The Figure Skating Federation (FFKKR) together with Channel One announced a new tournament - the Channel One Cup.
The team competition, in which all the leading athletes of the country must compete, will take place in early February.
The competition will take the place of the canceled European Championship in the calendar and will be held at the Moscow Megasport Arena in the presence of spectators.
Earlier, the President of the FFKKR Alexander Gorshkov shared his plans to organize a team tournament immediately after the New Year holidays, and since then the fans have been waiting for details.
The full list of participants was not announced either, although individual skaters - Elizaveta Tuktamysheva, Daria Pavlyuchenko and Denis Khodykin - confirmed that they were ready to perform.
And now the format of the competition has been determined.
Two teams will take part in it, which will fight among themselves.
Each will include three singles, singles and dance duos, as well as two sports couples.
They will perform short and free programs, which will be judged by the International Skating Union (ISU).
The winner will be determined by the total score.
In addition, there will be a People's Choice Award - fans will be able to vote for those participants whose performance they liked the most.
Also, on the first day of the competition, a separate jumping tournament will take place, which the organizers called "a particularly entertaining part of the program."
The team captains will be Olympic champion Alina Zagitova and two-time world champion Evgenia Medvedeva.
Under their leadership, the groups will choose their names and prepare demonstration performances.
At the same time, the athletes themselves will not perform with the programs.
Zagitova admitted that she is proud of her appointment and expects the fans to appreciate the new tournament.
“It is a great honor for me to become the team captain in such a tournament.
I am sure that the performances on the ice of the Channel One Cup will bring joy to the audience, and for athletes they will become a new opportunity to demonstrate their entire arsenal of talents and abilities, ”Zagitova said.
In turn, Medvedeva noted that she finds the format of the competition intriguing.
Interestingly, together with Zagitova, she is the silver medalist of the 2018 Olympics in team competitions.
“Figure skating is a very individual sport.
The more interesting is the format of the competition, in which team success is more important than their own.
Rather, each personal victory becomes part of a common achievement, ”said the skater.
Athletes who entered the top six in the recent Russian championship and won titles at major international tournaments received an invitation to the tournament.
Among the girls, Kamila Valieva, Alena Kostornaya, Alexandra Trusova, Elizaveta Tuktamysheva, Daria Usacheva and Anna Shcherbakova were among the favorites, and among men - Dmitry Aliev, Makar Ignatov, Mikhail Kolyada, Mark Kondratyuk, Andrei Mozalev and Alexander Samarin.
The reigning European champions in ice dancing Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov will be the only serious personnel loss of the Channel One Cup.
According to their coach Alexander Zhulin, the athletes are now out of shape and are preparing for later tournaments.
“Vika and Nikita were invited, and the federation is very upset by their absence, but I see and observe them every day.
If at Tatyana Navka's show they skated on a 20 x 40 m rink - there is acting, there is no need to push with anyone, then when they returned from there and began to train at full strength, they recovered for a long time, passing literally one or two elements.
Vika will have CT scan again in ten days, but her lungs were severely affected.
I do not want to take risks and cannot.
I really respect our federation, I love it when my athletes perform, but this is a risk.
They have their whole life ahead and, I hope, the Olympics.
Therefore, I decided not to exhibit them.
We will strive to prepare for the final of the Russian Cup and are looking forward to a decision on the World Cup, ”TASS quotes Zhulin.
The participants of the tournament will be divided into teams as a result of the draw, which will be held live on Channel One.
This should add additional intrigue to the competition.
After all, figure skaters from the same training group can compete against each other - or, conversely, those whose paths have recently diverged will appear in the same team.
The official training and jumping festival will take place on February 5, while the competition itself will take place on February 6 and 7.
The prize fund of the Channel One Cup will be 10 million rubles, which should exclude the "indicative" nature of the competition.