Leadership in everything: Russian skaters won short programs in four disciplines at the Grand Prix stage in Moscow

Triple leadership of Russians

The current figure skating season still has not answered one important question for Russian fans: who is worthy to be in the national team at major tournaments after the New Year? In the light of the end of his career with Maxim Kovtun and the long illness of Mikhail Kolyada, the leaders of the men's team are Alexander Samarin and Dmitry Aliyev. But the third ticket to the European Championship in Graz is still vacant and no one has yet claimed it. Neither Andrei Lazukin, nor Sergei Voronov, nor anyone else have performed so that their positions seemed unshakable (except for gifted juniors who are not yet assigned to the national team by age).

Finally, the places in the national team will be allocated at the Russian Championship in Krasnoyarsk, but now the rehearsal of this tournament has actually already taken place as part of the Grand Prix stage in Moscow. Both Samarin and Aliyev came to the Rostelecom Cup, and the company was made up of young skater Makar Ignatov, who just happened to open the competition in the short program.

Apprentice Yevgeny Rukavitsyna made a good attempt to occupy the emptiness that arose in the men's team. During the training, the 19-year-old skater perfectly jumped salchow and sheepskin coat in four turns, and at the competitions themselves he was able to repeat them in the same quality. A short program under In This Shirt would be perfect if it weren't for the triple ax step-out. Because of this, Ignatov received 87.54 points in his first stage of the Grand Prix, which still became his personal record.

This assessment has long held first place, even when more experienced skaters came forward. As if some kind of magic forced them to lose a few hundredths of points to a young Russian. Her victims were the silver medalist of the Canadian stage Nam Nguyen, and the Latvian Denis Vasiliev, and even Sema Uno. The Japanese came to Moscow to rehabilitate his career, but fell on the fourth lutz and frustrated the rotation, gaining 87.29 points in the end.

Ignatov managed to get around only other Russians. Samarin began his short program with a brilliant performance of the cascade of quadruple Lutz - triple sheepskin coat. The judges were not greedy and gave him 20.79 points - so Samarin broke the world record by estimates for a cascade of two jumps.

But then he had a fall on the quadruple flip and a step out on the triple axel. Hire, which could get the best rating in the world this season, brought Alexander 92.81 points.

The last speaker Aliyev could come out on top, provided that he also completed a complex cascade with a quadruple lutz. However, only three turns were made. Fortunately, the skater was not taken aback and rolled the rest of the program on the motives of the Mozart rock opera to the end. With only one mistake, which can not even be considered as such, since pure triple lutz is also a valuable element, Aliyev received 90.64 points for his rental and took second place.

The fight for medals in the free program will turn out to be incredibly persistent - the first position from the sixth is less than six points.

Personal record of Sinitsina and Katsalapov

Ice dancing taught the fans that in this category the gap between the duets is usually estimated in hundredths, but there wasn’t such a fierce struggle in the rhythm dance at the Rostelecom Cup. Leadership was captured by the winners of the recent Grand Prix in China, Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov. They so soulfully performed to the music of “Singing in the Rain”, which seemed: Alexander Zhulin’s wards would not mind continuing to ride for the pleasure and joy of the audience. But they had to save emotions and strength for an arbitrary dance, on which their getting into the Grand Prix finals will depend.

Sinitsina and Katsalapov's previous personal record in rhythm dance lasted only a week. In Moscow, they scored 86.09 points, reducing the gap between the unsurpassed leaders in ice dancing Gabriela Papadakis and Guillaume Sizeron to 2.6 points. At the same time, there is still room for Russians to grow - the pair’s tracks and finestep were rated at the third difficulty level.

Second place in the short program was taken by Canadians Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, who also fight for reaching the Grand Prix finals. But in order to qualify with two victories, they now need to win back three and a half points behind the Russians, huge for dancing on ice. With lower ratings, not only for the equipment, but also for the components, this will not be easy. Representatives of Spain Sarah Hurtado and Cyril Halyavin so far claim to bronze. An error on the step track allowed them to score only 72.01 points.

The Grand Prix stage in Moscow gave two young Russian couples a chance to speak and improve their rating. Anastasia Skoptsova and Kirill Aleshin recently took seventh place in China and houses are located in the same position after the rhythm dance with 66.52 points. Anastasia Shpileva and Grigory Smirnov, who got to the tournament at the invitation of the organizers, were a little more impressed with the judges - performance to the music from the film "Briolin" brought them 67.04 points, despite the practically unaccounted section of the finestep.

Another Russian intermediate pedestal

More than five years have passed since the Sochi Olympics, and the two team tournament winners from Russia are still skating and delighting fans with their successes. In addition to Katsalapov, Ksenia Stolbova continues her career. At the Rostelecom Cup, she returned to sports with a new partner Andrei Novosyolov - due to a change in his sports citizenship, the couple missed last season and only now made their debut in competitions.

The first performance was quite successful. The pair made a twist to the third level and performed a triple lutz surge - rarely in short programs they use such a complex version. If it weren’t for Novoselov’s mistake, who doubled the sheepskin coat, the couple would have noted the return by breaking through the milestone of 70 points, but she had to stop at 68.74 points.

Couples from other countries did not prevent Stolbova and Novosyolov from leading until the appearance on the ice of compatriots who closed the short program. For Alexander Boykov and Dmitry Kozlovsky it was slightly alarming - at the warm-up, the partner fell during the run-up to the spin and hit the side. But this incident did not affect the performance of the couple to the song My Way. After a pure triple salchow, the students of Tamara Moskvina performed the ill-fated twist and for the first time in a long time received the fourth level for it. Then they also made a surge of Lutz, earning even more points on it. Todes, support, track steps and rotation - all the elements received the maximum level of difficulty.

If the couple had not yet been perceived by the judges as young enough, then the world record of Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov would certainly have fallen. In return, the referees awarded Boykov and Kozlovsky another solid achievement - for the first time in their careers they scored more than 80 points, adding another 14 hundredths to this treasured bar. Their performance was definitely the brightest on the first day of the Grand Prix stage.

Tarasova and Morozov have not yet come out in full force and have shown a simplified program in Moscow, immediately depriving themselves of a chance to fight for first place. In addition to this, Marina Zueva’s students could not cope with the rotation, and some judges received nit-picking on the step track. But the Russians looked confidently on the key elements, and in their actions one could note the progress that the fans were waiting for. Tarasova and Morozov received 76.81 points for their performance, which became their best result of the season. If they manage to keep second place, they will be able to play in the Grand Prix finals, which Boykov and Kozlovsky will almost certainly end up in.

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