Tuktamysheva's chic debut and Gumennik's weighty bid: consolidated rating of single skaters in the 2022/23 season

Three falls of Akatieva and Tuktamysheva's axels

A year ago, the very idea that Elizaveta Tuktamysheva, in comparison with Kamila Valieva, could turn out to be higher, was completely unrealistic, fantastic.

Now such a disposition has become obvious, although someone will probably disagree with this statement.

Formally, Valieva has a much higher personal result.

At the first stage of the series, she finished the competition with a total of 244.66, which is 10 points higher than the result of Tuktamysheva, but this is exactly the case when you want to focus not on points.

The main difference between the two skaters from each other is that Elizabeth continues to progress and get better.

She completely stabilized the triple axel, and performs it to such an extent easily and naturally that the jump does not prevent the skater from focusing on choreography and presentation at all.

Plus, a quadruple sheepskin coat is on the way, the successful attempts of which Tuktamysheva demonstrated on social networks.

With regard to Camila, it is worth recognizing that she is much inferior to herself last year, not only in jumping, but also in skating.

And this strongly does not play in her favor, despite the overt desire of the judges to evaluate the skater to the maximum.

With all the more than well-deserved praises to Tuktamysheva, it is worth noting that single skating (whether women's or men's) is a rather cruel thing: at the second of the Moscow stages, the fact that Sofia Akatieva was out of her feet and fell three times played in favor of Liza, and Sofya Muravyova took a long time to recover from her injury.

By the Moscow start, the skater barely managed to restore the triple axel, but she had to temporarily abandon the quadruple jumps.

If you look at the numbers in the protocol, it becomes clear that Tuktamysheva’s positions are vulnerable: the basic complexity of her free program with two triple axels is 65.29, while Valieva’s content is 69.61, Akat’yeva’s is 79.11, and the absolute record holder in difficulty Adelia Petrosyan has 81.75.

Translated into Russian, this means that Lisa will not be able to beat the same Akatieva or Petrosyan, if they roll back unmistakably, purely mathematically.

And it's time to think about how to try to strengthen the free program as soon as possible with another ultra-c jump.

On the other hand, it is time to remember that in 11 years

performances at the international level, Tuktamysheva has already experienced a dozen domestic top figure skaters and, it seems, is not going to stop there at all.

If Lisa were a lover of poetry, it would be the right time to put the lines of Marina Tsvetaeva as an epigraph to her own career: “How many of them fell into this abyss ...”.

But about the women's tournament of the fourth stage of the ISU Grand Prix, you only need to know one thing - the skaters did not perform a single ultra-c element and could not skate a single program flawlessly.

Against this background, the victory of the Japanese Mai Mihara over the American Isabeau Levito looks like a thing in itself.

Summary rating of singles after four stages of the Grand Prix

1. (1) Sofia Akatyeva (Russia)

2. (-)

(Russia)

3. (2) Kamila Valieva (Russia)

4. (3) Adelia Petrosyan (Russia)

5. (-)

(Russia)

6. (4) Sofia Samodelkina (Russia)

7. (5) Ksenia Sinitsyna (Russia)

8. (6) Veronika Yametova (Russia)

9. (7) Luna Hendrix (Belgium)

10. (8) Alexandra Trusova (Russia)

Gumennik's victory "out of turn" and disruptions of Kolyada

Once, many years ago, returning from some competitions, I found myself in the same compartment with Oksana Grischuk and Evgeny Platov.

The skaters were very young, skated under the guidance of Natalia Dubova, in whose group Maya Usova and Alexander Zhulin were considered the first couple, and when it came to the dance “queue” and possible prospects, Platov, in a fit of sincerity, said: “We want to become the first before Maya and Sasha will leave the sport.

Figuratively speaking, try to change the train cars on the go ... "

Approximately the same thing was done on Sunday by Pyotr Gumennik at the fourth stage of the Russian Grand Prix.

It is clear that in men's single skating the concept of "queue" is meaningless: with the maximum complexity of the programs, everyone can make a mistake and fly to the bottom of the standings.

But there is always an unspoken group of leaders, entering into which (not to mention gaining a foothold in it) is not an easy task.

The 20-year-old ward of Veronica Daineko succeeded.

The seriousness of the skater’s intentions could be judged already after the second stage of the Grand Prix in Sochi, where Pyotr performed four quadruple jumps in a free program, including Lutz and Rittberger, showed the second result after Mark Kondratyuk at the box office, but remained third in the overall standings due to two frustrated jumps in the short program.

Interestingly, the basic difficulty of the free program at that stage was 83.73 points for Gumennik, while Kondratyuk had 74.12.

In the evaluations of those rentals, in fact, the advantage of the judicial attitude towards the recognized leader was reflected: Mark was judged as generously as possible - like Mikhail Kolyada at the first of the Moscow stages.

It was assumed that at the fourth stage, Kolyada would be evaluated as loyally as possible.

Moreover, his performance in the short program created the illusion that the skater is in good shape, and finally his free program, about which so much has already been said, will sparkle with all colors.

But this did not happen again.

The Sunday start turned out to be a failure and once again made me think that it is probably time to stop waiting for a miracle from Mikhail.

In the group of his coach Alexei Mishin, Evgeny Semenenko rather confidently relegates him to secondary roles, not only in the complexity and variety of jumps, but in the expressiveness of skating.

And most importantly - in the readiness to fight for the result.

Accordingly, Mikhail, with minimally complex content and, in fact, the only quadruple jump - a sheepskin coat, does not look very competitive even in absentia comparison with Western opponents.

Gumennik's winning total amounted to 280.65 points, and this result is valuable primarily because it was formed without taking into account any judicial advances.

As the saying goes, what you get is what you get.

That is why in the consolidated ranking Peter is higher than the champion of Europe-2020 Dmitry Aliev, although Dmitry's Kazan result was 0.3 better.

Another event of the stage is the return of Semenenko to the high society of single skating after a serious injury.

The fact that the free program of this skater will become an event was obvious even at open skates, but now, as it rolls, it has the prospect of becoming much more vivid and expressive with each next start.

In Moscow, Evgeny was somewhat insured, as always happens after a long break, he made the only mistake in the free program on the quadruple salchow, plus he lost too many points in the short program, doubling the lutz, which, according to the plan, should have been a quadruple.

In correspondence comparison, the Moscow stage completely outplayed the ISU Grand Prix tournament, which was held in parallel in Sheffield.

The Italian Daniel Grassl won there, who was ahead of Denis Vasiliev, but if the champion competed with Russian opponents, at best he would have remained third, despite the quadruple lutz and a flip in the free program.

Consolidated rating of single skaters after four stages of the Grand Prix

1. (1) Shoma Uno (Japan)

2. (2) Mark Kondratyuk (Russia)

3.

(3) Ilya Malinin (USA)

4. (4) Kao Miyura (Japan)

5. (-)

(Russia)

6. (5) Dmitry Aliev (Russia)

7. (-)

(Russia)

8. (6) Daniel Grassl (Italy)

9. (7) Gleb Lutfullin (Russia)

10. (8) Adam Xiao Him Fa (France)