From the news of the past week, for some reason, the discussion that unfolded around the vice-champion of the Beijing Games, Alexandra Trusova, caught on: did Sasha deserve the Olympic gold medal for personal rental or not?
She herself believes that yes - this followed from her phrase said in an interview: “Records are always important to me.
But this medal, the one that I think I deserved with my performance, was important to me.
It is this medal.
The harsh reaction of colleagues in the craft to the frankness of the 17-year-old athlete was not long in coming, but just here I want to think.
Olympic gold medals almost never become a bonus for this or that merit, and the one who even partly counts on such a thing at the Games is stupid.
It’s just that since the figure skaters had team competitions in the program of the Games, the concept of “deserved or not deserved” began to acquire some hidden meaning.
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Who, let's say, was more deserving of the team Olympic gold in Sochi - Adelina Sotnikova, who became the champion in the individual championship at those Games, or any of the Russian dance duets?
And is it not for the past (albeit grandiose) merits that Evgeni Plushenko, the owner of three medals of the previous Olympics, got his chance in the same Sochi?
Was it fair not to make team substitutions in Beijing, while Russia had a phenomenal chance at the same time to get not six Olympic champions, but more?
From the standpoint of deserving Sasha Trusova, of course, had to act in the command.
There is no other figure skater in the world who has so powerfully moved the development of her sport forward - even those to whom Trusova’s skating even now seems insufficiently expressive and soulful will not agree with this.
In addition to the quantitative record (five landed quads in one program), the skater presented the world with another truly invaluable gift: she clearly demonstrated that it is not at all necessary to be a skinny pre-pubertal child for successful quad jumps.
That it is just a matter of great desire and physical readiness of the body.
In the same way, by the way, Anna Shcherbakova deserved the opportunity to play in the team championship: a girl who almost always wins “in spite of” and this does not leave anyone indifferent.
Plus - the status of the current world champion, three titles of the national champion.
In a word, Anya had something to put on the scales in her favor.
We are all strong in hindsight, but, nevertheless, now it has really become completely clear that some figure skating fans expressed a not-so-oddious option before the Games, offering to put both of the above-mentioned athletes in command, giving personal superiority at the mercy of Kamila Valieva.
What could our country get in this case?
With a high probability - the same gold team Olympic medals minus the grandiose scandal that has been dragging on for several months and it is not known when and how it will end.
You can consider the Russian athletes who competed in the team championship as champions as much as you like, but if the doping trial in the Valieva case ends not in her favor, it remains to be stated that the Russian Figure Skating Federation made a miscalculation by declaring the athlete in the discipline where formally there is one medal, but in fact there are six of them.
Hand on heart, I don’t think that Trusova had in mind the team tournament at all, talking about the deserving of the highest award she didn’t get.
I'm sure not.
Sasha is too big an individualist to equate team and personal awards.
In addition, according to a person from the close circle of the athlete, she was informed back in January that there was no place for her in the command officer.
Well, in PM, she went for broke and lost.
Although “lost” is the wrong word here.
In the same way, in my opinion, Tatyana Tarasova's comment about the fact that none of the judges put Trusova in first place is not entirely correct.
Sasha left the free program with five votes against four, and it was this unique rental that became a grandiose exclamation point for the entire women's Olympic epic.
And was anyone ready to say after that speech that Trusova did not deserve to win?
She certainly deserved it more than anyone else.
Deserved, but not achieved - it happens.
Different things, by the way.
And what Sasha definitely didn’t deserve was the current comments addressed to her.