Kamila Valieva beat Sofia Muravyova and secured her place in the final of the Grand Prix Figure Skating Series

The women’s tournament at the sixth stage of the Russian Grand Prix in Moscow resulted in the first victory since the beginning of the season for the most talked about domestic figure skater Kamila Valieva. The athlete, who failed at the Kazan stage two weeks ago and sensationally left without a podium there, again suffered as many as two falls and gave a frankly weak performance. But the points Valieva scored were enough to bypass her main rival – the completely unstuck Sofia Muravyova – and secure a place in the finals of the series. Eteri Tutberidze’s students, Alexandra Boykova and Dmitry Kozlovsky, who recently joined her group, also won the doubles category.

Based on the results of the sixth stage of the Figure Skating Grand Prix series, which, under the conditions of sanctions that have not yet been lifted, is the main tournament for Russians, its finalists were determined. Their number included the most famous – not least thanks to the high-profile doping case – Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva.

For her, this stage turned out to be her first serious victory since the beginning of the season. Before this, Kamila Valieva appeared on the ice twice – at the September test skates and at the fourth stage of the Russian Grand Prix series in Kazan. But the control stages are not considered official starts and are not evaluated by judges, and the Grand Prix stage completely ended in outright failure for the athlete. She lost points with a series of falls and an extra sequence of jumps, leaving her outside the top three for the first time since the 2022 Beijing Olympics.

At the Moscow stage, 17-year-old Kamila Valieva, still going through the period of growing up and getting used to her new body, again showed a rather weak skating by her standards. In the free program, the athlete, dressed as a black panther, fell twice. At the very beginning of the program, she could not stand on her feet after a quadruple sheepskin coat, and in the final she did not have the strength left for another jump – a triple lutz. The skater herself, coming off the ice, admitted that the skate was by no means “good.” The traditionally high second score for components, which Valieva is really good at, and the mistakes of her opponents played into the hands of Eteri Tutberidze’s ward. Thus, Valieva’s main competitor, Sofya Muravyova from Evgeni Plushenko’s group, who was ahead of Valieva in Kazan, this time also did not do without several falls.

However, it is too early to talk about Kamila Valieva’s comeback. Although now Russian women’s single skating, which in recent years has been replete with quad skaters, is experiencing a certain decline, she will have enough competitors at the Russian Championship and in the Grand Prix final. Thus, Valieva will have to meet with the leader of the season Adelia Petrosyan, junior Daria Sadkova, as well as Alina Gorbacheva, who performs the quadruple sheepskin coat.

The Moscow stage was also victorious for other students of Eteri Tutberidze – the pair of Alexandra Boykova and Dmitry Kozlovsky. The current champions of Russia, in the absence of their main competitors – Anastasia Mishina and Alexander Gallyamov – produced two magnificent skates, the impression of which was not blurred even by a minor blemish on the release in the free skate.

However, if Boykova and Kozlovsky getting into the finals was an expected event, then the entry of the duet of the best singles skater of the last decade, Alena Kostornaya, who changed discipline, with her husband Georgy Kunitsa, became a real sensation. The skaters made their debut only this season, but after six months of training they managed to become strong average athletes. True, not due to paired elements – for twisting and todes, for example, athletes received extremely low levels in Moscow – but thanks to jumping skill. Thus, Kostornaya and Kunitsa managed to cleanly perform the most expensive parallel flip in a combination and lutz – this is the most difficult jumping content among pairs at the tournament. This, of course, is not yet enough to compete with the leaders of the genre (the athletes finished only in fifth place), but it turned out to be enough to reach the finals.

Ekaterina Remizova