The victory of Kamila Valieva at the fifth stage of the Russian Cup in Moscow with a record result for a skater and for the whole world made me wonder: does this mean that a favorite for the next Olympic season has already been determined in women's single skating, and that there is no other figure skater on the planet who would have so many reasons to claim gold for the upcoming Olympic Games?

It seems that both questions can already be answered in the affirmative: Kamila, despite her junior status, is judged as a champion of everything and everyone, her programs are equipped with a very well-balanced set of jumping elements, even if compared to Alexandra Trusova. axel and two quadruple jumps, she has the most memorable and expressive performances and costumes in the framework of "Crystal", which always speaks of a somewhat privileged position.

Plus Valieva is the only Russian junior who is purposefully led to the adult level, using all the opportunities for this.

The participation of the skater in the demonstration performances of the recent Moscow Grand Prix, which means that the opportunity to once again draw attention to oneself is another confirmation of this.

If we compare Valieva with her predecessors from the group of Eteri Tutberidze, I would not put next to the two-time champion of the country Anna Shcherbakova, not the European champion Alena Kostornaya and not even the Olympic champion Alina Zagitova.

And to Evgeny Medvedev, where the Khrustalny coaching staff honed the gold Olympic technology two years before the Games in Pyeongchang.

More precisely, for three: performing in the final of the Junior Grand Prix in Barcelona in December 2014, Zhenya looked much more powerful than those who fought in the same final for the senior awards.

That is, approximately the way Valieva looks now in comparison with adult athletes.

For the sake of fairness, it should be noted that the “record” of Kamila's results during the Russian Cup was to a certain extent achieved due to additional bonuses (for her performance in the free program of the last stage of the Cup, Kamila received seven bonus points and earned three more in the short program), which does not happen at international competitions.

But even without the allowances, the home results look impressive.

In an interview from those pre-Olympic times, Tutberidze said about her work:

“I have no choice but to work with the material that is and try to create my own product.

The words "material" and "product" can be very disliked by the readers.

But this is so.

The same Zhenya Medvedeva is a product of our factory ... "

Medvedeva, and before her, Yulia Lipnitskaya, did not even come close to that sieve of selection, through which those who want to train in the strongest group of the country now have to go.

When the selection is carried out in such conditions, the quality of the “material” that comes into the hands of the coaching staff also grows.

The principle remains unchanged: to sculpt a certain reference sample out of an athlete.

Such a standard within one group is always a big plus for those who train side by side, since a certain bar is set in this way.

In other words, the more efforts the coaching staff now invests in Valiev, the higher the likelihood that the level of the other figure skaters in the group will also go up.

This is how the main mechanism of many sports achievements works: it is no coincidence that the concept of a “rabbit” or pacemaker has existed for many decades in athletics: this is the name of an athlete whose task is to set the maximum pace for a race, and then leave the race, leaving others the privilege of finishing with a record result ...  

For almost three years Medvedeva was just such a model for the whole world - a figure skater whose stability is unlikely to be surpassed by anyone in the coming years.

Another question is that Zhenya's plans, of course, did not include leaving the golden distance in the most important season for him.

Although what happened in Pyeongchang, where she lost the main start of her life to Alina Zagitova, was rather an accident and a coincidence of many circumstances: too late for Medvedeva and too quickly a figure skater appeared nearby, superior to her rival in terms of qualities.

The state of health - including.

When Kostornaya, Shcherbakova and Trusova simultaneously reached a high level in the Tutberidze group, it was simply impossible to sculpt a reference sample from just one.

If the coach had set this goal from the very beginning, the unique three would have collapsed not this year, but earlier.

Valieva, on the other hand, approached the role of the standard ideally: she has a high jump, a very fast speed of rotation in the air, she is more stretched than even Lipnitskaya was at one time, very light on the ice, and long arms and legs make skating as expressive as possible.

No figure skater in the world can boast of such a set at the moment, and all these qualities, moreover, are served to the viewer in a beautiful package.

Will Valieva be able to maintain the deadly power of her skating in a year?

Perhaps yes, although it is already obvious that the athlete is growing and her body parameters are changing, which means that it will become much more problematic to maintain the skating standard.

But I would talk about something else. The problem of such athletes is often that they begin to feel invulnerable, forgetting that sport is not a chamber of weights and measures, where the concept of a standard is always unchanged. Everything here is changing too rapidly, especially in discipline, where the athlete's age sometimes does not even make a couple of years. In other words, even if the athlete copes with all the difficulties of growth, there is no guarantee that at the most important moment someone else will not jump out from behind.