Valieva's masterpiece, Kondratyuk's surprise, Tarasova's and Morozov's records: how Zagitova's team won the Channel One Cup

Dancing on Ice

At the end of the first day of the Channel One Cup, Alina Zagitova's team managed to secure a fairly comfortable leadership.

Her skaters scored 931.41 points, while the athletes of Evgenia Medvedeva earned 912.92 points.

But in free programs, you can get and lose much more than in short skates, so the whole struggle between the two teams was ahead.

The Sunday program of the competition was opened by the winners of rhythm dance Alexandra Stepanova and Ivan Bukin.

They immediately set an unattainable benchmark for other dancers - even with a lower level on the step track, their performance to the song of Justin Timberlake received 134.20 points.

This time there was no unofficial world record.

But even this result was very necessary for Medvedeva's team to begin to reduce the gap.

But to other duets of the two-time world champion, the judges were more strict.

They rated the performance of Anastasia Skoptsova and Kirill Alyoshin only by 123.34 points - they not only became the third behind Tiffany Zagorski and Jonathan Gureiro, but also won only hundredths of shares against Annabel Morozova with Andrei Bagin and Elizaveta Khudaiberdieva with Yegor Bazin.

Sofia Shevchenko and Igor Eremenko were the last with a score of 120.57 points.

In any other tournament, such a result would have been a huge success for them, but it was not enough to contribute to the success of the team.

Figure skaters Zagitova continued to lead by almost 15 points.

Men

In the men's tournament, the figure skaters of the Olympic champion first showed their free programs.

Makar Ignatov started skating very well and showed a quadruple rittberger, but then landed unsuccessfully from a quadruple toe loop.

The vice-champion of Russia could not get together and skate with dignity - by the end of the performance, his strength seemed to have left him.

Ignatov not only upset the fans with double jumps, but also stumbled on the steps.

At the same time, the judges still rated his efforts very highly, putting out 176.43 points - in Chelyabinsk the skater did not have such ratings.

And Andrey Mozalev did not get a clean run either.

He landed with difficulty after a quad flip and a triple axel, losing a few points on it.

The 17-year-old skater also failed to tighten the fourth revolution on the sheepskin coat.

However, he also received a very generous one-quad rental - 173.82.

Dmitry Aliev, who played then, fell on a quadruple lutz, but lost only 26 hundredths to his teammate.

Such assessments were supposed to help Zagitova's team stay afloat at least until the pairs competition, especially since the first skater from Medvedeva's team - Alexander Samarin - again turned out to be a pale shadow of himself.

He avoided serious mistakes, but skated with great difficulty, torturing every jump.

Technically, his program was also far from ideal.

Samarin scored only 166.04 points for Time of the First.

Medvedeva's team hoped that Mikhail Kolyada would eliminate the gap, but Mark Kondratyuk unexpectedly did it for him.

The bronze medalist of the Russian championship, about which many fans did not know anything at the beginning of the season, made a real sensation on the ice of "Megasport".

He cleanly performed a sheepskin coat and two salchows in four turns, while not forgetting about the rest of the elements in his rock treatment of "Swan Lake".

It was the best skating in Kondratyuk's life, and the judges rated it at 196.23 points - few people in the history of figure skating have managed to score more.

This did not work for Kolyada either.

Compared with the Russian championship, he strengthened his excellent program with a quadruple salchow, but stumbled on the landing.

This led to the fact that he lost 1.21 points to Kondratyuk and became the second.

However, the internal squabbles of the skaters were not so important - the main thing is that they returned the leadership to Medvedeva's team, and even with a margin of 19 points.

Sports couples

The pairs were supposed to further strengthen the position of the team, and here again not those from whom they expected it initially showed themselves.

Alexandra Boykova and Dmitry Kozlovsky performed to the music from James Bond films without the usual strain and, moreover, were left without premiums for a bold cascade with two salchows.

They got 151.10 points - even at last year's European Championships, where the judges were much stricter, the couple earned more.

For Anastasia Mishina and Alexander Gallyamov, this was still a very high benchmark, but the couple were able to surpass it.

They finally performed all the jumping elements cleanly, backing them up with flawless throws.

Tamara Moskvina's students realized the enormous potential that was laid in their production to the music of Queen.

The judges appreciated this and put 156.30 points - Mishina and Gallyamov were the first to surpass the official world record on Sunday.

Daria Pavlyuchenko and Denis Khodykin failed to adequately answer the students of Tamara Moskvina.

Although in their box office it was only possible to find fault with an uncertain flip release, the pair brought only 143.58 points to the Zagitova team's piggy bank.

But Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov literally saved their teammates - their performance impressed the judges so much that the unofficial highest achievement for couples in the free program has already grown to 158.45 points.

Taking into account the Saturday skating, Tarasova and Morozov could become the absolute world record holders if the competitions were held under the auspices of the International Skating Union.

Women

After the performance of the pairs, Medvedeva's team won 24 points.

But even on the eve of the loner Zagitova clearly showed that they are not afraid of any lag and can easily eliminate it.

In fact, it was possible to award the "Red Car" after Kamila Valieva's performance, or more precisely, immediately after her impeccable triple axel, which she had not previously included in her free program.

Valieva also performed two quadruple sheepskin coats in her Bolero.

Although one of them was with a small blot and did not allow perfect execution of the cascade, this was enough for the judges to give the student Eteri Tutberidze an incredible 179.19 points - she received more than a hundred points for the technique alone.

Medvedeva's team had no choice but to take risks.

Maya Khromykh tried to perform two quadruple sheepskin coats, but both attempts were unsuccessful, and the athlete immediately lost more than 40 points to Valieva.

But Anna Shcherbakova, who had even more complex quads in her arsenal, was next to go out on the ice.

The three-time Russian champion did not quite cope with the flip and performed a single rittberger instead of a triple one, but still put a very solid 169.06 points in the common piggy bank.

To make a comeback, Time of the First had to hope for a flawless performance by Elizaveta Tuktamysheva and Alexandra Trusova.

Both athletes in their programs delighted everyone, except for the pure execution of their signature elements.

The 2015 world champion was unable to land smoothly on triple axels, and her young friend immediately fell on a quadruple lutz.

They scored 150.41 and 163.33 points, respectively, after which Daria Usacheva, who closed the competition, could no longer worry about the lack of ultra-si elements in her content.

After her performance, the final result of Zagitova's team was 2634.95 points, and Medvedeva's skaters scored only 2606.21.

Both teams performed beyond praise, but the victory in the Cup of Channel One was won by the one in which Valieva was - her superiority over her rivals a year before the Beijing Olympics was undeniable.