Leadership interrupted: Mishina and Gallyamov won the short program among couples, Sinitsina and Katsalapov - rhythm dance

Tarasova and Morozov breathe in the back 

The first day of the Japanese stage of the NHK Trophy Grand Prix promised two powerful impressions at once. Two pairs of world champions made their debut in the series: Anastasia Mishina and Alexander Gallyamov in pair skating and Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov in dances. Expectations were justified: both those, and others, were at their best, leading the course of the competition with a fairly tough resistance from rivals.

The support of figure skating in media sources and social networks is now such that athletes constantly have to be in sight of a fairly wide audience and constantly prove something. In this regard, Mishina and Galliamov had to convince the public that the Olympic programs they had chosen were actually much more successful than it was perceived at the preseason rentals in Chelyabinsk, and Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov - that they still hold a blow in comparison with a whole bunch of younger and faster competitors.

At the first stage of the Grand Prix in the United States, we recall that the two-time European champions succeeded: Zhenya and Vladimir made a splash, having won the short program against the reigning champions of the continent Alexandra Boykova / Dmitry Kozlovsky, where they almost repeated their personal record two years ago, gaining 80.36 , then fixed the best total points in the free program and won the first 15 points on the way to the final of the series.

Despite this, the famous pair skating specialist Lyudmila Velikova noticed after the free skating that in America she again saw Tarasova and Morozov without jumping, and that even Eteri Tutberidze could not help the skaters yet.

Actually, the main intrigue not even of the current tournament, but of the entire Olympic season lies precisely in this: if the coaching staff of Evgenia and Vladimir (and six specialists are working with the skaters at once) manage to stabilize the jumping elements, they can be considered as the first duet of the country and the main contenders for Olympic gold: two excellent programs, experience and quality of skating objectively put Evgenia and Vladimir slightly above other applicants for places in the Russian national team at the Games in Beijing.

Ice owners Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihira became the heroes of the first day of the Tokyo tournament even before the release of Russian pairs, and not to say that suddenly: the Japanese made a splash at the debut stage of the Grand Prix in Las Vegas, taking the final second place, wedging between the Russian duets. At that tournament in the short program, the couple made a slight mistake in the jump, but in Tokyo the performance turned out to be close to ideal and ended in exceeding the personal record by 1.29 points (73.98). Of course, the score for the components has also grown.

In this regard, the Grand Prix series plays into the hands of the Japanese: before the Olympic Games, they will perform at two major tournaments (subject to the passage of the pair to the Grand Prix finals), there is an opportunity to dash off the programs and reach an even higher level.

And this actually means that at the Tokyo Games, the wards of Bruno Marcotte and his wife, two-time world champion Megan Duhamel, have more than a real chance to become the first Japanese Olympic medalists in the history of figure skating in this type of program.

And at the same time, to seriously increase the country's chances of success in the team tournament.

Sounds strange?

Partly yes.

But the Japanese really deserve all the compliments addressed to them.

The Russian duel ended with the superiority of the reigning world champions, but only thanks to Zhenya's gross mistake on landing from a triple sheepskin coat.

For the jump, the pair lost half of the base mark and because of this immediately dropped by a little over four points.

All other elements, except, perhaps, the release, the two-time European champions looked out of reach for anyone else.

Not to mention the fact that their short program "Galatea" certainly became one of the best productions both in the season, among other competitors, and in the entire career of Tarasova and Morozov.

Now the wards of Trankov and Tutberidze are separated from the leaders by 2.62, and it is obvious that only jumps will decide the success of this confrontation in arbitrary rental.

Sinitsina and Katsalapov take a hit

After the four-time world champions Gabriela Papadakis and Guillaume Sizeron presented their new programs at the Grand Prix stage in Turin, having won more than ten points from the closest pursuers, one of the best Russian dancers of the recent past, Ekaterina Bobrova, said: “It's hard for me to imagine what should to happen so that the French in the current season were not on the first step of the podium ”.

Does the above mean that all the efforts of Sinitsina, Katsalapov and their coach Alexander Zhulin may be fruitless?

Absolutely not.

But it is certainly more difficult for them.

The Russian duo was in a sense thrown back by a back injury from a partner, due to which the world champions were forced to partially miss a rather important start for themselves at the stage of the Russian Cup in Yoshkar-Ola - they withdrew from the tournament after performing a rhythm dance.

Prior to that, Victoria and Nikita refused to perform in Syzran, since they were remaking an arbitrary staging, and it turned out that the duo arrived in Tokyo like a cat in a sack: talk about injuries, especially so serious ones, involuntarily postponed in the minds of judges and may well cause insufficiently high marks ... Such thoughts were involuntarily prompted by the precedent that happened in Las Vegas with Sasha Trusova: the skater perfectly performed the step sequence in the free program, but received only the third level of difficulty for it. Perhaps the technical specialists had specific complaints about the elements, but it is just as likely that even before the start of the performances they simply succumbed to endless conversations that Sasha was going out on the ice with a severe leg injury. And if so, then this should not have the best effect on the quality of the elements.

Therefore, the performance of Sinitsina and Katsalapov in Tokyo was expected with some caution: among the rivals they were opposed by the vice-champions of the world-2015 Madison Chock and Evan Bates.

But the tournament began, and it was worth recognizing that the upcoming Russian-American duel faded into the background.

In ice dancing, it hasn't happened in a long time what is usually called the phrase "steal the show", but that's exactly what happened.

The show was stolen by the most, perhaps, the most extraordinary duo of recent years as part of the 2010 world champion in single skating Daisuke Takahashi, who took a four-year hiatus after the Games in Sochi and returned to a completely new kind of skating for himself, and his partner Kana Muramoto.

An unprecedented case, but the couple entered their first international tournament without having any personal records at all - there was simply nowhere to fix them.

The duet's street rhythm dance, staged in a purely Japanese style and costumes, made one remember that the current coach of the couple, Marina Zueva, is still one of the most interesting stage directors in the world.

The castling that Muramoto and Takahashi made in two and a half minutes of skating, earning 70.74 points, and at the same time the status of the strongest duet in their country, taking it away from Misato Komatsubara and Tim Coleto, was also perceived as a non-trivial event, since the second of the duets was several years old purposefully prepared for the Tokyo Games under the guidance of the most successful dance coaching group Marie-France Dubreuil, Patrice Lauzon and Romain Agenauer.

As it turned out, this experience did not bring any advantage to the more popular Japanese couple.

But the newcomers who impudently burst into dances turned out exactly like Caesar: he came, saw, won.

If someone didn't like it - their problem.

The final sixth place for Muramoto / Takahashi was more likely a consequence of the not too high authority of the figure skaters among the judges.

If the debutants had at least a year of joint international performances behind their backs, they could well compete in this company for the third position, just as they did in pair skating Miura / Kihira.

Suffice it to say that the basic difficulty of Japanese dance was the third and only 0.01 lower than that demonstrated by Sinitsina and Katsalapov.

Although in terms of the quality of the rental, the Russian world champions looked above all praise.

With Chock and Bates, the wards of Alexander Zhulin were nevertheless divided by only 0.31.

The Americans set a new personal record (86.02), improved the result shown at the first stage of the Grand Prix by 3.47, although judging by the numbers, Madison and Evan are still far from the world champions: the highest achievement of Nikita and Vika, dated the season before last, is 88.73.

But in the Olympic season, as you know, coaches and athletes are afraid of everything.

Accidents including.