The first victory of Medvedeva
At the Shanghai Trophy Commercial Tournament, Evgenia Medvedeva was finally able to cross out one item from her list of must-haves that worried her for a long time. After leaving Eteri Tutberidze and moving to Canada to Brian Orser, she has never managed to win any international tournament. For almost two years, the skater managed to become the best only in the final of the Cup of Russia.
On the eve of Medvedev, she coped with the short program, allowing only blots on the lutz, and took an intermediate first place in a dispute with Elizabeth Tursynbaeva from Kazakhstan. However, the Russians did not have the strength to continue in the same vein. She arrived in China after an illness and in a bad physical condition, and in a free rental it still made itself felt.
Medvedev began her performance to the music from the film “Memoirs of a Geisha” with another uncertain lutz, because of which she decided not to perform two sheepskin coats in the cascade, but to transfer them to more reliable jumps. But the program did not become more stable from this. Medvedev then stumbled on the axel, again moved the cascade, and when it came time to show everything that had been postponed, there were some mistakes. In the confusion, the skater even performed the wrong number of spins from the jump, for which she did not receive any rating. We no longer talked about including a new cascade of flip - rittberger in the program.
Medvedev's technical score was only 49.49 points. For an arbitrary program, this is an incredibly low result, which children usually focus on. Only high components were saved by Medvedev, with whom the final rating for the rental was 119.62 points, but still she did not get so little even in the junior years.
Nevertheless, the opponents had enough problems. Tursynbaeva put the quadruple salchow in a long box and fell twice, gaining even less points than Medvedev. The best in the free boxing was Korean Lim Eun-suo, but not much - one ripped axel and a lot of under-twisted jumps did not allow to move the Russian woman from first place. Medvedev won, though not the most beautiful, but still a victory. The next item on her calendar will be the almost home stage of the Grand Prix in Canada, which will be held in late October.
Samarin in search of a cascade
Perhaps the most serious squad at the Shanghai Open was picked up in men's single skating. Matteo Rizzo and Alexander Samarin, as well as the ageless Michal Brzezina, came to compete with local pet Jin Boyan. On the second day of the competition, they presented short programs.
European vice-champion Samarin this season has already played at the Nepela Memorial tournament, where he tried to show that he is capable of more than last season. However, what then, what now, the attempt to perform two complex quadruple jumps failed. Samarin fought for the Lutz and nevertheless fulfilled it, avoiding the negative allowance, but after the flip he could not rest on his feet and was forced to say goodbye to the cascade again. Then the Russian got together and performed an impeccable triple axel - for him he earned more than 11 points, which happens extremely rarely.
With a score of 84.66 points, Samarin was in second place. The first went to Rizzo, who has not yet decided to seriously complicate the programs. The success was brought to him by a clean cascade with a quadruple sheepskin coat, and the roughness on the axel was not in any case such a serious offense as one unsuccessful jump of Samarin. The Italian scored 87.76 points, which was his best result of the season.
Jin Boyang took a step back from his successful start at the Lombardia Trophy. The Chinese skater, who once fought on an equal footing with the main world stars, underwent the triple lutz, fell on the axel, and the cascade with the four sheepskin coat also did not escape complaints from the judges. Chinese fans had to applaud to comfort their favorite when he scored only 70.71 points.
The silver beginning of Boykova and Kozlovsky
But in pair skating, the hosts of the competition pleased the spectators. The struggle for victory was between the Chinese pair Peng Cheng - Jin Yang and the Russians Alexandra Boykova and Dmitry Kozlovsky. After a short program, they shared only 0.19 points.
The wards of Tamara Moskvina arrived in Shanghai with a more serious technical base, but could not show it - they prevented Boikova’s fall on the sheepskin coat and the uncertain flip exit, and again did not receive high levels of support. Peng Cheng and Jin Yang, having failed to complete their jumping program, scored 132.73 points for free rental and 209.85 in total - this is the second result of the season after Kirsten Moore Towers and Michael Marinaro from Canada. Boykova and Kozlovsky received 203.16 points.