If on Friday afternoon, when men and dancers performed, the stands of Megasport could still be empty, then in the evening this misunderstanding was corrected. The fans who bought all the tickets long ago pulled themselves into the arena for a short program for women. At the same time, one could see in the case of Russian girls, for the sake of which the audience came from all over the country, much earlier.
In the morning, Evgeny Medvedev, Alexander Trusov and Stanislav Konstantinov checked the ice of Megasport during a training session, showing their readiness for the first day of the competition. Trusov looked best of all in this trinity - when it is allowed to perform only triple jumps, it is not difficult for her to complete the entire program. True, already after hire to music, she decided to stretch herself on the fourth salchow and fell.
Medvedev had a warm-up not without problems - she had one mistake on the double axel, but at the box office she looked collected and self-confident. It was precisely on the short program that she needed to make maximum emphasis - before that, at the Canadian Grand Prix stage, her performance under the Muse group turned out to be a failure. Konstantinova also avoided falls, but her jumps and cascades were much easier than her compatriots.
All three Russians were in the strongest group, and Trusova was to open it. The start of the rental did not go smooth - right before taking the starting position, the athlete slipped, causing laughter in the hall. She herself could not hold back a smile in anticipation when the Solveig Song finally sounded. But Trusova still managed to tune up in a second and unmistakably skated to the immortal music of Edward Grieg. A double axel, a triple flip, a cascade of lutz - a sheepskin coat with raised hands - everything turned out at the highest level. But because of the replacement of the jump, the skater did not have a new personal record. She got 74.21 points
Konstantinova’s performance went wrong again. Starting with a good double axel, she then fell on a lutz, lost points on rotation and on an unclear edge of the flip, and in the end she also received a fine for delaying time. The components that were higher for many rivals from the first workout, Konstantinova did not save herself from the penultimate place with an estimate of 54.36 points.
Megasport soon buzzed joyfully, but not from the result of the skater, but from the appearance on the ice of Evgenia Medvedeva. She has not performed in her native Moscow since the European Championship in 2018, at which she became second for Alina Zagitova. This time, the 19-year-old skater was second to none - changes in the content went only to her advantage. The final Rittberger became a beautiful point in her program, from which the audience literally exploded and shouted “Eugene! Zhenya! ”She took Medvedev to the zone of tears and kisses.
According to the assessment for the technique, it was clear that the student of Brian Orser would take first place, but what the gap turned out to be was a surprise. Medvedev received 76.93 points and updated her personal best. Only skaters who have a triple axel in their arsenal recruited more this season. At the same time, in the components of Medvedev, she lost to the result of Alina Zagitova at the recent stage of the French Grand Prix.
Competitions were closed by athletes who are seriously fighting for getting into the Grand Prix finals. But they immediately complicated their way to Turin. American Mariah Bell performed beautifully, but a fall in a cascading sheepskin coat deprived her of several valuable points and sent her to third place with a score of 67.11 points.
Even more unlucky was Satoko Miyahara, whose chances of moving one of the Russians in an argument for a ticket to the finals were even higher. But the Japanese woman with excellent skating did not cope with her technical minimum - instead of a triple lutz, it turned out to be double, which the judges did not count as an element, and one revolution was not enough in a cascading sheepskin coat. Such serious errors sent the skater with a second result in the components to an offensive sixth place.
For the first time in two years, Medvedev won the short program at the Grand Prix stage. But it will still be difficult for her to compete for the final first place. A lag of two and a half points is negligible for such an athlete as Trusova, who is able to perform four quadruple jumps in a free program. But on the other hand, Medvedev created a really good margin to please herself with at least silver.