Before the women's free program at the Russian Figure Skating Championships, a real drama unfolded around Evgenia Medvedeva. After performing in the short program, the athlete assured that she was not going to withdraw from the competition. But those who happened to get to training on Saturday morning, it became clear that everything is not so simple.
Medvedev was the first member of the strongest group to start a program run. But after the first triple lutz, she tried to make a couple of visits to jumps, and then she stopped skating. The skater drove up to the coach Brian Orser, after a short conversation with him, she nevertheless made a path of steps and returned to the side. For a few minutes they still discussed the difficult situation that the athlete got into because of a broken boot, and left the ice before the end of the lesson.
Many began to suspect that Medvedev would still not be able to continue the fight, and after the performance of the couples, these guesses were confirmed - an updated start list was published on the tournament website. However, soon the page with the squad began to give an error, and the scoreboard with the results of the girls in the mixed zone was turned off. However, when the first girls had already taken to the ice, Medvedev still officially announced on the air of Channel One that she decided to end her performance at the Russian Championship.
“I know how much you worry about me. I understand how now, perhaps, someone is upset, disappointed in the situation with my boots. I don’t even know how to express what I feel, because I feel, to put it mildly, not very well. This is the first refusal to continue to participate in competitions, I could not imagine that I would find myself in such a situation. This is an experience that will temper me, and I will become stronger. I love you all very much. See you next season, ”Medvedev turned to the fans.
Following the Alina Zagitova, the Russian Championship lost another athlete beloved by fans, and the circle of applicants for medals, which the two-time world champion nevertheless entered, was reduced to four figure skaters. Only Elizabeth Tuktamysheva could challenge the trio of students of Eteri Tutberidze.
In training, she did not perform the quadruple sheepskin coat in the run, but still did it after the end of the music. The tiny hope that the 23-year-old skater would surprise in the free skate program still glowed. And the skater fans waited. As soon as groovy music opened the performances of the strongest group of participants, Tuktamysheva turned her back, going not to the usual triple axel, but to the sheepskin coat. But the attempt failed - the skater fell. This failure led to sad consequences - later errors were on the axel, and on two more jumps. Hire Tuktamysheva failed, but for a while it was she who became the leader of the competition with a score of 204.63 points, ahead of Victoria Sinitsyna, who, running ahead, won as many as nine positions and became fifth.
Anna Shcherbakova in terms of quadruple jumps went much further than the student of Alexei Mishin. She started the Firebird program with the fourth lutz in the cascade, after which she immediately went into the fourth flip. Due to a small step-out, Shcherbakova lost hundredths of a point on the jump and did not formally become the second figure skater after Alexandra Trusova, who performed it, but at least she twisted all the turns and landed. The rest of the program went smoothly, and in the end Shcherbakov was expected to have a surprise - she immediately exceeded two world records: for a free program and in total. The current champion of Russia took the lead with a phenomenal score of 261.87 points - higher than the winning result of Dmitry Aliyev the day before.
Alena Kostornaya had a huge margin after a short program and all the possibilities to save him even after such a breakthrough performance by Shcherbakova. Two triple axels in her performance made the championship of the figure skater without quadruple jumps quite real. But suddenly Kostornaya made a mistake on the double axel and did not quite correctly execute the triple sheepskin coat in a cascade. She did not receive more than three points from the judges for them, and with such a crazy rivalry for gold it was a verdict. Even with more generous components that exceeded the official record of Alina Zagitova, Kostornaya became the second. She scored 259.83 points - the champion of the Grand Prix finals received the silver of the Russian championship.
The last word remained with Alexandra Trusova. She simplified the free program after the short one, leaving “only” four quadruple jumps. But even such content was again too complex for the skater. She fell on the fourth flip and the fourth lutz, and on the fourth sheepskin coat she made a “butterfly”. For a moment, even Tuktamysheva had a chance to win a medal. However, Trusova still gathered in the second half and issued a cascade with a quadruple sheepskin coat and a Lutz - Rittberger, which became literally a ticket for the figure skater for the European and World Championships. Trusova scored 226.34 points in total and became the third. At the second tournament in a row, the Tutberidze trio occupied the entire podium, only this time only one skater could be pleased with her performance.