Alexandra Trusova embarked on a slippery slope – Sport – Kommersant

The fifth, penultimate stage of the Grand Prix in figure skating in Samara turned out to be perhaps the strangest since the launch of the Russian series. The winners of the dance tournament were Elizaveta Khudaiberdieva and Yegor Bazin, who gave the worst performance – with two falls – in their entire career. One of the favorites of the men’s competition, Andrey Mozalev, who scored under a hundred points in the short program, had problems with his shoelace after the first jump, which forced the athlete to interrupt the performance and tie it again. And immediately after the end of the rental of one of the main stars of the women’s team, Alexandra Trusova, who fell from the quadruple lutz and was again left without gold, her fan ran onto the ice.

The next stage of the Grand Prix in Samara, which became the fifth of six in the series, turned out to be the weakest, both in terms of composition and in terms of results. He, in addition, turned out to be associated with a huge number of various oddities.

So, the victory in ice dancing went to Elizaveta Khudaiberdiyeva and Yegor Bazin (210.42 points), who skated just badly. In the free program, the partner managed to collapse on the ice as many as twice, although in the dance genre, in which you do not need to perform jumps or throws, falls are extremely rare, and if they do, then athletes of the second or third echelons.

While Bazin, after the first misfire, twisted and carried to the board, his partner stopped and watched in bewilderment what was happening.

Having skipped a good part of the steps, they seemed to continue the dance, but soon the skater again plopped right on the buttocks. Yegor Bazin could not find an explanation for what happened. He only called what happened “complete nonsense” and apologized “for the bad rental.”

It is noteworthy that for the program that turned into a complete disaster, Elizaveta Khudaiberdieva and Yegor Bazin received a higher score than for a cleanly performed one year ago at the Russian Championship in Chelyabinsk: 119.68 points against 117.84.

The women’s tournament was also rich in surprises, ending with the victory of Sofia Samodelkina (217.87). A student of Svetlana Sokolovskaya, who joined her group this spring, pulled off a quadruple salchow and fell on the second jump in a combination of a triple lutz with a triple sheepskin coat, but still, like at the October stage in Sochi, she jumped over the silver medalist of the Beijing Olympics Alexander Trusova (213 .80). For comparison: the winner of the first and fourth, Moscow and Kazan, stages Kamila Valieva scored 244.66 and 241.72 points respectively, the champion of the second stage in Sochi Adelia Petrosyan – 239.31, the leader of the fourth stage in Moscow Elizaveta Tuktamysheva – 234.63.

In Samara, 18-year-old Trusova, who, against the background of growing up, is entering the current season quite hard, did not have a short program: she received zero points for the simplest jump element – a double axel, which turned out to be a single one.

And in the free program, the athlete, who had mastered all types of quadruple jumps six months ago, fell from the only declared lutz and with great difficulty, at a rather low speed, reached or, more precisely, endured until the end of the program.

The most notable episode happened, meanwhile, not during the rental of Alexandra Trusova, but after it. A fan with a black hood on his head and a bouquet of red roses in his hands jumped out onto the ice to the skater, who was bowing to the audience. Alexandra Trusova, shocked by such a combination of circumstances, accepted the gift and hurried to leave the ice. The fan, as it was later established, was detained, and it was decided – for some reason only after the incident – to place security officers around the perimeter of the rink.

Another incident occurred already during the competitions of men-singlers, who closed the stage. One of the main favorites, Andrey Mozalev, who took silver in Kazan, made two quadruple jumps on Saturday and scored about a hundred points in the short program – an extremely solid result. It seemed that here, in Samara, he would claim victory, but on Sunday, trouble happened to Mozalev. His skates let him down: after landing from the first jump, a quadruple salchow, the athlete’s lace jumped off the hook. Andrey Mozalev explained the situation to the judging team, and then drove up to the side and began to tie it up. For a break in skating, the skater automatically received a fine – minus five points.

After that, the music was turned on again, but then the athlete, who had lost his mood, who was supported by the audience with loud applause, made a couple more mistakes – he fell off the quadruple sheepskin coat, crookedly left the axel.

As a result, Mozalev (258.80) was only third. Meanwhile, Gleb Luftullin won the stage, having made six elements of the ultra-c class at the box office: four quads and two three-turn axels (273.56).

Ekaterina Remizova