As we enter the season, the stages of the Russian Grand Prix become more and more intense, but the fifth tournament in Samara was not without losses: it became known that two very outstanding athletes would miss it at once - Daria Usacheva and Maya Khromykh, who do not have time recover from injuries.
Both skaters were remembered by the fans in their first (before last) adult season, but the Olympic year was not the best for both: Daria received a severe hip fracture, Maya did not make it to the national team in December, and in September of this year severely cut her tendons during training.
In connection with these problems, the participation of both athletes was postponed for the final two stages of the series, but now it is already obvious that both Usacheva and Khromykh are not able to compete and can only be admitted to the Russian Championship by decision of the Russian Figure Skating Federation.
In the absence of two representatives of Khrustalny, the women's tournament becomes the domain of Svetlana Sokolovskaya's wards - Alexandra Trusova and Sofia Samodelkina.
Both athletes had a rather large - three weeks - break between the stages, respectively, both should appear before the judges in the form of improved versions of themselves.
The medalist of the Beijing Olympics in the upcoming duel will have a harder time: on the one hand, the skater is in excellent condition and ready to compete, on the other hand, Alexandra is expected to perform her trademark quadruple jumps, while for Samodelkina any improvement in her Sochi result will be considered progress.
In the men's competition, the most solid load of fan hopes lies with Mark Kondratyuk.
At the first of his stages - in Sochi - Mark perfectly performed the short program, but fell from the quadruple salchow in the free program.
Then it was all easy to explain by the fact that the hero of the Olympic team tournament entered the season late and was only gaining momentum.
However, in the course of the Grand Prix series in the men's category, several very good performances happened: Dmitry Aliev and Pyotr Gumennik scored higher points at their stages in Kazan and Moscow.
In Samara, Kondratyuk will have to prove that he still intends to retain the status of the leader of the Russian team.
Moreover, they will have to prove in extremely harsh conditions: the opponents of the European champion are Alexander Samarin, Andrey Mozalev, Gleb Lutfullin and Artur Danielyan.
The result of this confrontation, by the way, may turn out to be completely different from what the fans expect: last Saturday, Kondratyuk performed in the Evgeni Plushenko show and, judging by the jumps, he is still far from his best condition.
In pair skating, the fans are waiting for the second appearance of European champions Alexandra Boikova - Dmitry Kozlovsky.
The Anna Karenina free program of the skaters sounded good at the stage in Sochi (the skaters won this tournament), but there was a lack of purely acting interaction.
The couple's coach Tamara Moskvina noted in this regard that the program at that time was primarily technical.
That is, the main task of the skaters was to concentrate on this particular aspect of skating.
“Now, in three places, we have made seemingly minor changes, but thanks to them, the program is slowly turning into a performance, where both the reference to the well-known plot and the relationship of the characters to each other are clearly traced,” the coach explained in an interview with RT.
Interestingly, in Samara, Alexander and Dmitry will face a face-to-face fight with a younger couple Moskvina - Yasmina Kadyrova - Valery Kolesov.
At the stage in Kazan, the duet became the second after the vice-champions of the Games Evgenia Tarasova - Vladimir Morozov, but in the correspondence dispute lost to Boikova and Kozlovsky a little less than four points in the sum of two programs.
Given the fact that yesterday's juniors have a higher base difficulty of the free program - 60.70 versus 58.84, any mistake by a more titled pair can turn the competition into an extremely tough format.
The dance tournament should be an opportunity for Elizaveta Khudaiberdiyeva - Yegor Bazin to stake out the position of the leaders of the Russian team even more firmly.
At the tournament in Sochi, they received 210.98 points from the judges, which is much higher than the amount scored in Kazan by Elizaveta Shanaeva - Pavel Drozd.
But the main interest of the upcoming tournament is not in the face-to-face competition between the two duets, but first of all in how brighter the leaders will look than the previous ones.
After all, it is they who, in the absence of the first Russian trio of the previous season, will have to drag the entire dance peloton on themselves.