Golden miracle: Sinitsina and Katsalapov become European champions in ice dancing

According to the results of the three days of the European Figure Skating Championships in Graz, the Russian team had a real chance to repeat one of the incredible, but already forgotten by fans of Soviet sports records. In 1986 and 1987, domestic skaters managed to win ten of the 12 possible medals at the continental championships. Throughout the next third of a century, it was not possible to bring the number of awards to a double-digit value.

The hope for a repetition of this achievement, which no other country even came close to, was presented by men and couples who put five out of six medals in the piggy bank of the Russian national team - not only the bronze that Maurice Kvitelashvili from Georgia took away. Three more awards could be safely added to the awards, which Alyona Kostornaya, Anna Shcherbakova and Aleksandra Trusova were going to play at the end of the tournament. And in order to collect exactly ten, two more had to bring dancing on ice.

Two duets from Russia on the podium are an infrequent phenomenon even for the European Championship. In the last ten tournaments this happened only four times. But in Graz there was an opportunity for this. After the rhythm dance, Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov came second, losing to Gabriela Papadakis and Guillaume Sizeron symbolic five hundredths of a point, and Alexandra Stepanova and Ivan Bukin showed the fourth result, losing to the Italians Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri, also very little - only 1, 01 points. In ice dancing, it is quite possible to recoup in this position.

During the rolling of the final group of participants, what happened was that impressionable fans might consider a bad sign. Stepanova and Bukin almost collided with Tiffany Zagorski and Jonathan Gureyro, who had the task of maintaining fifth place at the end of the day. The couples still managed to disperse in different directions, but how this incident could affect the silver medalists of the Russian championship, who needed to stay on the ice, was not clear.

But in the end, the forced adrenaline rush only sent the duet back on track. Their performance under Ludovico Einaudi and Justin Timberlake passed in the same breath. At the end of the dance, the couple spared no effort to invest in every movement. The judges could not do without nit-picking - the section on one leg of Stepanova received the second level of difficulty, and the track diagonally the third. But this did not stop the Russian duet from updating two personal records and gaining 211.29 points in total. The personal record of Guignard and Fabbri, who was to close the competition, was inferior to these figures by almost eight points.

The performance of Zagorski and Gureiro became a kind of pause before the final ice battles for medals. The judges in their attitude chose the same tactics - they allowed to show the best points in their careers, but did not give as much as the skaters needed. To the music from the film about Laura Croft, the third number of the Russian national team scored 188.03 points and lost the position to the British Laila Fir and Lewis Gibson, who have made great progress in the current and deserved to be in the top five European Championships.

Sinitsina and Katsalapov continued a series of Russian performances. From the first notes, they began to work a real miracle - their mutual understanding and affection for each other during the program reached a peak above which it was already impossible to climb. The technical panel was especially impressed - in total, on one and a half elements, students of Alexander Zhulin did not earn the maximum level of difficulty.

After the phenomenal final support, it became apparent that the Russians again challenged Papadakis and Sizeron and at least had to overtake them again in a technical assessment. True, from such a perspective it only became doubly sadder - in the case of the French, they could override any assessment with components. The final result of Sinitsina and Katsalapov was 220.42 points - for five-time European champions, such figures have long been a passed stage.

😍🥰 Just beautiful !! Victoria and Nikita skate a season's best and take over the lead with two programs to go! https://t.co/Sq2quTPcTY#EuroFigure#FigureSkatingpic.twitter.com/eHTykA1a32

But the followers of Papadakis and Sizerov turned out to be completely different monsters than they were the last two years. Academics, which is their trademark, have disappeared from their dance to words without music. Just about the patience of the judges could burst, and they would start to cut the levels, when suddenly a catastrophe struck - Papadakis almost fell on the track on one leg. For a long time this element in the protocol was marked as unfulfilled - and this is the loss of as many as nine points and crumbling components.

Such a special program! 🥈 Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron 🇫🇷 take the silver medal at the European Championships!

Final results: https://t.co/tn2StiN021#EuroFigure#FigureSkatingpic.twitter.com/krBt8Csh7Y

After the rental, the judges took a break for the meeting, because right now the history of figure skating could be rewritten, no matter how loud it sounded. The analysis of the performance of Papadakis and Sizeron took about seven minutes - Guignard and Fabbri had to patiently wait all this time for the start of their program. The French nevertheless returned their path of steps, but with such low levels that the question of the winner has not yet been resolved. As a result, the judges decided that five-time European champions did not deserve another gold. They scored 220.28 points and lost only 14 hundredths to Sinitsina and Katsalapov.

Emotions are running high backstage as Victoria and Nikita hold on to the lead by 0.14 points with one final pair to go! 🥇🥈🥉? # EuroFigure # FigureSkatingpic.twitter.com / LFoxLYZBgA

The dance of the Italians had no effect on anything. Immediately after the start of the music, it became obvious that they could not catch Stepanova and Bukin, the Russians took too far ahead this season, although the judges tried to restrain their impulse. Ginyar and Fabbri earned 205.58 points and were forced to be content with fourth place.

The victory of Sinitsina and Katsalapov can now be considered the main event of the season in figure skating. They inflicted Papadakis and Sizeron the first defeat after the Olympics in Pyeongchang and did not allow the French to repeat the record of Lyudmila Pakhomova and Alexander Gorshkov in the number of European titles. The gold of the tournament in Graz was the first for Russian dance duets since 2013, and for the students of Zhulin themselves - the debut medal of the European Championship in their joint career. Before that, there were only two silver awards and one bronze in the Katsalapov piggy bank.

The third place of Stepanova and Bukin is also difficult to overestimate. They climbed the podium for the fourth time in the European Championship, of which only Papadakis and Sizeron were able to compete, and also helped the Russian team win the seventh award of the current competition. After an arbitrary dance, the girls are left with a bullet in the competition.