Girls
More recently, figure skating enthusiasts admired how three junior women from the group Eteri Tutberidze occupied the entire podium at the adult championship in Saransk. Anna Shcherbakova, Alexandra Trusova and Alyona Kostornaya played medals among themselves, but did not receive any bonuses for their quadruple jumps and skating flawlessly. At the European Championships, they could not compete because of their age.
They needed only to perform at the Junior World Championships in Zagreb, but trips to them were not played at all in the capital of Mordovia. The Russian championship for young athletes started in Perm, and it was there that it was necessary to again demonstrate their skills in order to be in the national team.
The champion of Russia Shcherbakov a year ago overwhelmed the junior championship, becoming only the 13th. This time it was very difficult for her to repeat this result - the short program of the 14-year-old figure skater turned out to be amazing and without any flaws. This season Shcherbakova tried to perform a cascade of Lutz - rittberger, but after a series of mistakes, she decided to abandon this idea. Replacing the second jump to a sheepskin, she lost a little in the technical base, but at the same time confidently performed all the elements.
In addition, the judges awarded her with generous components - in this assessment Shcherbakov was only 13th in Saransk. Now she scored 77.17 points, adding almost three points to her personal record in domestic competitions. For a place in the top three in the short program the champion of Russia could be calm.
But from the first place she was quickly dismissed by her friend in the coaching group Alena Kostornaya. She does not perform quadruple jumps and so far only learns the triple Axel, but each of her other elements is much closer to ideal samples than her rivals. None of the judges rated its technical performance lower than the top three, and as a result, all the extras in the short program brought more points - this is an extremely rare case for figure skating.
In assessing the choreography, the opinions of the judges were divided. Someone was already ready to put dozens of 15-year-old athletes, and someone held the assessment. As a result, Kostornaya nearly broke through the 80-point mark - only three hundredths were not enough for him. More this season, only Rike Kihira managed to score thanks to the triple axel and Alina Zagitova.
Alexandra Trusovoi failed to take a place in the intermediate three. For the time being, she was almost on par with Kostornaya, but her performance to the music from “Kill Bill” was interrupted at the Lutz - Rittberger cascade. Trusova fell on an undistorted second jump and immediately lost a few points in relation to her rivals. The rest of the girls almost did not allow themselves to fall, so even with decent components Trusova ended up in seventh place. But even with 69.55 points in stock, the skater can rise high following the results of an arbitrary program - after all, no one performs the best four-time jumps, even Shcherbakov.
In the meantime, Anastasia Tarakanova is in third place, which also gives a ticket to the World Junior Championship. A year ago, she was still listed as a student of Tutberidze, but in the offseason she joined the Evgeny Plushenko Academy, and now she has shown the fruits of their joint work. A 14-year-old native of Volgograd returned to the execution of the cascade at the beginning of the short program and convinced the judges to give her 73.53 points. The fourth was suddenly Ksenia Sinitsyna, who lost to the more titled Tarakanova only 22 hundredths of points.
Men
No less interesting was the short program for men, where the struggle for trips to Zagreb is also serious. This season, many Russian figure skaters showed themselves at the Junior Grand Prix - Pyotr Gumennik won two stages and became the silver medalist of the final, excelled in the Czech Republic Andrei Mozalev, and won medals to Cyril Yakovlev and Roman Savosin. Finally, the reigning junior world champion Alexei Erokhov, who missed almost the entire season due to injury, was to return to Perm.
But the 13-year-old student of Eteri Tutberidze, Daniel Samsonov, confused all the cards. Because of his age, he did not go to international competitions, but he showed himself well at home, winning all the starts among the candidates for the master of sports. In Perm, the young figure skater gave the judges no reason to put a mark below two for their elements, and his program was very difficult - in the second program, he planned a triple Lutz cascade - a triple retitberger and successfully coped with it. Samsonov received 87.07 points, which no one later managed to block.
Second place went to Gumennik, representing St. Petersburg. He also skated purely to the music of Hungarian folk dance chardash, but did not include Lutz - rittberger, who didn’t play perfectly perfectly in the final of the Junior Grand Prix. Replacing the second jump to a sheepskin coat, Gumennik lost a little more than Samsonov's score due to a different technical base. Apprentice Veronica Daineko scored 85.94 points.
Arthur Danielyan closed the intermediate trio, who planned the same content as Gumennik, but performed it somewhat worse - he tripped slightly on a triple flip. A pupil of Svetlana Buyanova, who won silver at the World Junior Championships last year, was satisfied with 84 points exactly, although he could be in second place due to his experience.
Since Samsonov is not able to participate in the World Championships in Zagreb by age, the fourth place in the Russian tournament acquires a special value - the last ticket to the national team can get it. Igor Kunits lost almost four points to Danielyan in the short program, but at the same time he beat many skaters who were on the international stage.
Erokhov played poorly - the competition as a whole was very clean, and one drop on the triple axel immediately threw him out of the top ten, and the indistinct edge on the lutz in the cascade sent the world junior champion to the 16th place. The student Tutberidze scored 72.33 points and, in theory, could still be in the national team if he shows his maximum in the free skate program.