10. Anna Prakaten (rowing)
Anna Prakaten 'was added to the rare number of athletes who appear out of nowhere and almost immediately achieve incredible success. A native of Minsk, who moved to the Russian national team in 2017, she was a team fighter for a long time and played in fours and eights, with whom personal ambitions could not be realized. But in the year of the Olympics, she made a fateful decision - to go free swimming and start performing alone.
And Prakaten began to get it so great that there was only one question left for her: where was she before?
The first start in a new role was the selection for the Games in Tokyo, which she confidently won.
Three days later, she performed at the European Championship, and also won.
Finally, all doubts that a new star was born disappeared at the stage of the World Cup in Lucerne - one of the most prestigious regattas.
Practically again, it turned out to be out of reach for rivals.
At the Olympic Games, Russian rowers have not won medals alone since 1980.
In Tokyo, Prakaten won all preliminary heats - all year she came first in each of her runs.
Only in the final was New Zealander Emma Twigg able to bypass her, and Prakaten finished her breakthrough year with a silver medal, which they could not even dream of a few months before the Games in Russia.
9.Elena Osipova (archery)
Archer Elena Osipova also went from being an athlete known only to narrow specialists to a star in her sport in just a couple of months.
First of all, she was an indispensable member of the team and shortly before the Olympics she helped the national team win gold in the European Championship together with other girls and in mixed doubles.
A native of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky also managed to excel at the World Cup stage, becoming a silver medalist in the individual championship.
In Tokyo, Osipova again proved to be indispensable in the team.
Several times, her most accurate hits rescued the Russian national team and helped, after the sixth place in qualification, reach the final.
There, the archers still lost to the Korean girls and repeated their result five years ago.
After that, a personal tournament started, in which Elena had only the 22nd seed - since 2008, no one after such an average performance in qualifying has been in the prizes.
But the Russian athlete started everything from scratch and began to knock out one rival after another from the tournament grid.
In the quarterfinals, Osipova took revenge on the Korean Kang Chae Young, then defeated the Italian Lucilla Boari dry and made it to the main bout of the Olympics.
The duel with another Korean athlete Ahn Sang was overly tense - the prescribed five sets were not enough, and the fate of the gold was decided by a single arrow.
Osipova was again content with silver, which was the best result for domestic archers since 1980.
8. Sofia Nadyrshina (snowboard)
By 2021, Sofia Nadyrshina was firmly entrenched in the status of a future snowboarding star - she became the world junior champion three times in pivotal disciplines and twice won medals at the adult stages of the World Cup.
Only few could imagine that she would become a star very soon, and even before she came of age.
Already in January, she twice won the World Cup races and even joined the fight for the Crystal Globes.
But Nadyrshina achieved her main success at the World Championship.
First, she reached the final in the parallel giant slalom, in which she lost only 0.12 seconds to German Celine Jörg.
The next day, the Russian woman took revenge in the semifinals of the parallel slalom competition.
In the second race for gold, Nadyrshina waited for her rival's mistake and won - at the age of 17 she became the youngest champion in turning disciplines.
After finishing the season in second place in all World Cup standings, the Russian woman entered the junior championship of the planet and added three more golds to her collection, becoming the most titled snowboarder of her age.
7. Angelina Melnikova (artistic gymnastics)
In the past year, gymnast Angelina Melnikova surprised not only with her high achievements, but also with her amazing performance.
The international season began for her with the European Championship.
The Russian woman became the silver medalist in the all-around and won awards of all merits in individual exercises.
After that, there were 12 continental championship medals in her collection.
The finest hour for Angelina came at the Olympics.
When the Russian national team had a real chance to win gold in the team all-around for the first time in 29 years, she helped to use it.
On all the shells, except for the log, Melnikova's grades were among the best that day.
She performed even more steadily in the individual championship - in no form did she fall below fourth place, which ultimately allowed her to win bronze.
She won an award of the same dignity in the floor exercise.
After the Olympics, many gymnasts finished the season, but Melnikova decided to go to the World Championships as well.
Her goal was gold in the all-around, which the Russians have not had for the last 11 years.
Melnikova turned out to be almost the only top gymnast who retained her strength for this marathon, and deservedly became a champion.
In addition, she won silver and bronze medals in individual events.
6. Dina Averina (rhythmic gymnastics)
For Dina Averina, 2021 was not quite the way she planned.
The main event for her was the Tokyo Olympics, to which she rode in the status of the main and only favorite.
But Averina became only the second, letting the Israeli Lina Ashram go ahead.
This caused an incredible scandal, which clearly showed what a sincere response the Russian woman managed to evoke in the hearts of the fans.
Averina went to the World Cup to rehabilitate for the unfortunate defeat.
There she managed to prove who is the best artist on the planet right now.
The 23-year-old gymnast has won five gold medals, including four in individual competitions.
She was the first in history to win four all-around victories, and in total, she has 18 world champion titles - this is a new record for rhythmic gymnastics.
5. Sofia Pozdnyakova (fencing)
It has become a good tradition for Russian saber fencers to win two gold medals at one Olympics.
