmitry Aliev – 99.20. Gumennik had the numbers 91.84 in his protocol.
In the free program the fight was already at a higher technical level. However, few of the losers of the first day of the tournament managed to fully rehabilitate themselves. Thus, the 2019 European vice-champion Alexander Samarin managed to rise only to 15th from an intermediate 16th place, Vetlugin became 14th, Kondratyuk closed the top ten, followed by Mozalev.
Among those who claimed medals, the first and very serious application was made by Gumennik, who performed a purely free program with three quadruple jumps and scored more than 200 points for it. Aliev, who performed next, did a butterfly instead of the first quadruple jump. He then rallied and performed the rest of the program almost flawlessly, but ended up falling below Gumennik.
But Semenenko coped with the pressure one hundred percent. Although he had to fight for some jumps, he emerged victorious from this situation. As it turned out after Dikiji's performance – the entire championship. The skater, who became the real discovery of this season, was aiming for the championship until the last element, but instead of two and a half revolutions on the Axel, he performed one and a half revolutions. 1.01 points – this was the final superiority of Semenenko, who became a two-time champion of Russia, over his competitor. Gumennik, who last year scored the same amount of points as the champion and was second in additional indicators, this time remained with bronze.
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