Stability of favorites: Semenenko beat Kondratyuk, and Stepanova and Bukin confidently won the Spartakiad of the Strongest

The fight between Semenenko and Kondratyuk

The men approached the Spartakiad of the Strongest with different goals and moods. Thus, Dmitry Aliev, who unsuccessfully skated his short program, announced the day before that he had no mood for internal competitions, for which he received a decent amount of criticism from specialists, starting with coaches Tatyana Tarasova and Alexander Zhulin and ending with RT columnist Elena Vaitsekhovskaya. Perhaps this somehow spurred the skater on. His free composition turned out great, and as a result, the athlete rose from eighth place to fourth.

Andrey Mozalev went to the first competitions after moving to Eteri Tutberidze. A miracle did not happen during the month of working with the new coaching staff. On Saturday he fell from the quad salchow, made a mistake on the trixel and was only sixth.

“This result will be the starting point from which we plan to build. What did the coaches say after the skate? Some comments, mistakes, they said: we will work,” the skater quotes the words of the “Championship”.

Matvey Vetlugin, it seemed, was on his way to Magnitogorsk, already looking ahead to the next season. The skater started the year performing a quadruple sheepskin coat, and at the Spartakiad he tried the quad Lutz. In the short, the ultra-c element was under-rotated, and in the free, he failed even once, although the skater tried to jump it twice. As a result, Alexei Mishin’s student took only 10th place.

Alexander Samarin, on the contrary, is no longer thinking about the next season. The athlete performed at the Spartakiad with thoughts of ending his sports career. 

“Feelings are mixed. But I understand that's all. He gave out everything he could squeeze out. Last season was generally excellent, I was able to take a medal at the Czech Republic, look how competitive we are, all the guys who are competing now were no weaker a year ago. But then, apparently, I gave out everything I could and gave away the last,” admitted Samarin.

Finally, Mark Kondratyuk arrived at the competition with the right attitude. Throughout the season, the skater could not perform consistently in both programs, making very offensive mistakes. However, in Magnitogorsk, fans finally saw the same athlete who fought for a medal in the team tournament at the Games in Beijing.

The student of Svetlana Sokolovskaya perfectly performed all the elements of his bright composition, which included four quads and two triple axels, and scored 199.37 points. With this result, he beat all his opponents except Evgeniy Semenenko.

Mishin's student was inferior to his opponent in technique, having done one quadruple less, but was quite a bit ahead of Mark in the components. The current champion of Russia performed better in the short program, so it was he who won gold again. However, Kondratyuk was pleased with the silver. According to the skater, in recent days everything has finally started to work out for him in training. 

“All that remained was to cope with emotions and nerves. It seems that it almost happened. What did you shout after the skate? Thank you. Thanks to the coaches, myself, the judges, the spectators, all the people involved in this. I really wanted to skate this program well, with four quads. Once I succeeded, but I fell off the path there.

Today I didn’t manage to do a cascade, but at least without falling. When I drove along the path, I was very careful not to repeat history. I’m very glad that I practically managed to assemble what I wanted,” Mark noted.

Vladislav Dikidzhi won the bronze medal. This time he didn’t succeed in his first quadruple, but the skater pulled himself together and continued working with only one blot on the trixel. At the end of the performance, the young athlete was clearly upset by the performance and did not please the audience with his winning dance. In the free program, he eventually lost, in addition to Kondratyuk and Semenenko, to Aliyev. But in terms of total points, he still surpassed the student Evgeniy Rukavitsyn.

Once again Roman Savosin failed to get on the podium. After the first day of the Spartakiad, he was in third place, but on Saturday, due to a butterfly, the skater lost his cascade, and then there was a mistake in the quad Salchow. All this dropped the athlete to fifth place.

“I’m glad that the tournament is over, because there were a lot of difficulties in preparation, even here I twisted my ankle in training. I’m glad to perform, I coped with some moments, but, unfortunately, not to the end. There are few emotions yet, I’m upset that I didn’t do the cascade. The preparation turned out to be crumpled, I rested too much. Initially, there were doubts that I would be able to perform here at all,” Savosin said.

