Duel between Kostornaya and Tuktamysheva and a chance for Kondratyuk: the main intrigues of the Russian Figure Skating Cup final

Men - Mark Kondratyuk, Makar Ignatov, Dmitry Aliev

The men's tournament in the Russian Cup final will be the fiercest.

If in other disciplines there will be two tickets to the World Championship at stake, then the singles will have only one to play.

The Russian national team in this form has only two quotas, and one has already been received by the country's champion Mikhail Kolyada, who has confirmed his readiness to fight for medals at the Channel One Cup.

The dispute for one more place in the team should be led by three skaters at once.

These are the reigning European champion Dmitry Aliev and the prize-winners of the Russian championship Makar Ignatov and Mark Kondratyuk.

And while the favorite in this trio is the one who is just the least familiar to the fans and did not even think about getting into the national team last season.

The main argument of the 17-year-old Kondratyuk is the second place in the same Channel One Cup, where, according to his free program, he even bypassed Kolyada.

In total, Mark deservedly scored an incredible 293.12 points thanks to five quadruple jumps and complex choreography.

Svetlana Sokolovskaya's student was also stable on the other jumping elements, and this is especially important for Russian singles.

Many are capable of performing one or two complex elements, but so far only Kondratyuk can confidently land from absolutely every jump.

Aliyev and Ignatov confirm this.

One has a quadruple lutz in his arsenal, and the other has a quadruple rittberger, but both are too dependent on their signature elements and cannot always confidently finish programs to the end, risking falling out of the blue at any moment.

The technical base of these skaters is higher than that of Kondratyuk and even Kolyada, but at least at the Channel One Cup they did not fully reveal it.

However, all is not lost either for Aliyev or Ignatov.

Kondratyuk has not yet earned the opportunity to skip the Russian Cup final and calmly wait for the Figure Skating Federation (FFKKR) to invite him to the World Championship.

Mark will have to go out on the ice and confirm that he is in excellent shape and will be able to fight Kolyada for three Olympic quotas.

For this, the federation needs a stable skater who will not allow failure in Stockholm, and now this role is quite suitable for Kondratyuk, but he needs to prove that he is not a brightly flashing and immediately extinguished star.

Women - Alena Kostornaya, Elizaveta Tuktamysheva

Even in women's single skating, the fight for a place in the national team is not so desperate.

This next season, Kamila Valieva, Daria Usacheva and Maya Khromykh will begin to fight for getting to the Olympics, and now they do not get to the world championship by age, although they perform no worse than adult figure skaters.

Anna Shcherbakova has already won one ticket to the tournament in Stockholm, and the second will most likely go to Alexandra Trusova.

Pupil Evgenia Plushenko holds a rare tournament without falls and mistakes, and has not yet demonstrated her maximum program with several quadruple jumps and a triple axel, but still, due to the technical base, she bypasses almost all singles in the country.

Judging by the fact that Trusova was never included in the list of participants in the Russian Cup final, she herself does not worry about her place in the national team.

Unlike men, girls have only two applicants for the last ticket.

The final of the Russian Cup should be reduced to the fight between Elizaveta Tuktamysheva and Alena Kostornaya.

Interestingly, the student of Alexei Mishin two years ago at the same tournament already opposed Evgenia Medvedeva for a place in the team and was defeated.

But this time, the 2015 world champion can be considered the favorite.

Basically, however, this status belongs to Tuktamysheva due to Kostornaya's health problems.

The coronavirus and its consequences have had a strong impact on the reigning European champion and world record holder.

She has not gone out on the ice since November, when she twice took second place at the Russian Cup and Grand Prix stages.

Kostornaya's triple axel disappeared, without which her programs were greatly depreciated.

Even if she manages to qualify for the national team, at the World Championships she will no longer be as competitive as a year ago.

Tuktamysheva also has her own problems.

Although she performs a triple axel, all six attempts at the Russian Championship and the First Channel Cup were unsuccessful.

