The Slovenian Rogla hosted the Snowboard World Championship in turning disciplines.
Russian athletes became his real triumphs - they won five medals out of 12 possible, and Dmitry Loginov and Sofya Nadyrshina won gold awards, simultaneously establishing a number of historical achievements.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, it was assumed that the combined world championship in snowboarding and freestyle 2021 will be held in China's Zhangjiakou, where athletes will test the Olympic tracks.
But then the competition had to be moved to Calgary, and when Canada refused to hold them, they were divided between Sweden, Slovenia, Kazakhstan and the United States.
The resort of Rogla, located on the mountain of the same name, received slalom disciplines, in which four sets of awards were played.
By default, Russian snowboarders were the main favorites in the dispute over the world championship medals.
In the men's starts of the World Cup this season, five people were winners at once, and Dmitry Loginov, right before his arrival in Slovenia, led the overall standings, making a winning double at the stage in Bannoy - just like at the World Championship two years ago.
Among women, 17-year-old Sophia Nadyrshina quickly burst into the elite, winning two gold and silver in January in addition to the December victories at the junior world championship.
On Monday, the World Championships opened with the parallel giant slalom competition, which is now the only Olympic discipline for turn signals.
Already from the qualifications it was clear that the Russians were serious.
Igor Sluyev, Dmitry Loginov and Andrey Sobolev took the first three places, which allowed them to choose faster and more convenient tracks for themselves in the playoffs.
Nadyrshina showed the fourth time, losing only to German girls.
In the playoffs, Sluyev was eliminated in the first round, while Loginov and Sobolev reached the semifinals, where they met with each other.
The current title holder was 0.07 seconds faster and made his way to the decisive race, where his rival was the 40-year-old Italian Roland Fischnaller - he took part in the world championships even when Loginov did not celebrate his first birthday.
The final turned out to be very tense, and until the last moment it was not clear who would win.
The Russian was able to get ahead of the opponent by only one hundredth of a second.
So Loginov became a three-time world champion in snowboarding, and the youngest in history - just a month ago he turned 21 years old.
Sobolev, too, did not remain without a reward.
In the small final, he won bronze in a dispute with South Korean Kim Sang Kyom and became a four-time world championship medalist.
Nadyrshina also made it to the final of the women's competition.
She confidently won the first two rounds, after which she got a mistake in the semifinals from the experienced Austrian Julia Dumovits.
In the race for gold, the Russian woman was awaited by the current world champion Selina Joerg from Germany.
At first, the native of Sakhalin took the lead and drove her opponent for about half a second, but by the end of the distance Jörg was able to get ahead and left the debutante with silver.
The very next day the snowboarders had to compete for medals on the tracks for parallel slalom.
Loginov, Sobolev and Nadyrshina showed themselves again in qualifying, leading the seeding in the elimination heats.
True, this time it did not help the men get to the decisive battle - after two successful rounds of the playoffs, they stumbled on the Austrians Benjamin Karl and Andreas Prommegger.
In the dispute for bronze with each other, Loginov was again lucky.
He was ahead of Sobolev by only two hundredths of a second.
Karl became the world champion, for whom this title became the fifth in his career - he won the first 12 years ago.
Nadyrshina's parallel slalom competitions, where she leads the World Cup, were much more successful.
To reach the final, she had to deal with the Austrian Sabine Schoffmann, who showed the worst time out of qualifying, again upset Dujmovitz and take revenge from Jörg.
The Russian woman got a second chance to win gold.
True, she got a more than serious rival - the leader of the World Cup in all pivotal disciplines, German Ramona Hofmeister.
Nadyrshina again started the final very aggressively, and Hofmeister had to take great risks to close the gap.
At some point, the German woman could not stand it and made a mistake, driving the gate over a too wide radius.
Nadyrshina, on the other hand, continued to pass each next obstacle close to the ideal and was the first to cross the finish line.
At the age of 17, she became the youngest world slalom champion and brought the Russian team the first gold in women's competitions after Ekaterina Tudegesheva in 2013.
“Today there was a fighting spirit, after yesterday's silver, as after a defeat.
I strove for this victory with all my might and dreamed about it, this is the highest award for me.
You always want to win, but especially when you know that you can do it.
I really wanted to win, to prove to everyone, to the whole country, that we didn't just come to this world championship.
I went to compete, to win these medals.
The World Championship is the start that you are especially looking forward to, especially since this year we did not know for sure whether it would take place or not.
I was very serious, ”Nadyrshina told TASS after the victory.
The two-day competition in Rogla became the most successful for the Russian national team in the history of the world snowboarding championships. Athletes have never won five medals at once - before that, the record was three awards in several tournaments. On March 6, slalomists will again compete in Rogla, but now in the penultimate stage of the World Cup. The season will end on March 21 in Berchtesgaden, Germany.