Many figure skating fans are waiting for the Russian championship solely because of the opportunity to see the face-to-face confrontation of the best singles. There is simply no other chance to meet Russian girls in full force on the same ice. At the World and European Championships, no more than three participants can represent one country; in the Grand Prix finals, this quota in theory can grow up to six athletes. In the national championship there are no restrictions and limits, even despite the crazy competition.
You can skip the current Russian championship in Krasnoyarsk only for personal reasons, and that is why it will be missed by one of the most beloved athletes. Alina Zagitova was in the list of participants under the first number, until she announced the suspension of her career for an indefinite time. This happened immediately after the Grand Prix finals and exactly two weeks before the start of the women's national championship competitions. The Olympic champion admitted that she was not able to fight for medals, which should become a pass to the main competitions of the season.
Zagitova’s refusal to participate in the competition seems absolutely justified. She risked not only staying out of the prize three, but also falling below the fifth place, which she took a year ago at the Russian championship in Saransk. This season, Zagitova was not able to cleanly skate a short and arbitrary program within one tournament, and the lack of proper motivation would most likely hit her psychology more. The absence of the current world champion will be a loss, but not for figure skating proper, but for those fans who previously bought tickets to Krasnoyarsk to see their favorite with their own eyes.
Like a year ago, the struggle for gold, silver and bronze will be primarily waged by the students of Eteri Tutberidze who have matured and have already become winners of the Grand Prix finals - Anna Shcherbakova, Alexander Trusova and Alyona Kostornaya (TSHK). It was in that order that they finished in Saransk, but now this sequence does not quite reflect their capabilities and the expectations of the fans.
As the winner of the Grand Prix finals, Kostornaya will be the main favorite of the Russian championship. The absence of four jumps allows her to perfect her programs to the limit, in which she does not risk making serious mistakes, except during triple axels, but the 16-year-old skater has already managed to bring this jump to automatism. It is possible that in Siberia it will break its world record - at the national starts, a certain “inflation” is always permissible.
Trusova’s Napoleonic plans prevent her from confidently claiming gold, although technically she is the best and absolutely inaccessible for all skater. This season, she can not perform a purely quadruple salchow, but instead of working only on this jump, she focused on a triple axel for short programs and a quadruple flip for arbitrary ones.
Trusova has been trying to put everything together for so long that she has been waiting for two clean rentals from her, and one can hardly be sure that two weeks after the Grand Prix finale she nevertheless polished her mega-complex programs. But with every fall she will move away from the much more stable Kostornaya.
The current champion of Russia, Anna Shcherbakova, also at the last moment learned the quadruple flip, deciding not to stop exclusively on the quadruple lutz. Without him, she really had already exhausted the possibilities to beat Kostornaya, but with three quadruples in the free program “Firebird” by Shcherbakova she could already go ahead and at the same time beat Trusova if she continued to fall on her unfinished jumps.
If anyone can compete with the “murderous” Tutberidze trio, then this is not the last year because of Elizabeth Tuktamyshev’s illness. After the stages of the Grand Prix, she seriously took up the study of quadruple jumps, starting with a sheepskin coat. In training, the 23-year-old skater turned out so well that she even managed to show her subscribers a cascade with a triple toe loop. However, at the “Golden Skate of Zagreb”, which took place during the days of the Grand Prix finals, Tuktamysheva did not begin to perform a new jump. The skater did not include him in the free program in the Czech Republic.
With an ideal rental, the pupil of Alexei Mishin is able to be on the podium, but the struggle for fourth place and the status of the first substitute in the team is much more real. Evgeny Medvedev also claims this. She has not sent any signals from Canada regarding her readiness recently, but it can be said with confidence that the arbitrators still sympathize with her, and this is not so little. Eugenia has only one chance to get closer to the MSC - to complete the entire technical base without blots. And this is not as difficult as it might seem, because at the Grand Prix stage in Moscow she was able to give out her maximum, which was appraised accordingly.
Other skaters who would have been considered the favorites of the past Russian championships will perform in Krasnoyarsk, but this season they, like Zagitova, have stopped in development. This is primarily about Sofya Samodurova and Stanislav Konstantinova. Both can break the jackpot and break into the national team only in theory, but in practice they need to fight exclusively for their own worthy skating, which personal fans have not seen for a long time.
What the current championship of Russia will definitely miss is the fresh landing of juniors who played in the Grand Prix finals for their age. Kamila Valieva and Daria Usacheva, who took first and third places in Turin, did not fly to Siberia. It is much more important for them to gain strength before the junior championship of the country. Later, Victoria Vasilyeva joined the duo. And Ksenia Sinitsyna, who took fourth place, decided not to miss the opportunity to perform on the same ice with adults, although in January she will be performing at the Youth Olympic Games.