Valieva's triumph and the sharp struggle of men: how the Russian Figure Skating Cup ended

The final, fifth stage of the Russian Figure Skating Cup has ended in Moscow.

The skaters who had the best results after short programs and rhythm dance became the winners in the three types.

Kamila Valieva scored a record amount in the women's category (254.86), ahead of Ksenia Tsibinova by 56.42 points, Anastasia Mishina and Alexander Gallyamov (232.47) won with an equally convincing advantage of almost 50 points in pair skating, success in dancing celebrated by Anastasia Skoptsova and Kirill Alyoshin (204.98).

The triumphant of the men's tournament was Pyotr Gumennik (247.14), who skated a purely free program and managed, due to this, to be less than a point ahead of Yegor Rukhin.

The draw for the cup tournament, which replaced almost all the international competitions of the fall for the Russian skaters, turned out to be much dimmer than expected at the very beginning of the season.

It was planned that the stages of the Russian Cup would become a prerequisite for everyone to enter the national championship, but this illusion had to be said goodbye rather quickly: more than 20 skaters, including the leading ones, failed to cope with the qualifying criteria.

Someone was knocked down by injuries, someone - by the coronavirus, but now it remains to state: the list of the "fallen" could really decorate a tournament of any rank, but their absence completely drained the Russian Cup.

The European champions in pair skating Alexandra Boykova - Dmitry Kozlovsky could not come to Moscow for the final start of the series, but even without this it was clear that this is the kind in which our country is now doing as well as possible, even if we do not take into account the winners of three world championships and owners of the team Olympic silver to Evgeny Tarasov and Vladimir Morozov.

The injury, and then the illness of the duet Alexander Stepanov - Ivan Bukin deprived the fans of the opportunity to see some semblance of a fight in ice dancing, and, oddly enough, the European champions Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov suffered from this.

This fall they managed to perform fully only at the Moscow stage of the Grand Prix, but their skating in the free dance looked raw.

This was understandable given the consequences of a rather unpleasant knee injury on a partner, due to which the dancers were forced to interrupt their performance at the second stage of the Russian Cup in Moscow, but if we talk about a potential fight for the top world positions, while Alexander Zhulin's wards are too noticeably inferior myself last year.

All the performances of male singles were held under the sign of cooperation between Alexey Mishin and Mikhail Kolyada.

Where the skater performed, he was praised.

In other cases, he was cited as an example to everyone else, like a phoenix bird that rose from the ashes.

The athlete will have to work out compliments at the Russian Championship in Chelyabinsk, and it is not a fact that the European champion Dmitry Aliev and the winners of continental championships Alexander Samarin and Artur Danielyan will be his main rivals.

As you know, a holy place is never empty, and there is a paradox in men's skating this season: as soon as the leaders moved a little from their usual positions and vacated the competition area for the second echelon, it turned out that there was someone to look at.

Moreover, neither Kolyada, nor Aliyev, nor Samarin are no longer the undisputed leaders in terms of the jumping complexity of the programs: Andrei Mozalev mastered, in addition to the "standard" sheepskin coat, a quadruple flip, Makar Ignatov showed a quadruple rittberger at the penultimate stage of the Russian Cup, and both of them already now talk about the intention to further complicate the jumping content.

A fairly large group of singles is also set up, which includes Artyom Kovalev and Evgeny Semenenko, who won the second and fourth stages of the series, respectively, while Kolyada, Aliyev and Samarin still have to restore and retain those elements that they have shown not for the first season.

In terms of women's single skating, despite all its media hype and appeal, the results of the Russian Cup are rather alarming.

The absence of two-time world champion Evgenia Medvedeva was an unconditional loss of the first half of the season.

The figure skater planned to perform in two stages of the Russian Cup, but was forced to suspend training due to a back injury, and then caught the coronavirus.

At the moment, Zhenya has not competed for a year already, and this is too long a period to continue to believe in her trouble-free return.

Valieva's victory at the final stage in Moscow was somewhat blurred by mistakes in the free program, but it became very indicative.

In the absence of any serious competition, the world junior champion could afford to skate a light version of the programs and would still become the first.

Instead, the world was shown a triple axel in the short program and two quad sheepskin coats in a free program.

But none of the skaters claiming places in the adult Russian national team can boast that they have made a step forward this season: European champion and Grand Prix final winner Alena Kostornaya cannot restore the triple axel, world champion - 2015 Elizaveta Tuktamysheva coped with the axel, but so far she is far from returning the quadruple sheepskin coat to the program, Alexandra Trusova seemed to be encouraged by a fairly solid attempt at the triple axel at the previous stage of the Russian Cup in October, but so far the forces are mainly spent on connecting everything in the program jumps without losing quality, and her coaching staff has not yet been able to cope with this task.

As for the two-time champion of Russia Anna Shcherbakova, she, despite victories in two stages of the Cup of Russia, showed, rather, "herself last year."

And she fell ill with pneumonia.

Now, a little over two weeks before the start of the national championship, it makes no sense to even try to predict the possible alignments in single skating - both for men and women.

But in the current situation, this only adds interest: for the first time in many years, the number of athletes, on equal terms, claiming to be included in the national team in all types of programs with the exception of dancing, exceeds the number of available vacancies.