Without her crown element, the 24-year-old skater also becomes extremely vulnerable, and so much so that Elizaveta Nugumanova bypassed her already in Chelyabinsk.

For Tuktamysheva, this is a very disturbing call - at least one high-quality trixel she simply needs.

At the same time, she has more chances to score decent points for him than Kostornaya.

Plushenko's student performed this element cleanly for a long time.

Couples - Daria Pavlyuchenko and Denis Khodykin

About the Channel One Cup, we can say that it did not go to the advantage of the pair Daria Pavlyuchenko - Denis Khodykin at all.

The current bronze medalists of the European and Russian championships took fourth place in it in both the short program and the free program.

This result has sharpened the competition among sports couples with renewed vigor for three places in the national team for the World Cup, although usually such issues are not discussed again in the second half of the season.

Pavlyuchenko and Khodykin performed at the team tournament at their own level and received quite familiar marks.

In the short run, their result was 75.73 points, in the free run - 143.58 points, and in total - 219.31 points, which is only two points worse than their result at the Russian championship.

The pair had only two errors on the throws, and not the most critical ones, and at the same time the skaters managed to execute a parallel triple flip - no one else was capable of that.

But Pavlyuchenko and Khodykin only confirmed their level, while the other couples excelled themselves.

Their main competitors Anastasia Mishina and Alexander Gallyamov took second place, surpassing the world records for the free program and the overall mark.

Alexandra Boykova and Dmitry Kozlovsky also performed better than Sergei Dobroskokov's charges.

There was no question at all about imposing a struggle on Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov.

By the way, the champions of Russia have already secured a trip to Stockholm and will not compete in the final of the country's Cup.

The Channel One Cup showed that Pavlyuchenko and Khodykin, even with unique elements and pure performance of their programs, impress the judges less than the students of Tamara Moskvina.

It is worth recalling that at the last two Russian championships, they found themselves on the podium, partly due to the failures of Mishina and Gallyamov, who failed short skates.

If they do not make mistakes, as was the case in Megasport, then they immediately gain more points thanks to complex emissions and high-quality support.

Pavlyuchenko and Khodykin in the final of the Russian Cup need to make a huge leap forward, but they may not have the space for this.

Ice dancing - Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov

The Russian national team is already difficult to imagine without Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov, the only ice dancers who beat Gabriela Papadakis and Guillaume Sizeron in the current Olympic cycle.

But this season, this duo has not yet won the right to compete in the world championship, where he could defend his silver medals.

The final of the Russian Cup is his last chance.

The current season for the students of Alexander Zhulin did not immediately work out.

First, the partner suffered a leg injury, and then a severe form of coronavirus.

Because of this, the dancers did not perform at the Russian championship, which they had won twice in a row before, and at the Cup of the country they showed only one rhythm dance.

By the way, in 2018 Sinitsina and Katsalapov had already withdrawn from the national championship, and then it cost them to participate in all the main starts of the season.

The only bright spot was their performance at the Russian stage of the Grand Prix, where the duo won a convincing victory with the old rhythm dance and the new free dance.

Their marks for the first rental even exceeded the world record of Papadakis and Sizeron.

But since then, too much time has passed to present that result as an argument in a dispute over a ticket to the World Cup.

Sinitsina and Katsalapov acted quite wisely, choosing the Russian Cup final as the first tournament after their return, and not the Channel One Cup, where all the fans were waiting for them.

They got more time to prepare and avoided meeting with direct competitors, against whose background they might look very unimportant.

And none of the Chelyabinsk medalists will compete in the Russian Cup final.

Now the students of Alexander Zhulin need to score those points that will convince everyone that today they are still in the top three dance duets.

You can focus on the result of Anastasia Skoptsova and Kirill Alyoshin, shown at the Channel One Cup.

If Sinitsina and Katsalapov score more than their 204.76 points, then their right to speak at the main start of the season is defended.

And they have always taken such a low bar over the past year and a half.