No surprises in dancing

In ice dancing, Alexandra Stepanova and Ivan Bukin expectedly won. The students of Alexander Zhulin again skated their free program to music from the film “Passengers” very well and received a total of 222.53 points from the judges for two performances. 

At the same time, according to her partner, she managed to perform very emotionally in Magnitogorsk and had fun on the ice. 

“It seems to me that at previous starts it was not possible to do this. We always try to skate with feeling, because we have a certain story, we know where to give what emotion to the viewer. Today she went straight through me,” Championship quoted Stepanova as saying.

However, if we compare the duo’s results with the scores of their opponents at international tournaments, then even taking into account home judging, Alexandra and Ivan would only fight for fourth place with the Americans Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue. And 2023 world champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates receive 10 points more from the referee, which is a huge gap for ice dancing.

Bukin and Stepanova understand this very well. As the partner noted, the next season will be experimental for them.

“We are happy about the grades, but we have other thoughts in our heads - we want to work, develop and try. We want to do something that we haven't done before. And we’ll find out very soon what will come of it,” the skater promised.

Elizaveta Khudaiberdieva and Yegor Bazin, who took second place at the Spartakiad, are quite far behind the leaders. In Magnitogorsk they scored 11 points less. At the same time, according to the partner, this season they were undergoing a restructuring, and in the future they will try to force a fight on Sasha and Vanya.

“An athlete’s goal in itself is to always be the best. This year it was necessary to restore stability and quality skating. We coped with this, maintained the level of last season, except for Stepanova and Bukin, no one overtook us,” Bazin noted.

The top three were completed by Irina Khavronina and David Narizhny, who were only slightly behind Egor and Lisa. Young Sofia Leontyeva and Daniil Gorelkin also skated well again. The skaters remained fourth, but for the first time this season they overcame the 200 point mark in two programs.

Trixel Petrosyan

In the absence of Sofia Muravyova, Adelia Petrosyan became the main favorite of the Spartakiad in the girls' competition. And the Russian champion in the short program made a serious bid for victory. She jumped a triple axel, and also received an additional bonus for performing a cascade in the second part of the rental. As a result, the judges rated her performance at 86.29 points.

“I’m glad I did the trixel, because I wasn’t entirely sure about it, but I was psyching myself up. The audience made me very happy, I saw golden letters with my name, toys that were thrown at me, they handed me a large bouquet - I was all very pleased. Thank you very much to the fans!” said Petrosyan. 

None of the competitors decided to try the trixel again. So student Eteri Tutberidze was ahead of second place Anna Frolova by almost 10 points. Next, with a slight lag from each other, were Ksenia Sinitsyna and Alina Gorbacheva, who also performed their free programs cleanly.

“What emotions? Only positive things, I think this is my best performance of the season. I tried to do every element efficiently, to invest in every rotation and position. I worked on my jumps and raised my height. Glad how it went. Number one in the draw? I started the draw with a bright performance; it doesn’t matter to me which one I skate. I would be happy with any number,” Sinitsyna explained.

And Veronika Yametova closed the top five. This time she was unable to avoid a small mistake by under-rotating one of the jumps in the cascade. However, the athlete herself was pleased with the performance.

“It seems to me that I gave it my all and did everything in the best possible way, but the judges know better, they can point out a flaw. But I'm happy with my performance. Do many people think my program is bright? They pay more attention to my splits in the step sequence; this is probably the most striking element in my program,” Yametova emphasized.

Daria Sadkova, who finished in the top 6, was unable to cope with her program. At the same time, she explained the fall on the triple flip due to strong excitement.

“I haven’t been so worried before a short program at a competition for a long time, I can’t even fully understand what this is connected with. I remember that before the Junior Grand Prix final about a year ago, I was also very worried, everything was falling out of my hands, I didn’t have time to do anything, I thought that the short program would also fail,” the athlete admitted.