Difficult season in mogul 

The freestyle world championship has resumed this week in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

The main protagonists of the mogul competition - skiing down a bumpy slope with jumping - were Russian athletes, who brought a lot of sensations in two days.

Anastasia Smirnova and Victoria Lazarenko won a full set of awards together, and Nikita Novitsky stopped one step away from the podium.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the International Ski Federation (FIS) of the sport was unable to organize a unified freestyle and snowboard world championship, as it did in previous years.

Various disciplines had to be divided between four countries, and Kazakhstan got mogul and ski acrobatics - the closest types for Russian freestyle.

Until recently, it was possible to speak about the mogul with some stretch.

The last medal in major competitions was dated 2015, when Alexander Smyshlyaev won bronze at the planetary championship.

After the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, the national team was noticeably rejuvenated and could not return to the world level for a long time, until last year 17-year-old Anastasia Smirnova took third place at the World Cup in Mont Tremblant.

She also started the current season with bronze in the competition in the Finnish Hand.

Bronze start Smirnova 

The World Cup at the Kazakh resort "Chimbulak" near Almaty became only the fourth international tournament for the leading mogulists - many stages of the World Cup had to be canceled altogether due to the same COVID-19 pandemic.

On March 8, medals were played in the classic mogul, and already according to the results of the qualification, it became clear that the Russian athletes were determined.

Lazarenko and Smirnova entered the top four and lost only to the main favorites - the owner of the Pyeongchang gold medal Perin Laffon from France, who won the last nine stages of the World Cup, and the reigning world champion Yulia Galysheva from Kazakhstan.

In the first final attempt, which determined the six best athletes, Smirnova scored 78.69 points - any result of about 80 points for women is considered an excellent indicator.

The 18-year-old athlete was helped by a very difficult set of jumps on both jumps.

Lazarenko also failed to perform well - she made a mistake on landing after the first jump and was forced to slow down on the descent.

To continue the struggle for medals, she lacked a little more than a point.

Smirnova reached the superfinal with the third result.

In the decisive attempt, she again brilliantly performed both jumps, and in particular her trademark back flip, for which the judges put the highest points among all the participants.

Having gained 79.41 points, the Russian woman became the leader of the competition, until she was shifted to the third line by the more experienced and faster Laffon and Galysheva.

Smirnova became the bronze medalist of the world championship in the Olympic mogul, which no Russian mogul woman has ever achieved before.

A few minutes later, a surprise was presented by Novitsky.

During his career, the 20-year-old athlete did not rise above ninth place at the World Cup stages, but in Alma-Ata he unexpectedly made his way to the superfinal, where he became the youngest participant.

In the decisive attempt, Novitsky did not have enough jumps to compete for medals, but due to the speed and passage of the slopes, he climbed to fourth place - for Russian men this is the best result since the very performance of Smyshlyaev in 2015.

The victory among men was won by the best mogulist in the history of freestyle Mikael Kingsbury, who won his fifth championship title.

He scored 87.36 points, beating Novitsky by more than six points.

Frenchman Benjamin Cave and Kazakhstani Pavel Kolmakov won silver and bronze.

Russian final in doubles mogul 

The next day, the World Championship program included a medal drawing in a doubles mogul - in which athletes compete with each other in the playoff system, showing descents and jumps on parallel tracks.

This discipline is not Olympic, but it also clearly demonstrates which of the athletes is among the best Mogulists.

From the very first rounds, the Russians began to work miracles, beating some favorites after others.

On the way to the semifinals, Lazarenko first in a bitter struggle bypassed Australian Jakara Anthony, who won silver at the last World Championship, and then took advantage of Laffon's mistake on the second springboard.

Then the 17-year-old athlete scored an incredible 84.51 points in a dispute with the Canadian Sofiane Gagnon and made her way to the final.

The last Russian woman who achieved this was Marina Cherkasova back in 2003, when Lazarenko was not even born.

In parallel with her, Smirnova strove to draw a gold medal.

In the 1/8 finals, she won only 0.9 points from Sochi Olympic champion Justine Dufour-Lapuinte from Canada, after which she passed the American Tess Johnson and the host of the competition Anastasia Gorodko.

The fact that two Russian women entered the final at once meant that for the first time, the gold of the World Championship in the mogul would go to domestic athletes - neither men nor women in any kind of this discipline had yet conquered the highest award.

Smirnova turned out to be the best in the dispute between two compatriots, who, moreover, train under the guidance of one coach Sergei Lazarenko.

In the final, she covered the distance more than a second slower, but the judges rated her slopes and jumps better.

An 18-year-old native of Chusovoy, Perm Territory, takes away gold and bronze from Alma-Ata, and Victoria Lazarenko, whose best result was previously the sixth place in the World Cup, got silver.

In the men's doubles mogul competition, the Russians finished the medal fight quite early.

Nikita Novitsky, Mikhail Aleinikov and Artyom Shuldyakov were eliminated at the 1/16 final stage.

Kingsbury became the champion again, making the second championship double in a row.

On March 10 and 11, individual and team ski acrobatics competitions will take place, where the Russians will have excellent chances to win several medals at once.

And from the 12th, the American Aspen will host the finals in big air, halfpipe and slopestyle for both snowboarders and freestylers.