“This is a new experience for me”

Russian skater Alyona Kostornaya won the final stage of the Grand Prix in figure skating and secured herself a chance to reach the final of the tournament. She confidently skated both programs and was eight points ahead of runner-up Japanese Rika Kihira. The athlete was pleased with her performance, despite an error in the performance of the triple axel.

“I was able to execute the programs quite cleanly. Glad it could have been better, but, of course, this is a good result. I hope that next time I will roll back the short program even better, I will cleanly execute an arbitrary one and beat the mark of 240 points, ”Kostornaya TASS quotes.

The main weapon of the Russian woman at the moment is triple axels. According to her, in the future she intends to strengthen her program due to quadruple jumps, but for now she wants to focus on improving the existing components.

“First you need to deal with the axels, then stutter about the quadruples. But of course I want to try, ”she said. - I can’t say what are the strengths of the athletes of the group Eteri Tutberidze. In general, everyone is trying to ride cleanly, we have complex elements. I think we are almost equal. ”

In addition to Kostornaya, three more students of Tutberidze made their way to the Grand Prix finals - Alexander Trusov, Anna Scherbakova and Alina Zagitova.

“First, Anya won the first stage, then Sasha took the gold. Of course, we thought that our group would have all the gold medals. At first we laughed, talking about it, but now we did it, and it is very nice, ”Kostornaya concluded.

After failure in the short program, some were quick to write off Zagitova, but she managed to get together and demonstrate clean rental on the second day of competition, which brought her bronze. According to Alina, the trainers helped her in this, who selected the right words and helped to draw the right conclusions.

“The free program turned out a little better than the short one. It was nice to speak here - at the end everyone clapped me, and it gave me strength. I already had experience of failures, I made the appropriate conclusions after the speech, in any case, this is a new experience for me, ”said Zagitova.

According to the results of two programs, another representative of Russia Sofya Samodurova became only the sixth. The skater emphasized that at the moment, her priority is to prepare for the Russian championship, which will be held at the end of December in Krasnoyarsk.

“I will roll programs. But before the trip to Krasnoyarsk I will have a start in Zagreb. For me, this championship will be the most crucial start, because I myself am from Krasnoyarsk, so I will have a little more responsibility than the rest, ”said student Alexei Mishina.

“In the end, we have unkind ourselves”

The dance duet of Alexander Stepanov - Ivan Bukin took second place, failing to get ahead of the Frenchmen who set the next world record to Gabriela Papadakis and Guillaume Sizeron. Despite the fact that the Russians also qualified for the final of the competition, they admitted that they were not satisfied with their performance. Both partners noted that they did not feel on the ice the relaxedness that was present at their training.

“We need to reconsider the rental, but it seemed to me that by the end, we still rekindled ourselves. If we compare this stage with our first performance in the United States, then we only prepared for it for three weeks and performed wide open, but then we already knew that we could, and that made us feel sad, ”explained Stepanova.

Bukin confirmed her words: “We prepared very well, we had an amazing month of fruitful work. I am upset that I could not show the maximum of what we have gained during this time. There are two weeks ahead of the series finale, and we have time to patch up the flaws. But in general, the rental turned out all the same not bad. ”

Another medal in Sapporo Russia was brought by the third sports pair Anastasia Mishina - Alexander Gallyamov. They expressed joy at getting into the Grand Prix finals, but complained that the rental could have worked out better.

“I made my salchow in a short program, everything could have been a little different. And so the points for both equipment and components were lost. Maybe it’s good that this has just happened, we will be better prepared for the further struggle. Today I managed the salchow in the cascade, it’s very pleasant for me, but we didn’t come forward without technical flaws, no matter how pure the rental looked for the audience, ”said the partner.

For Mishina and Gallyamov this season is the first at the adult level. Prior to that, they won the 2019 Junior World Cup and the final of the Junior Grand Prix of the 2018/19 season.

“We try to use this season to the maximum - ideally, clearly, without blots. Yes, they counted on higher scores, but that’s nothing, good motivation for the next starts. The coaches taught us what a sporty character is and how to act at the starts, ”said Gallyamov.

Another debutant of adult competitions Alisa Efimova and Alexander Korovin took fourth place in Japan. They admitted that they were satisfied with their performance at the stages of the Grand Prix, since at the moment they need to gain experience in participating in such tournaments.

“They didn’t especially think about getting into the finals, because they wanted to do their own thing, starting with the small. Now we will prepare for the championship of Russia. It is necessary to come and discuss our preparation: maybe it is worth doing more whole rentals. We execute full programs twice a week, focusing on technical elements. The feelings are a little different, ”admitted Korovin.

In turn, Efimova said that she experienced excitement before the start of a free program.

“Every season you start over, although you take something with you from the past. New starts, new conditions, all this allows you to accumulate experience. But today I was still very nervous, ”the partner shared her emotions.