Refusal of difficult jumps and problems with stability: how Trusova, Shcherbakova and Kostornaya have changed in the new season

Alexandra Trusova

Unlike Anna Shcherbakova and Alena Kostornaya, Alexandra Trusova was able to compete in three tournaments this season.

She won two stages of the Russian Cup, but then unsuccessfully performed at the Russian stage of the Grand Prix.

Pupil Evgenia Plushenko took fourth place and did not make it to the podium for the first time since 2017, when she also became fourth at the Russian championship among juniors.

This season, Trusova, as before, relies on quadruple jumps in a free program.

Sometimes they help her to recoup the gap after short rentals, and sometimes mistakes on them lead to very unpleasant consequences.

True, Trusova no longer declares five quadruple jumps at once, as in last season.

In the last two starts, the 16-year-old skater tried to perform the same set of elements - solo salchow, lutz and sheepskin coat at the beginning, and in the second half of the sheepskin coat in conjunction with an oiler and triple salchow.

If Trusova manages to complete at least two jumps cleanly, this becomes a good help for a positive final result.

However, if there are too many falls, it leads to failure.

Trusova's more or less stable jumps include only a sheepskin coat.

She fell on it in two cases out of six.

Salchow's successful attempt was only one of two, and Lutz was one of three.

The athlete does not risk adding quadruple flip and rittberger to her program.

The absence of a flip, which Trusova used to do earlier, can be easily explained - the technique of its execution has undergone changes.

In the short program, she has never kicked off a clear edge when performing a three-turn jump and always lost a good bonus for this.

The same problem forced Trusova to briefly abandon the triple flip in the free program, but at the Grand Prix stage she finally completed this element without any complaints from the judges.

This season of Trusova differs from the previous one by unsuccessful attempts to execute the triple axel in the short program cleanly.

He could help her close the gap that always occurs after the first day of competition and reduce her dependence on quadruple jumps.

If Trusova performed a new element at the Grand Prix stage in Moscow, she would become a prize-winner of the competition.

So far, however, she makes a mistake on landing or falls altogether.

With Trusova's transition from Eteri Tutberidze to Plushenko, fans and experts hoped that the athlete would improve the score for the components.

However, so far, it has not made significant progress in this.

If in the short program she still had a slight rise, then the disrupted free programs forced the judges to evaluate her "Romeo and Juliet" lower and lower.

Also, Trusova's emphasis on quadruple jumps does not allow her to get the maximum points for the steps and rotations - the judges rated her step track at the fourth level only once.

Anna Shcherbakova

Anna Shcherbakova went out on the ice for the last time quite a long time ago - she performed only at the stages of the Russian Cup in September and October, winning them victories.

The current champion of Russia was announced for the Rostelecom Cup, but withdrew at the last moment due to illness.

She did not refuse a trip to Chelyabinsk, despite the consequences of pneumonia.

This season, the technical stuffing of Shcherbakova's short program has remained unchanged.

She performs a double axel, then tries a triple flip, and the crown element in the second half is the lutz-rittberger cascade.

The short rental of the athlete has not yet caused serious complaints, except for the third level of the step track in Syzran and the disrupted last jump in Sochi, which cost her about five points.

In the components, Shcherbakova added significantly.

At the stages of the Russian Cup, they were 37.20 and 37.44 points.

If we compare with last year's national championship and make allowances for home refereeing, then the student Eteri Tutberidze won more points from herself.

In the protocols of Shcherbakova, now it is extremely rare to find marks below nine, than only Alena Kostornaya could previously boast.

But Shcherbakova's free program was noticeably simplified.

The signature quadruple lutz, which she performed even in a cascade with a triple toe loop, is no longer included in her arsenal.

Now she starts skating with a quadruple flip, which has become much better compared to last season.

But the absence of a lutz and its replacement with a double axel led to a loss of about 15 points in the technical base.

Also, Shcherbakova has not yet been able to maintain her strength and concentration for the second half of the rental and go through it accurately, and after all, there she usually shows two important cascades, at a basic cost commensurate with quadruple jumps.

But in the components, she continues to keep the brand and cause only admiration among the judges.

Despite the fact that Shcherbakova without lutz began to gain much less points than before, her skating became much more stable.

She did not allow falls, small mistakes could well be attributed to the beginning of the season, and the artistic part immediately fell to the taste of the judges.

If the Russian champion still manages to regain her favorite jump, then she will become a much more perfect version of herself.

Alena Kostornaya

Alena Kostornaya will not be able to perform in Chelyabinsk due to the consequences of coronavirus infection.

But this is not a reason not to remember how the European champion performed this season and with what she was going to go to the national championship.

She did not win this season, finishing second at the Russian Cup in Kazan and at the Rostelecom Cup.

In the case of Kostornaya, the absence of a triple axel is immediately striking.

This jump allowed her in the past to successfully compete with Trusova and Shcherbakova, even when they avoided serious mistakes.

But after switching to Plushenko and with the start of the new season, Kostornaya has put aside her signature element for now, although last year she performed it with incredible ease.

The absence of a triple axel immediately lowered Kostornaya's technical score in the short program by about five to six points.

At the same time, the judges began to evaluate the rest of the jumps worse than before.

Last season it was almost impossible to imagine that someone would give her a grade below two, but now there are a lot of such examples.

In terms of components, Kostornaya also passed slightly - at home the referees evaluate her almost the same as a year ago at international competitions.

The disappearance of the triple axel also greatly affected the free program.

Last season, Kostornaya never scored below 150 points for the second rental.

Now - never higher.

Now you can repeat in the program both a triple flip and a triple lutz, which was previously prohibited, but this is still not sufficient compensation.

Especially in conditions when under-rotation is recorded on these jumps.

In the results of Alena, the score for the tracks of steps and rotation is also alarming.

If in short programs she receives the maximum levels of difficulty for them, then in arbitrary the judges have already given her not even the third, but the second level three times.

For such a beautiful skater like Kostornaya, this loss is even more unpleasant than the disappearance of the triple axel.

Of course, it is much easier to restore the tracks and rotations, and she would definitely have achieved this by the Russian championship, but so far we have to admit that over the past season Kostornaya has taken a larger step back compared to other participants in the famous trio.

If in the case of Trusova and Shcherbakova, some positive changes can be noted, such as an attempt to insert a triple axel or a confident execution of a quadruple flip, then the European champion has not added anything yet, and to prove that this is not so, she, unfortunately, will soon can not.