Going for gold: why Russian figure skaters can be considered favorites of the team tournament at the Games in Beijing

Short programs

The figure skating competition at the Beijing Olympics will be preceded by the third-ever team event.

If in personal disciplines the balance of power in this season is already generally clear, and the main favorites have already been determined, then in this still young discipline, not everything is so obvious.

Due to the fact that the final result will depend on the performance of a large number of athletes, it becomes more difficult to determine the contenders for the medals.

However, if we assume that all the best skaters will perform in the team tournament, and they will show approximately the same results as now, then we can write an approximate scenario according to which the competition in China will develop.

And for the fans of the Russian national team there is good news here - it is the domestic skaters who have the highest chances for gold.

The team tournament will begin with short programs for men, and here the Russian squad is likely to have a hard start. None of the singles have yet managed to impress with a good first run this season. The best score of Mikhail Kolyada loses to the results of all the main competitors from the USA, Japan, China and even Italy and Canada. So the first "catch" for the Russian national team may be only 5 points out of 10 possible.

But then girls and dancers will perform, and after the first day the Russians will be able to take second place. Whoever competed for women, there is no doubt that the Russian woman will get the maximum points, and skaters from Japan and the United States will follow - even Ricky Kihira, who has healed all of her injuries, will have little chance of being higher. The French Gabriela Papadakis and Guillaume Sizeron will not perform in the dancing, since their team simply did not qualify for the team tournament. This opens the way to the first place in the rhythm dance of Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov. Even if the rivals from the USA and Canada turn out to be higher, the lag of the Russians from the Americans in the overall standings should not be critical.

Then couples will perform where the main dispute with the Chinese Sui Wenjing and Han Tsun will be led either by Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov, or Anastasia Mishina and Alexander Gallyamov (although it is possible that the choice will be made in favor of Alexandra Boykova and Dmitry Kozlovsky). It will be important for the Russians to win the short program, which they are quite capable of, and to break away from their rivals from the United States as much as possible. The Japanese Riku Miura - Ryuichi Kihara and the Canadians Vanessa James - Eric Radford, who are still quoted above the Americans this season, should help with this.

After the pair competition, half of the participants will be eliminated, and only five national teams will be able to claim medals.

If nothing extraordinary happens, then Russia, the United States and Japan will be in the lead.

By that time, Canada and China will have little chance of a podium, but they will still have a little more than a solid Italian team, which will have to finish their performances.

Free programs

The men's free program should equalize the chances of the top three teams.

Although the second rental of Kolyada is better than the first, still this season he is inferior to the best singles from the USA and Japan.

It will be of great help if he bypasses the representatives of Canada and China.

Further, the order of performances will change - couples who will not have a day of rest between skates will have to go on the ice. In the free program, the Russians perform even better than Sui and Han, so it will be quite possible to get the highest score. Any American pair will be an outsider in this form, so that the Russian team will be able to regain its leadership before the final day.

Free dance will be very important for the final result.

If rumors that Sinitsina and Katsalapov need to be replaced, then the Americans will have a chance to close the gap.

Neither Alexandra Stepanova with Ivan Bukin, nor Diana Davis with Gleb Smolkin will be favorites in a dispute with dancers from the USA and Canada.

Here we can only be glad that there will be no competitors from France and Italy.

If there is no disaster and the replacement pair does not yield to the Japanese and Chinese, then the Russian national team will remain the first.

The girls will finish the tournament, and by that time there will be no cause for concern.

No one from the American team will be able to win back the gap, especially since the figure skaters from the United States this season are clearly inferior in class not only to Russian women, but also to Japanese women.

The Land of the Rising Sun will have the opportunity, thanks to the progress of its pair, to rise to third place and win a team tournament medal for the first time, and the Americans will get silver after two bronzes.

The likely victory of the Russians could bring the second gold to Nikita Katsalapov, who will become the only skater to win two Olympics, and even with an interval of eight years.