As you know, there is nothing secondary in figure skating.
This phrase can be heard from any coach whose players have ever achieved serious heights.
In their interests, outstanding mentors have always used even such a seemingly insignificant format as demonstration performances.
What can we say about the tournament, which is held a little over a month before the main start of the pre-Olympic season with the participation of all the strongest skaters of the country, which sets all possible trends in figure skating?
It is clear, however, that against the background of a total competitive “fishlessness” throughout the rest of the world, tremendous attention will be drawn to him.
It would be simply unreasonable not to take advantage of this on the part of the Russian figure skating federation.
The format of such tournaments by definition should not imply harsh judging.
Here, a parallel with the post-season commanders of the World Team Trophy suggests itself, which, since 2009, has traditionally been held every two years in Japan (Russia, by the way, has never become the first in these tournaments).
The ideology of Japanese tournaments was to arrange a holiday for the skaters, since the season is over.
There, as a rule, under-rotation and incorrect ribs were not recorded, skaters were punished only for really visible mistakes.
By the way, it was at these competitions in 2017 that the two-time world champion Evgenia Medvedeva recorded a number of record results.
The Russian Figure Skating Federation (FFKKR) did not plan at all to make the protocols of the competitions open to the general public: the source from which this information reached the journalists explained the reason for such secrecy by the fact that the Channel One Cup has the status of a show, not a sports event.
And now this already went against common sense, because the battle on the ice field went seriously from the very first performance.
The reason was simple: the country has not yet determined the team that will perform at the end of March at the world championship, there are more equal applicants for a trip to Stockholm than places in the national team, the tournament assumed two full-fledged competitive rentals and made it possible to see all applicants in comparison. with friend.
What kind of games are there?
It is no coincidence that none of the participants went to make the technical content even a little easier, to speak not in full force.
The protocols after the first day of team performances on the network still appeared, and the most interesting were the women, where the result of the two-time world champion among juniors and the medalist of all the main competitions of the last season, Alexandra Trusova, was only the fourth.
Moreover, Sasha received this position both for technique (the judges noted a flat rib on a triple flip) and for the components of skating, where the skater was behind the junior Daria Usacheva in all five components.
Against the background of the abundance of previously recorded record points (the existing world records on the first day exceeded in the dances of Alexander Stepanov - Ivan Bukin, in the pair skating of Evgeny Tarasov - Vladimir Morozov, and among women - Kamila Valiev) and extremely generous assessments in relation to other participants of the commander, arose only one feeling is bewilderment.
After all, whatever one may say, Trusova is currently the second number of the national team.
There had to be extremely weighty reasons for such openness to flatter one of the strongest skaters within the framework of one's own country, albeit within the framework of a show tournament, with a clean box office and with obvious progress in the presentation.
Although nothing prevents us from abstractly suggesting (since we are talking about a frivolous and meaningless show format) that the judges simply decided to put her coach Evgeni Plushenko in the place of her coach, for quite unpleasant statements addressed to him during the season.
However, all this did not spoil the holiday.
The only stroke that did not allow the Channel One Cup to be considered a festival of stars in the full sense of the word was the non-participation of Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov in the tournament.
On the one hand, competitions of this kind would definitely not be superfluous for the European champions in ice dancing, on the other hand, Vika and Nikita missed most of this season, including the Russian championship, performed only at the home stage of the Grand Prix, but there the duo even there was no serious competition anywhere.
To get involved on the eve of the world championship in the fight against the reigning champions of Russia Stepanova and Bukin at the risk of not being the first would be too risky an undertaking: the dancers always knew how to build a strategy of struggle in this regard perfectly.
Now, all the more, it can be argued that the decision of the strongest couple in the country to ignore the tournament was definitely not superfluous: for the rhythm dance (that is, the type of program according to which the judges "meet" and build a further attitude towards the athletes) Alexandra and Ivan scored 90 on Saturday , 75 points, which is more than the highest achievement of four-time world champions Gabriela Papadakis and Guillaume Sizeron.
The most interesting thing that highlighted the Moscow tournament is that it can be safely asserted even now: it is unlikely that any other power can be compared with Russia in a team format in the coming years. And that means the battle to represent the country on the Beijing 2022 Olympic Commander in a year will be even more ruthless than it was this weekend at Megasport.