Bad Rock in Tokyo: Usacheva fell during the warm-up and withdrew from the Grand Prix stage, Ignatov became the fourth with a personal best

Usacheva's broken hip and Sakamoto's leadership

The stage of the Grand Prix in figure skating in Japan could initially be called the most unhappy of all this season. Even before it began, several star participants were forced to withdraw from the tournament due to injuries. The fans were deprived of the opportunity to see their favorites Yuzuru Hanyu and Rika Kihira, and the "queen of quads" Alexander Trusova, and other less status athletes who were supposed to create the atmosphere.

And no sooner had the competition begun than Daria Usacheva suffered a hard fate. Student Eteri Tutberidze came to Tokyo to compete for a ticket to the finals. To be guaranteed to become one of the six participants, the 15-year-old figure skater had to take a place not lower than the second and at the same time bypass Korean Yoo Yeon. On the one hand, this task was not easy - the opponent has a triple axel in her arsenal, and Usacheva skates without ultra-si elements. On the other hand, at the stage in the USA, she was already ahead of Yoo Yeon due to her stability and artistic skating.

But they failed to challenge the competitor. During the warm-up before showing the short program, Usacheva suddenly fell after trying to do a triple flip. The athlete immediately began to limp and with tears in her eyes went to the exit from the ice. The team's doctor Philip Shvetsky had to carry the girl in his arms to the room under the stands. Soon, the arena officially announced that Usacheva was being withdrawn from the tournament due to injury. So the winning streak of Russian figure skaters in the Grand Prix series was interrupted - before that, they won 11 stages in a row, in which they participated.

This development of events was especially offensive due to the fact that Usacheva really had a chance to bypass Yoo Yeon.

The Korean woman fell from a triple axel, did not twist the toe loop in the cascade, and received the third difficulty levels on the rotation and the step sequence.

As a result, she scored 68.08 points, while Usacheva this season obeyed a score of 76.71.

With a repetition of this result, the Russian woman would have bypassed even the leader in the short program, Kaori Sakamoto from Japan.

Later it became known that Usacheva was diagnosed with a trochanteric fracture of the hip, because of which, obviously, she would no longer be able to qualify for participation in the Olympic Games in Beijing.

According to experts, the girl flew to Japan with an injury to the muscles of the back of the thigh and experienced pain.

Ignatov's personal record and Samarin's undercompletion

The first day of the Japanese stage of the Grand Prix ended with the performances of men.

They were attended by two Russian figure skaters who have already performed in Canada - Alexander Samarin and Makar Ignatov.

If the first has already lost the chances of getting into the Grand Prix finals, then the second in Tokyo is just waiting for a fight for one of six tickets.

To do this, Ignatov needs to take at least second place in the competition and rely on the help of competitors.

Yevgeny Rukavitsyn's student did everything in his power to at least get closer to fulfilling the first condition.

In his program, in which you can hear an excerpt from the movie "The Great Dictator" by Charlie Chaplin, Ignatov pleased with the high-quality performance of all jumping elements, including the rare quadruple rittberger. A small mistake in the step sequence did not prevent the Russian from surpassing his recent personal best and gaining 90.54 points.

Ignatov did not receive any support from his rivals. All those who came to fight for getting into the Grand Prix finals turned out to be higher in the end. Local favorite Shoma Uno with simpler content scored 12.04 points more due to the highest components. American Vincent Zhou began his performance with a stunning cascade of quadruple lutz - triple toe loop, but did not tighten the quadruple salchow and triple axel, which is why he remained second with a score of 99.51 points. The third was the Korean Jun Hwang Cha, who performed the simplest quadruple jump, but finished with components - 95.92.

Samarin's performance under the soundtrack for the movie "The Matrix" did not work out from the very beginning.

He planned to repeat what Zhou had started with, but after the quadruple lutz, the Russian touched the ice with his hand and was left without a cascade.

He had to redraw the program and perform a combination of a triple lutz with a sheepskin coat.

Because of this, Alexander's technical assessment was already far from ideal, and the referees did not give a high rating to all the subsequent elements.

As a result, the 2019 vice-champion of Europe scored 84.32 points and took an intermediate seventh place.