Bonus rental: how Trusova took revenge from Valieva, Usacheva and the judges for the short program at the Russian Cup

The main sensation of the tournament was Alexandra Trusova's performance in the free program.

Losing almost 10 points to the reigning world junior champion Kamila Valieva after the short program, she finished the free skate with a 16.22 point advantage and won her first victory of the season.

Was the skater, widely known for her relentless pursuit of prohibitive complexity, really sued in the short program on Saturday?

This topic excited the informational Internet space immediately after the first day of the women's competition ended, and continued to blaze on Sunday in the stands while the stadium was waiting for the singles to enter the ice.

The two-time world champion among juniors, let me remind you, on Saturday for the first time in her career showed a twisted triple axel in the short program, but in total points she lost 9.33 to Valieva and 4.62 to Daria Usacheva, two of the most promising juniors of Khrustalny.

After that, the assumptions arose that in this way Trusova made it clear that her departure from Eteri Tutberidze to the school of the Olympic champion Evgeni Plushenko was a mistake, the payment for which is a referee's disgrace.

It is not always possible for an untrained viewer to understand the current refereeing collisions, so it should be clarified: the Russian Cup is a rather specific competition for internal use with appropriate refereeing.

In particular, with surcharges for those elements, the development of which, from the point of view of the Russian Figure Skating Federation (FFKKR), should be further stimulated.

In current reality, such elements in women's skating are jumps in three and a half and four revolutions, as well as the most difficult and well executed rotations.

The intentions are certainly good, but not unambiguous.

To understand this, it is enough to include logic.

For example, the second of the criteria officially reads as follows: "Rotation of the fourth difficulty level with an average GOE of at least +4".

A reasonable question immediately arises: if a skater is able to perform the most difficult rotation flawlessly, he already gets extremely high points.

Then what kind of additional allowances can we talk about at all?

But both Valieva and Usacheva earned three additional points in the short program in exactly this way, and Trusova did not receive a bonus at all for her triple axel shown in the competition for the first time (the bonus for which, by the way, is not one, but two points).

Why?

All revolutions in ultra-si were completely tightened by Sasha, that is, they corresponded to the point of the rules: "Satisfactory performance of all jumping elements includes the absence of under-rotation."

Another question is that she performed the exit from the triple axel with a blot.

This, apparently, did not motivate the referees to an additional bonus, although there is no logic in this either: for an error on landing, Trusova was already punished by the referees - she received 5.60 for an axel with a base jump cost of 8.0.

It turns out that, having punished the athlete twice, the referees actually openly declared: bonuses are nothing more than a tool of manipulation.

An ace, which at the right time you just need to pull out of the sleeve.

So, at least, it looked to everyone who watched the competition from the outside.

Therefore, it was doubly interesting to wait for women's battles in a free program, where Trusova and her new coaching staff announced three quadruple jumps.

Against two from Valieva.

By and large, Trusova's jumps in the context of the Russian Cup should not be regarded at all as an instrument of rivalry with anyone else.

After the September rentals, the figure skater's coach Evgeni Plushenko said in an interview about the possible complication of the programs that, they say, the free staging was made in such a way that it was possible to replace the double axel with a triple axel in it.

“In addition, we also have a quadruple salchow planned, Sasha does it perfectly,” the coach added.

Such complications in difficult-to-coordinate sports are never done at once - there is a high risk that the athlete simply will not be able to stand his head and global co-ordination will begin.

From this point of view, for Trusova everything is still going according to plan: a new jump for herself, a triple axel, she showed in Megasport not only in a short program, but also in two open training sessions, that is, in conditions as close as possible to combat.

And this is not at all the same as successfully performing a jump in training mode at a home rink.

The coaching staff considered it premature to include a new element in the free program, when this program is unstable and just starts to roll, and it was right.

The athlete coped with her set of jumps quite famously: the most difficult of the existing quads - the lutz - was performed without leaving, but Sasha resisted on her feet.

Next, she perfectly performed two quadruple sheepskin coats, earned four bonus points for them in addition to the judges' marks, and in aggregate won 12.01 against Usacheva and 16.22 from Valieva, despite the fact that Kamila received a record number of bonuses from the judges - 5 ...

On this, in fact, all talk about scandalous refereeing subsided by itself.