In 2016, Yana Yegoryan achieved this, five years later Sofia Pozdnyakova became the new queen of the saber.
Thus, she repeated the achievement of her father Stanislav Pozdnyakov, who in 1996 also remained undefeated in Atlanta.
The main rival for the 24-year-old athlete was her most experienced teammate Sophia Velikaya.
They both confidently made it to the finals.
Great, with her long and successful career, deserved personal gold, but Pozdnyakova did not give up in front of her.
In the main battle, she won with a score of 15:11.
Soon they joined forces to compete for the gold in the team tournament together with another fencer Olga Nikitina.
Pozdnyakova was especially useful in the first rounds, when several times she pleased with long successful streaks.
In the Olympic final, the French women were defeated - 45:41.
4. Vitalina Batsarashkina (shooting)
Bullet shooting can be attributed to those sports where it is almost impossible to win one victory after another in the same tournament.
The current competition format with elimination after each shot in the final leaves no room for the slightest mistake.
It is all the more surprising that at the Tokyo Olympics there was an athlete whose grip did not weaken for a second - Vitalina Batsarashkina.
It was she who brought the Russian team the first gold of these Games.
In shooting from a pneumatic pistol, Batsarashkina chased the Bulgarian Antoaneta Kostadinova throughout the final.
When she still made a mistake with the last shot, the Russian woman cold-bloodedly hit the targets almost to the very center and exchanged the silver in Rio de Janeiro for the gold in Tokyo.
For 29 years, none of the pistols have made a winning double at the Olympics.
When the final in shooting with standard weapons started, then for Batsarashkina this achievement seemed too difficult due to several mistakes.
But gradually she joined the fight and came to a shootout for gold.
In a dispute with a Korean woman, Kim Minjon, a native of Omsk had enough to wait for someone else's misfire, since she herself was not going to be mistaken.
To her two gold medals, Batsarashkina also added silver in the mixed tournament, in which she participated with Artyom Chernousov.
This allowed her to become the first female shooter in history to win three medals in one Olympics.
3. Svetlana Romashina and Svetlana Kolesnichenko (synchronized swimming)
If in rhythmic gymnastics the golden series of Russian girls was interrupted, then in synchronized swimming stability remains - since 2000 they have not lost a single start.
The main merit in the fact that two victories were won in Tokyo also belongs to Svetlana Romashina and Svetlana Kolesnichenko.
As in previous years, the success of the Russian synchronized swimmers was more than convincing.
First Romashina and Kolesnichenko won the duet competition, showing the best results at every stage and in every program.
After that, they joined their teammates and took first place in the group finals, again and not getting close to the rivals.
The Tokyo Olympics brought Romashina the seventh gold in her career - only 24 other athletes won so many titles in 125 years, and only eight of them were women.
Kolesnichenko, on the other hand, became a three-time Olympic champion.
Before the trip to Japan, the athletes also distinguished themselves at the European Championships, adding three more golds to their already impressive collection of awards.
2.Maria Lasitskene (athletics)
For high jumper Maria Lasitskene, 2021 began with a tough start.
In the winter season, she only once conquered the two-meter bar, and with the beginning of summer, injury and litigation for the right to speak at the Olympic Games in Tokyo were added to the inexpressive results.
Clouds thickened over the three-time world champion, because of which it was difficult to discern the joyful prospects.
Fortunately, after the injury, we managed to quickly recover, and the miss of the Russian championship did not prevent Lasitsken from going to Tokyo.
But the long-awaited Olympic final almost ended for her even before the medal showdown.
At 1.96 m, the athlete wasted two attempts and was one step away from failure.
But the third run was successful, and the 28-year-old athlete continued her path to victory.
The rivals drove Lasitskene to a height of 2.04 m - a level she had not conquered in open stadiums for two years.
But she also took this line, remaining alone in the sector.
Maria brought Russia the first Olympic athletics gold in nine years.
Her successes did not end there - in the fall of Lasitskene she won the Diamond League for the fifth time, with a score of 2.05 m.
1. Kamila Valieva (figure skating)
In figure skating, a new brightest star has lit up - Kamila Valieva.
She had been predicted a great future before, but now it is a fait accompli.
So far, the 15-year-old ward Eteri Tutberidze has not won a single big title at the international level, which her predecessors could boast, but she achieved something different, no less valuable - she opened up new colossal opportunities for her sport.
Valieva became the first figure skater who became stable and for a long time to perform both triple axel and quadruple jumps in the same program.
For most singles, even an attempt at one of these elements is an event, and yesterday's junior in less than a year was able to turn an incredible achievement into a routine.
At the same time, Valieva combines programs that are crazy in complexity with skillful and soulful skating.
So far, the young figure skater has only two victories at the Grand Prix stages and a triumph at the Russian championship.
What makes these successes special is not the status of the competition, which, of course, is inferior to the Olympic Games and world championships, but how Valieva won them.
She crushed previous world records one after another, and bypassed her rivals by dozens of points, despite the fact that she did not have to experience a lack of competition.
With this dominance, which the young skater achieved, nothing can compare.