A unique case: Semenenko became the champion of Russia in figure skating, although Gumennik did not lose to him

The men's tournament of the national championship turned out to be so powerful in composition that it was just right to consider not one, the final, but two groups of participants as the “strongest”.

If we take out the record amount of Petr Gumennik, with which he took the lead after the performance of the short program, the next eight athletes are in the range of 8.3 points.

That is, each of them had a real chance to climb the podium.

It remained to wait for the final and see who will dispose of it most effectively.

According to the results of the performances of the top five of the competition, Ivan Popov led the competition, pushing the bronze medalist of the European Championship 2020 Artur Danielyan to a lower position: Evgeny Rukavitsyn's ward did an excellent job with the quadruple salchow, but fell on the triple, which was the second jump in the cascade with a triple flip.

The first warm-up turned out to be rich in errors.

Roman Atoyar fell three times, Andrey Anisimov fell twice.

Four "butterflies" managed to make Vladislav Katichev.

If Popov had not doubled the first lutz, which according to the scenario was supposed to be a quadruple, he could well have imposed a fight on many of those who skated later.

But the jump let the skater down too much.

Gleb Lutfullin was the first to make a serious bid for a high result.

Alexei Mishin's ward almost coped with four jumps in four turns (rittberger, sheepskin coat and two salchows in the second part of the program), but only sheepskin coats and salchows in a combination with a triple loop were performed on the pluses.

The rest of the landings let us down.

Plus, Gleb lost a turn on the second jump in the triple axel combination.

The skater got ahead of Popov, but that was all: Dmitry Aliev, who followed, with a single mistake at the box office (a butterfly instead of one of the two triple axels after three magnificent quadruples in a row), took the lead with an advantage of more than 20 points.

At any tournament there are athletes for whom everyone is rooting.

In figure skating, this is, of course, Aliyev.

Dmitry was recovering for a long time and rather painfully after an injury to the calf muscle, which happened in the summer of 2021, then, already this September, he was injured again, although less seriously, and, perhaps, only by December he truly found himself.

“All Russian athletes knew that this was the main start.

Maybe I didn't get enough sleep or was nervous.

But I’m taking away the feeling from this tournament that I can fight, that the Dimka Aliyev who wants to skate and wrestle is reborn, that I have the spirit of struggle, ”the ex-European champion admitted in the mixed zone.

Most athletes arrived in Krasnoyarsk on Monday, and on Friday fell the very notorious day when the body reacts especially sharply to the change of time zones.

Ilya Yablokov canceled his program (two falls, two stepouts and a butterfly on a flip), then Makar Ignatov rushed after Aliev: with a quadruple loop of breathtaking quality, he twice broke the jumps.

Following the results of two warm-ups, the students of Evgeny Rukavitsyn took the lead.

Coach Denis Samokhin, whose dancers Liza Khudaiberdieva and Yegor Bazin became champions, noted in an interview that one of the most difficult challenges for an athlete is to become the first number in the country.

It was with this that the specialist partly explained why this season Khudaiberdiev was storming to such an extent at the competitions.

Trying on the burden of the best is really not easy, and this applies to everyone without exception.

Interest in the final part of the tournament was due to this, too.

In the course of the Russian Grand Prix, it seemed that Evgeny Semenenko would become the leader of the season: his superiority over his rivals at the final stage in Perm was too obvious to put anyone next to him.

But the performance in the short program of Gumennik overturned all the alignments.

Not to say, however, that the skater got hold of a solid advantage.

Thanks to the first rental, he won 5.32 points from Semenenko, but, firstly, this is not the amount that allows anyone to feel safe, and, secondly, to be in the role of an evader without having the appropriate experience , unlike more difficult than catching up.

Even if there are four quadruple jumps against three in the arsenal - Evgeny.

In a word, pure psychology has gone to the male field.

The Rukavitsinsky tandem was shaken by Artyom Kovalev, who opened the strongest warm-up.

He became the second behind Aliev and the first to show a clean performance, although with a caveat - a double butterfly instead of the second of the three declared quadruples.

And then the leader changed in the tournament.

Figuratively speaking, Alexander Samarin had to take the rap for the entire group of Svetlana Sokolovskaya, bled white by the filming of Mark Kondratyuk and Alexandra Trusova.

The performance was still perceived as a minimum program: out of the two declared quadruple lutzes, the athlete completed one, and the program with such a limited set of ultra-c is perceived by the present times not quite complete, regardless of the quality of the performance.

But globally, Sasha coped with the task - he actually secured a place in the top three.

Semenenko became the first who almost perfectly coped with all jumps, including three quadruple and two triple axels in cascades.

His K-pop-style free program has received all sorts of compliments before, but it's one thing to have a choreographic production, and quite another when there is not a single technical flaw in this production.

For technique Evgeniy received 101.98 balaa, that is, he showed no less grandmaster result than Gumennik in the short program, and made the task of Veronika Daineko's ward as difficult as possible.

During the years of the legendary confrontation between Alexei Yagudin and Evgeni Plushenko, as a result of which the first of the skaters was forced to leave his mentor, Alexei Mishin uttered the classic phrase: “It’s not easy to withstand the temperature of my group.”

The temperature of the strongest warm-up is the same story.

Sometimes it incinerates, deprives of strength.

But when all this was discussed in anticipation of the release of Gumennik, it could not even have occurred to anyone that in the end two skaters would score exactly the same amount and only the championship in the free program would lead Evgeny to the champions, and push Peter to the second step.

Could he win?

Undoubtedly.

Decisive (and, alas, not in favor of Gumennik) were errors in two jumps.

Not too significant, but bit off a solid piece of the total.

Therefore, in fact, there was no resentment.

Neither those who rode, nor those who looked at it from the outside.