The Grand Prix finals are traditionally considered an occasion to take stock of the first half of the season in figure skating. Although much fewer athletes participate in this tournament than in continental championships and world championships, all the strongest skaters gather at the moment, and only the best of the best are awarded medals.
In Turin, Russian skaters won the medal standings and won the most awards in adult competitions. In terms of numbers, this is an undoubted step forward after last year's Grand Prix finals, at which the Russians did not win a single gold for the first time since 2014. However, if we compare those two tournaments in terms of the quality of their performances and the value of the awards, they are very different. The current competition left to the Russian skaters much more questions for the second part of the season than the previous ones.
Only women's competitions can be taken out of brackets. Alyona Kostornaya, Anna Shcherbakova and Alexandra Trusova continue the victorious procession, begun in the junior years. They managed to accomplish the impossible - to take all three places on the podium. What is possible according to the unwritten rules of figure skating only at the European Championships, but now superterio Eteri Tutberidze is just two heads taller than all rivals, even those who also have quadruple jumps and triple axels in their arsenal.
In the remaining disciplines, the Russian figure skaters were all quite sad. If the rules for the transition from junior to adult were a little stricter, then in the piggy bank of the Russian team there would be only one bronze medal, moreover, won by other recent juniors Anastasia Mishina and Alexander Gallyamov in pair skating. During the season, nothing foreshadowed that the intermediate exam for skaters would be passed so badly.
In men's skating, there really were hopes for the best. Alexander Samarin and Dmitry Aliyev made a qualitative leap forward. One earned a reputation as the best performer of the quadruple lutz with a cascade of triple sheepskin coats, began to include the quadruple flip in his programs, demonstrated the character in his programs and necessarily rolled them to the end, even if he made many mistakes. Another put his head in order and returned to stable rentals, re-mastered the same quadruple lutz and began to develop his image, leaving the comfort zone at least in the short program.
After a successful performance at the Moscow stage of the Grand Prix, it seemed that Samarin and Aliyev were at least the best in Europe, and this is already a considerable achievement for Russian men's skating. I especially wanted them to gain a foothold in this status, also because there is no one else behind them now - Maxim Kovtun has left the sport, Mikhail Kolyada continues to be treated, Andrei Lazukin regresses in everything except one jump, while Makar Ignatov has not yet grown .
But the Grand Prix finals showed that it is too early for two leading Russian singles to dream of something big. Samarin still lacks stability and mobility, and Aliyev simply does not fulfill the elements if something confuses him.
For many years, fans expected that there would be jumping skaters in Russia who would please at least the quality of the program execution, but here they appeared, and still lose to the Frenchman Kevin Aymoz, who performs the four-piece toe loop only on major holidays - the competitions in Turin were just that . There will be even more such skaters at the World and European Championships, but Samarin and Aliyev may not be able to withstand competition with them again if they do not skate perfectly.
The results in pair skating have become just as discouraging. The planned rivalry between Alexandra Boykova and Dmitry Kozlovsky with Chinese couples ended in defeat with a score of 0: 2 - both duets from China, who received less points this season than were the personal record of the Russians, were higher. So far it is impossible to demand too much from them, which is quite justified, because they ride at the adult level for only the second year, as well as Daria Pavlyuchenko and Denis Khodykin, who became fourth,.
Two factors prevent Bronze Mishina and Gallyamova from rejoicing. Firstly, their total score was only 203.13 points. For world-class couples, this is quite small - for the Grand Prix finals, such ratings were enough for the last time in 2014. Secondly, in Turin there was no much more experienced duet of Evgeny Tarasov - Vladimir Morozov, and the French Vanessa James - Morgan Sipre missed the whole first half of the season. Someone just needed to become a bronze medalist, and Mishin with Gallyamov, for whom such a major tournament was the first in his career, did not have time to get scared of him.
The lack of medals in ice dancing is the most unpleasant moment of the Grand Prix finals. And Alexander Stepanova with Ivan Bukin, and Victoria Sinitsina with Nikita Katsalapov also did not give reason to think that in the end they will take fourth and sixth places. They did everything they could, showing the same decent skating as usual.
In the free dance, the judges noted this and were not at all greedy for evaluations. Stepanova and Bukin received the best components for the season and the best allowances. Sinitsin and Katsalapov became the second in terms of components among all participants. But the technical team involved in leveling and fixing the falls was merciless to both Russian couples. The basic cost of their programs did not stand up to criticism, but whether the skaters themselves were to blame for this remains a question.
Talk about the love of judges for one pair and dislike for others has always been and will be, and you can argue for a long time about how wealthy they are. In the end, the very same Sinitsina and Katsalapov managed to break the vicious circle and make incredible progress last season, in connection with which there remains the hope that the current failure in the Grand Prix finals is simply an unfortunate mistake against them.
But what cannot be disagreed with is the lack of growth in Stepanova and Bukin, who have continued to stagnate in the same place since the partner was not allowed to participate in the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang for unknown reasons. No matter how much the couple works on themselves, they still occupy the same place in world ice dancing as they did then.
The Grand Prix finals in Turin were just very similar for the Russian skaters to the latest Olympic Games. The success in women's skating and the mediocre result in the other forms were repeated again. Only if then the skaters had a bonus in the form of a silver team tournament for the average indicators in all disciplines, now it is difficult to say that he would have been deserved.