Butterfly effect: Valieva flunked the trixel and lost to Akatieva, Tuktamysheva and Muravyova in the short program

Not even 20 minutes have passed since the start of the women's short program, and the audience has already experienced the first shock: Kamila Valieva made a butterfly instead of a triple axel.

This can happen, as they say, with everyone, but with regard to prima, it didn’t fit in my head: butterflies are definitely not the lot of the Eteri Tutberidze group as a whole and its strongest representative in particular.

Much has already been said about the fact that this season is hard for Valieva like no one else, and it’s really hard to argue here.

But there is another, albeit cruel-sounding, truth: if it weren’t for the Olympic tragedy, which frayed the skater’s nerves and left her without a personal medal, most likely, we would not have seen any Camila at the competitions.

The incident, as it were, nullified a career, forced me to start everything from scratch with the same, if not greater motivation.

But the trixel was thwarted.

If we were talking about any other skater, the program without a key element would automatically mean falling down the standings.

But the airbag worked in the form of a second assessment: Camila scored quite competitive 76.61 points.

The loss was still significant.

Sofia Akatieva with the same set of triple jumps (axel, flip and lutz-toe loop combination in the second half of the program) outperformed Valieva by 8.98, and showed a triplex of such quality that you don’t always see even in men.

It was a kind of application to be in front of a free program not lower, but at least on a par with Adelia Petrosyan: this figure skater made a splash at the very first of her stages of the Russian Grand Prix in Sochi, where she won with a score of 239.31, surprising phenomenal complexity of the free program.

But in Krasnoyarsk, Petrosyan, like Valieva, was left without a jump - she fell from a triple lutz.

She surpassed Kamila in technique, but the second assessment reduced this advantage to zero.

Sofya Samodelkina, who has the most difficult short program thanks to the same axel and lutz cascade with a rittberger, could also take advantage of the mistake of the European champion, but the ideal performance of all jump elements was not achieved.

In the axel, the ward of Svetlana Sokolovskaya, according to her, flew too high and reinsured herself on landing - it turned out to be a step-out.

The second mistake was in the cascade: the rittberger came out double.

In the mixed zone, Sophia tried to laugh it off: “I don’t understand how you can cope with a cascade in an arbitrary one, but not cope with a short one!”

After Alexandra Trusova withdrew from the tournament, her temperature jumped to 39.4 ° C and the flu was diagnosed, there were by and large only two contenders to break into the top three - Elizaveta Tuktamysheva and Sofia Muravyova.

The rest of the skaters still have not yet managed to rise to the level where the struggle for awards is being fought.

However, the chances of the ex-world champion also did not look too preferable.

In relation to Lisa, the truth is always remembered that figure skating consists not only of jumps.

In terms of non-jumping elements, both Petrosyan and Akatieva objectively looked stronger.

As well as Valiyeva.

But here's the paradox: Tuktamysheva's program was staged in such a way that Liza looked absolutely organic in it, with winning positions in spins and a very powerful step sequence.

As a result, the outstanding score is 82.98.

But Camila's program would ideally suit Valieva-junior, but not an adult, a fairly large and powerful girl.

The abundance of small movements ate up the amplitude, and if any other figure skater were in Valieva's place ... However, this has already been said.

Only Muravyova could objectively push Kamila, as well as Tuktamysheva and Akatieva, having crossed the grandmaster mark.

But she was not too lucky with the draw: Sonya completed the skates in a group of six athletes, that is, on an order of tormented ice, and even without this, the last starting number is a difficult test.

It is no coincidence that the same Tuktamysheva said in the mixed zone that the second result completely suits her.

Just because it gets rid of the last starting number in the free program.

But Muravyova managed the main thing - to create a reserve in front of Valieva (and at the same time in front of Adelia Petrosyan, Ksenia Sinitsyna, Veronika Yametova and Sofya Samodelkina, who were breathing in her back) and not give in a lot to the leaders.

Samodelkina fell absurdly insultingly at the end of the steps, which on smooth ice she would have done with her eyes closed ten times out of ten.

Otherwise, she looked close to the definition of "excellent", and if she performs all her jumps in a free program with the same quality, she will be able to get ahead of any of her rivals.

Yes, and with the starting number in the final, everything went well: in the strongest warm-up, in front of the two leaders (that is, without being nervous about their scores) and at the same time not the last.