Men

The men in the Russian Cup final will have to play only one ticket to the World Championship in Stockholm - the national team has only two quotas in this form, and Mikhail Kolyada has already received one.

Despite the fact that the stakes in this discipline are higher than in the other three, at the end of the first day, fans might have a feeling that no one wants to fight for getting into the team.

All the main favorites could not even get into the top six.

The first to go out on the ice was Mark Kondratyuk - the main opening of this season in men's single skating.

The bronze medalist of the Russian Championship began skating with a step-out on a quadruple sheepskin coat and an uncertain landing with a triple axel.

But it was not even mistakes in the jumps that were much more offensive, but only the second level on the steps, which can be called Kondratyuk's trump card.

The skater received only 83.56 points in total.

The vice-champion of Russia Makar Ignatov was ahead of him by only 1.1 points.

He began his performance with a fall on a quadruple rittberger, thanks to which he is among the main skaters of the country.

It was not possible to tighten the third turn on the cascading sheepskin coat.

The judges did not allow Ignatov to make up for the losses due to choreo elements, evaluating the rotation and the track to the third level.

Another student of Yevgeny Rukavitsyn did not please either.

Dmitry Aliyev refused the quad lutz and left only a quadruple sheepskin coat, which satisfied some judges, but did not impress others.

But the butterfly on the axel was a real disaster for the European champion.

At the end of the day, Aliyev received the best components, but became the worst skater in technique.

In total, this resulted in an inexpressive 82.79 points and the penultimate place.

The champion of Russia among juniors Yevgeny Semenenko won the short program.

He was the only one who performed purely two quadruple jumps, and had an excellent triple axel for the second half of the rental.

The judges made it clear that they do not yet consider him as an adult and an accomplished figure skater, but still awarded him 94.95 points.

Perhaps Andrei Mozalev now has the greatest chances of participating in the World Championship.

Rejecting the quadruple flip, the skater showed a clean and decent skating, while gaining more points on choreo elements and components than Semenenko.

The final score was 93.83 points.

Although the two leaders after the short program are of the same age, Mozalev still has more experience and should already be ready for big tournaments.

However, men's free skating can still change everything.

Couples

In the pair competition, the main one was the duel between Anastasia Mishina - Alexander Galliamov and Daria Pavlyuchenko - Denis Khodykin.

If the Moscow pair was the best at the Russian Championship, then the students of Tamara Moskvina were clearly ahead at the Channel One Cup.

In the final of the Russian Cup, they needed to confirm this in order to get into the national team for the first time in their career.

But the fight did not work - Pavlyuchenko and Khodykin did not cope with their short skating.

They started the program very promisingly, at a good pace and with a clear parallel toe loop.

But already on the todes, the couple lost one level, and on the rittberger throw, the skater fell.

A few seconds later, the partner stumbled too.

The judges gave the bronze medalists of the Russian Championship only 70.14 points.

At the same time, Mishina and Gallyamov succeeded in everything they tried to do.

For spinning and throwing lutz, they even got more than two bonus points, which few modern couples are capable of.

The duet from St. Petersburg scored 80.79 points - this is even more than Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov earned in the victorious Russian championship, where Mishina and Gallyamov were only fifth.

And Pavlyuchenko and Khodykin in the end did not even hold on to second place, letting Yasmina Kadyrova and Ivan Balchenko go ahead.

It will be almost impossible for them to win back the ten-point gap from the first place.

Women

The women's tournament at the Russian Cup final could be conditionally divided into two leagues.

The juniors competed in one, trying to attract attention once again a year before the Beijing Olympics.

And in another, there was a battle for a ticket to the World Cup and, which cannot be ruled out, the opportunity to play at a major tournament as part of the national team for the last time.

The participants in this dispute were Elizaveta Tuktamysheva and Alyona Kostornaya.

The 2015 world champion performed earlier and could either give hope to the student of Evgeni Plushenko, whose season was completely unsettled due to the coronavirus, or she could destroy her.

Tuktamysheva chose the second option.

Although she did not very clearly land from the triple axel and did not tighten the sheepskin coat in the cascade, in general, the skater's skating turned out to be quite smooth.

The judges rated him 77.74 points.

Last season, Kostornaya could have easily surpassed this result in the short program.

And even in this, when the triple axel disappeared from her arsenal, she always scored more than 78 points.

But after the athlete withdrew from three tournaments in a row, one could no longer be sure of her successful performance.

In the final of the Cup of Russia Kostornaya showed a new program under the "Seasons" ("Winter") by Antonio Vivaldi, which the judges liked, but there were problems with the technical component of the rental.

Kostornaya made a mistake on a triple flip, which is why she could not complement it with a triple sheepskin coat.

The path after the cascade received only the second level.

If the European champion received a generous 36.16 points for the components, which became the second result among all girls, then in total with the first mark she scored 70.14 points.

In order to compete with Tuktamysheva in an arbitrary program, this may not be enough.

By the way, Tuktamysheva herself takes only third place after the first day of the competition.

The leader predictably became Kamila Valieva, who created another masterpiece on the ice.

Even if she did not get the perfect cascade of lutz - toe loop, but the triple axel really pleased the judges.

The increase for him was 3.20 points - no one received so much at official competitions.

The last spin of Valieva was also recognized by the jury as ideal and rated one "five".

As a result, student Eteri Tutberidze scored 88.71 points, once again surpassing the world record of Kostornaya.

We should also mention the performance of Daria Usacheva, who took second place.

Even without ultra-si elements or at least the lutz-rittberger cascade, she managed to bypass Tuktamysheva and score 79.12 points, which is extremely rare for modern women's skating.

Dancing on Ice

The dance tournament was deprived of their attention by all the winners of the Russian championship, but the European champions Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov could not miss it.

They were not so much required to take first place as to show a result with which it would be shameful to go to Stockholm.

This task was complicated not only by a long pause in the competition, but also by the absence of their coach Alexander Zhulin due to poor health.

But Sinitsina and Katsalapov clearly showed that they are still the strongest dancing couple in the country, despite all the troubles that happened to them this season.

They received 90.44 points for their well-known rhythm dance with music from "Singing in the Rain".

Each element of the dancers received the maximum difficulty level.

Even if the judges succumbed too much to the couple's charm, this did not negate the fact that their successful return to the ice finally took place.

By the way, they exceeded the world record of Gabriela Papadakis and Guillaume Sizeron, who will not come to the championship of the planet.