The morning workouts before the girls' free program encouraged the fans of some athletes and upset the fans of others.
The first could be attributed to Kamila Valieva and Alexander Trusova.
The world champion among juniors coped with two quad sheepskin coats in a run and looked very confident before her first battle for the medals of the Russian championship.
Trusova, on the other hand, did well with two quadruple lutz - this type of jump was previously the reason for the skater's two falls at the Grand Prix stage in Moscow.
She did not try to perform other quads.
The other nominees for awards were not all so great.
Elizaveta Tuktamysheva was unable to perform the triple axel, and soon her coach Alexei Mishin even warned that the 2015 world champion could withdraw from the competition after finishing fifth in the short program.
According to him, the skater has not yet fully recovered from the coronavirus infection.
The two-time Russian champion Anna Shcherbakova also had problems.
After a short rental, which she won, the athlete could barely breathe, which greatly disturbed the fans, because she had recently suffered pneumonia and also clearly did not fully recover.
Shcherbakova assured that she was not going to act in film, however, in training, neither a quadruple flip nor a quadruple lutz submitted to her, and without them it would be very difficult for her to fight for another gold.
Before the main favorites started performing the free program, Maya Khromykh tried to intervene in the fight for medals.
The young student Eteri Tutberidze was the seventh after a short skate and wanted to improve her position with the help of a quadruple sheepskin coat.
In the morning, this jump did not work out for her, during the warm-up before the performance everything was already in order with him, but at the right moment the 14-year-old figure skater still fell.
Although the fall was quite sensitive, Khromykh pulled herself together and completed her program with dignity, having received 211.91 points at the end of two days.
For a junior, this is a very good result.
Tuktamysheva still did not withdraw from the competition and went on the ice in the last group of participants.
But she did not manage to give her all to the end in her 13th Russian championship in her career.
The student Alexei Mishin did not succeed in both triple axels - she stumbled on the first, and fell on the second.
Compared to the victorious stage of the Grand Prix, Tuktamysheva was no longer so hardy, and the double rittberger at the end of the program was a confirmation of this.
Because of this mistake, the world champion scored only 204.25 points and lost not only to Khromykh, but also to Elizaveta Nugumanova - she unexpectedly for herself ended up in the top three adult figure skaters and could have gotten into the Russian national team, if not for the cancellation of the European Championship.
Trusova nevertheless decided to stop chasing quadruple jumps and left only two quadruple lutz for her free program.
Risk refusal allowed her to skate cleanly and show all the beauty and richness of her "Romeo and Juliet".
The audience could no longer worry before the next entry to the jump - Trusova very clearly demonstrated that she would cope with each element.
The judges only once again lowered the points for an obscure rib, but almost all the marks for the components turned out to be above nine - for Trusova it was a real breakthrough, estimated at 246.37 points.
But even such a result was not enough for the championship, when Valieva came out on the ice and performed to the eternal classic of figure skating "Bolero".
In her case, it did not matter at all which jumps needed to be performed - she coped with each one surprisingly easily, including with quadruple sheepskin coats at the beginning.
Valieva tried to complicate all the elements, demonstrating transcendent plasticity and flexibility, as well as absolute harmony with the music.
If it were not for a very slight under-rotation on the flip, the judges would have no reason to put marks below three for the technique.
Of course, they also did not skimp on components - Valieva's second score exceeded Alina Zagitova's official world record, set back in 2018.
The final result of the 14-year-old figure skater was 254.01 points, and it was already much higher than the other highest achievement belonging to Alena Kostornaya.
Anna Shcherbakova was required to accomplish the impossible - it would be difficult to exceed such figures even in an absolutely healthy state, let alone after a serious illness.
But she was capable of even such a feat.
Both the quadruple lutz and the quadruple flip were surprisingly easy for the two-time Russian champion, and as for the rest of the content, she gave no reason to doubt that everything would be performed at the highest level.
All the choreographic elements of Shcherbakova received the fourth level, and in the end she scored more than a hundred points for technique alone.
The score for the components also exceeded Valieva's result.
When the judges announced the final results, the audience at the Traktor Arena exploded with delight.
For arbitrary skating, Shcherbakova received 183.79 points, and on the sum of two days - 264.10 points.
Both results left the official world records far behind.
The Russian Championship ended with the performance of Maya Khromykh. Another student of Tutberidze did not demonstrate ultra-si elements, but her skating was so high quality that one could forget that a junior was out on the ice. She even slightly bypassed Trusov in terms of components, but still, without proper technique, she could not count on a place higher than fourth. When Khromykh's estimates became known, Shcherbakova was officially declared the three-time champion of the country. Before her, only Maria Butyrskaya and Irina Slutskaya managed to win three gold medals in a row back in the days when Shcherbakova was not even born.