In one of the short stories of the famous American writer O. Henry there is a joking phrase: “Just one glance at the hairstyle and neat white blouse of Miss Bates was equal to the full course of correspondence education in any subject.”

Something similar can safely be said about the finals of the Russian Grand Prix starting on Saturday in St. Petersburg.

This is the first tournament after the national championship, where all the best that domestic figure skating has today will be presented.

In other words, do you want to get a higher figure skating education?

That way!

It is symbolic that such non-trivial competitions will be held in the city, whose fans, perhaps, like no other, are able to appreciate figure skating as a sport.

In this regard, the initial distribution of the Grand Prix finals to the Sochi Iceberg looked absolutely ridiculous (not to say absurd) and extremely disrespectful towards athletes and coaches: in the nine years that have passed since the Games in Sochi, the once legendary Olympic Palace never gathered a full house at a sporting event.

And this is quite a sufficient argument not to give significant tournaments to the city at all in the near future.

In anticipation of the start in St. Petersburg, more was said about the losses.

Due to injuries and the resulting unavailability (this is the official version), Alexandra Trusova, Ksenia Sinitsyna, Anastasia Zinina, Mikhail Kolyada, Gleb Lutfullin, Ilya Yablokov, as well as the dance duet Elizaveta Khudaiberdieva - Yegor Bazin, refused to perform.

But the paradox is that the absence of all these skaters in the Grand Prix finals is a loss for themselves rather than for the competition.

It is enough to look at the lists of participants to understand: even without them, competition in all four types of the program will be extremely high.

There is no obvious leader in any of the disciplines, and this guarantees the most twisted intrigue from the first to the last performance.

Another thing is that this season, unusual in format, seems to have shifted the priorities in the minds of both some athletes and their coaches.

If officially the strongest dance duo of the country refuses an important start with the wording “not originally planned”, but at the same time confirms their intention to perform in the show programs tournament in mid-March, then this is the beginning of a road to nowhere, and from all points of view.

The same can be said about the two newsmakers of figure skating, Alexander Trusova and Mikhail Kolyada, who, in principle, have chosen a show format for themselves this season.

The situation when a company of equally strong athletes does not have a pronounced leader is good because the environment itself sooner or later pushes one person to the top - brighter, more tenacious, more motivated, more stress-resistant.

Men's single skating is now going through just such a period: during the season, Dmitry Aliev, Pyotr Gumennik, Evgeny Semenenko, Andrey Mozalev and even Makar Ignatov were presented as potential leaders in turn.

But in fact, almost every participant in the final is capable of becoming a winner in the men's confrontation at the final purely sports tournament of the season.

A similar picture is observed in girls.

Over the past year and a half, we have become accustomed to perceiving Kamila Valieva as an unambiguous and, in fact, unconditional favorite.

But now the picture has changed.

It's not even that the threat of disqualification and the loss of two adult titles continues to hang over the skater - the crown of the European champion and Olympic team gold.

From the point of view of sports form, one can only respectfully curtsy in front of the skater: in the year that has passed since the Beijing Games and filled with extremely tragic events, Camila has not gained weight, has not lost her ultra-si, has not lost her taste for competition.

But the effect of novelty in the perception of Camila on the ice, of course, is gone.

She can’t be called a clear leader either: she lost the Russian championship to the figure skater of her own coaching staff Sofya Akatieva, and in terms of the complexity of the two programs, Adelia Petrosyan noticeably surpasses both athletes.

At the same time, on the eve of the Grand Prix finals, the figure skating public is discussing not so much the Khrustalny trio as the 15-year-old national champion among juniors Alina Gorbacheva, to whom, at the suggestion of Tatyana Tarasova, the nickname Fierce Beast managed to stick (it was with these words that the venerable coach described Gorbacheva’s ability to compete ).

Interestingly, the figure skater's coach Sofia Fedchenko is attracting no less attention now.

At 27, she seems to be repeating the path that Eteri Tutberidze walked with junior Yulia Lipnitskaya more than ten years ago.

For both mentors, their insanely talented wards have become a kind of pass to the high society of the profession, but Fedchenko, it seems, is starting to work on a different level - taking into account other people's experience and other people's mistakes.

Pair skating this season is the most desperate ultra-si (even if shown not in the Grand Prix, but in a jumping tournament) and the toughest battle for the championship: of those who will compete in St. Petersburg in this category, it was easy to to make up the two strongest warm-ups of any world championship - and they would really be the strongest.

It would be wrong to say that the top three Russian sports duets - Alexandra Boykova and Dmitry Kozlovsky, Anastasia Mishina and Alexander Gallyamov, Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov - are one league, and all the rest are another.

Firstly, there is simply no striking difference in complexity and class in the top six Russian couples.

And secondly, something else is obvious: some performances by those who have not yet gained sufficient experience and titles turned out to be brighter and more interesting than those of the recognized strongest.

This is probably logical: when you are objectively not yet able to win, you need to make every effort to at least attract attention and be remembered.

Here are young couples trying to succeed in this, and therefore you should not be surprised if one of them surprises.

A similar approach to ice dancing is even more relevant.

The famous Canadians Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz began to be actively talked about not in 1996, when the couple first climbed the podium at the home world championship, but two years earlier - thanks to an unusually memorable free dance in Lillehammer, where the duo became only tenth.

It was there that Tarasova, looking at the newcomers, uttered an almost prophetic phrase: “I give a ruble for a hundred that future Olympic champions are skating!”

The Canadians did not manage to become the first at the Games, but they still won the world title - in 2003.

Tatyana Navka and Roman Kostomarov in the same way took their first step towards the Turin gold Olympic podium not in 2004, having won the World Championships for the first time, but two years earlier, at the Salt Lake City Games with the most luxurious and already classic dance under Michael Jackson.

But we're down to earth.

In the absence of Khudaiberdiyeva - Bazin, the debutants of the adult season Vasilisa Kaganovskaya and Valery Angelopol go to the favorites of the St. partner’s illness, the main start of the season) should take place in St. Petersburg.

The only drawback of the Grand Prix finals can be considered perhaps the absence of demonstration performances in the program.

But there is no doubt: they are more than compensated by two days of truly exciting and very compact competitions.