The Russian Figure Skating Federation on the eve of published the national team for the World Cup in Montreal, which will be held from March 16 to 22. The team included the owners of all ten medals of the recent European Championship, as well as the dance duo Tiffany Zagorski - Jonathan Gureiro, who took sixth place. The only skater who fell out of the application was Alexander Samarin.
Long before the tournament in Graz, it was clear that one of the three Russian singles would have to miss the main start of the season. In contrast to the continental championship in the world, Russia has only two quotas in men's skating, so elimination was inevitable. As a result, the trips were received by Dmitry Aliyev and Arthur Danielyan, who managed to take two first places in Austria.
Officially, the European Championship is not declared as another stage of selection for the Russian team. But informally, he repeatedly performed a similar function. It’s enough to recall the last season when, after an unsuccessful performance in Minsk, Stanislav Konstantinov lost the right to go to the world championship, although she was the best adult figure skater in the Russian championship. She, along with other athletes, had to re-pass the selection in the final of the Cup of the country, and then luck smiled at Evgenia Medvedeva. It is possible that she would not have won the bronze in Saitama if Konstantinova had performed a little more successfully at the European Championships.
The same or similar development of events could not be ruled out this time. During the first half of the season, Samarin stubbornly argued that he was not only the best in the country, but also highly rated at the world level. He consistently performed the quadruple lutz with the triple toe loop, updating the world record for points for a single element, and included two quadruple flips in his programs. The judges sympathized with Samarina and put high scores for the components - at the stages of the Grand Prix, he exceeded Aliyev in this assessment. It seemed that for the 21-year-old skater, the second half of the season would be completely planned out.
And even an unsuccessful performance at the Russian Championship was not a sentence for the silver medalist of the European Championship in 2019. Samarin, although he became a bronze medalist, in terms of potential, he was still ahead of Aliyev, and even more so of 16-year-old Danielyan. It only remained to open it in Graz, but the student of Svetlana Sokolovskaya did not cope with this task - he did not please either the firm quadruple jumps or smooth skating. Samarin took the tenth place, which against the background of silver of Danielyan and especially of Aliyev’s gold was a real failure.
Only one circumstance allowed discussing Samarin’s chances of getting into the national team after this. Danielyan can still play at the junior level, and for him the main start of the season was to be the world championship in Tallinn, which ends a week before the start of the adult world championship.
The unexpected title of European vice-champion confused all plans. After the competition, Danielyan himself did not know which of the two tournaments he would go to, but now he will have a chance to be on the same ice with Yuzuru Hanyu and Nathan Chen. The Russian Figure Skating Federation decided that in this case, experience does not prevail over the current results, with which Danielyan was in full order in the last two tournaments.
Partly on Samarin itself lies the blame for the fact that now Russian skaters again did not have three quotas at the World Cup. At the last tournament, he took only 12th place in the status of European vice-champion - this was the worst result for the Russians over the past three years. If Samarin didn’t rip off the quadruple Lutz with his first jump, his total points would be enough to leave three tickets for the country together with Kolyada, and a year later to get one of them.
In the Olympic season, Samarin found himself in a similar situation. Then he was the second in the Russian championship, went to the European championship, lost to Mikhail Kolyada and Dmitry Aliyev, after which his candidacy for participation in the Olympic Games and the World Cup was not considered. Only two athletes could go there, and the choice of the Russian Figure Skating Federation was obvious. Samarin at that time was not yet as strong as it is now, so there could be no exceptions in his favor.
For a student of Sokolovskaya, missing another world championship should not be a tragedy. Of course, when this happens the second time, especially after Samarin took many steps forward, it is insulting. But his career does not end there. Aliyev’s last season turned out to be even more disastrous, but the return turned out to be triumphant. The age of a loner is not so short that after such failures nothing could be corrected.
Samarin only needs to understand what went wrong this year and why the company jumps ceased to be obtained, and if you do not resort to extreme measures in the form of a change of coach, then at least strengthen your team with the necessary specialists who will help to correct all errors precisely. One can even rejoice that the crisis, if such a term is really applicable, occurred at Samarin now, when two more years are ahead of the Olympics. This time should be enough to once again become one of the hopes of Russian men's figure skating.