Skaters turned out to be greedy for medals – Newspaper Kommersant No. 197 (7398) of 10/24/2022

The starting stage of the Russian Figure Skating Grand Prix series, which took place last weekend in Moscow, turned out to be extremely rich in surprises. The leader of the men’s team, Mikhail Kolyada, who was considered the favorite of the tournament, gave a nightmarish ride with a scattering of falls and finished outside the top three, and the silver medalists of the Beijing Olympics in sports pairs Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov sensationally lost to yesterday’s juniors. Meanwhile, the most recognizable figure skater Kamila Valieva won the women’s tournament. Having performed a scandalous program on the theme of the Olympic doping drama with a gross mistake, the athlete managed to get ahead of her main rival, Sofya Akatieva, with a gentleman’s set of three ultra-si elements.

The Moscow stage of the Grand Prix, which ended on Sunday, turned into a series of sensations that fired one after another. First, the silver medalists of the Beijing Olympics and two-time European champions in sports pairs Evgenia Tarasova with Vladimir Morozov, against whom a handful of juniors without titles competed at the Megasport ice arena, half of the elements, including ejections and parallel jumps, were made on the minuses and skipped forward no-names Natalia Khabibullina and Ilya Knyazhuka.

Then the long-term leader of the men’s national team did not succeed – it seems that none of the athletes declared for the tournament could pose a threat to him – Mikhail Kolyada. The figure skater, who had already failed in the short program the day before and instead of a quadruple sheepskin coat in the cascade, made only a triple one, in the free program the next day completely crumbled. In it, Kolyada, skating to the famous composition “Tango in a Madhouse” by Alfred Schnittke, portrayed a madman in a straitjacket, but, it seems, got used to the image too much and fell three times – from a quadruple sheepskin coat (he doubled the second quadruple sheepskin coat), a triple rittberger and a double axel in cascade. The skater, who left the ice completely discouraged, could not find an explanation for such a failure. “It happens,” he briefly noted in an interview with reporters.

In the meantime, the European champion Dmitry Aliyev, who also did not do without blots, became the best. It is noteworthy that with mediocre content, he scored only seven points less (273.63) than Ilya Malinin, who won the starting stage of the Skate America foreign series that same weekend (280.37). Only if Aliyev had only three quads and a double loop in his arsenal, then the new superstar of the American team Malinin fired a burst of five quads – the most expensive Axel, sheepskin coat, Salchow and two Lutz.

But the predictions turned out to be correct, promising victory in Moscow for the Olympic champion in the team (she, however, like other members of the national team, still does not have a medal due to a doping scandal) Kamila Valieva. The women’s tournament, which promised to become the highlight of the competitive program, turned into, it seems, the most boring part of it.

The intrigue, which even before the start of the competition was reduced to the confrontation between the two wards of the famous Russian coach Eteri Tutberidze – the Olympic champion in the team of Kamila Valieva and the best junior of recent years Sofya Akatieva, completely dissolved after the first competitive day.

Then 16-year-old Kamila Valieva, with rather simple content by her standards, that is, without a triple axel, managed to get more points from the judges for the short program than she earned with it at the February Olympics in Beijing: 83.92 against 82.16. From the main rival of 15-year-old Sofia Akatieva, who makes her debut at the adult level, Kamila Valieva broke away by almost 12 points.

The situation could change only if two unlikely circumstances coincided on Sunday: in the free program, Akatieva would have given out a powerful series of ultra-si elements, and Valieva, in their absence, would have been grossly mistaken somewhere else.

So, actually, that’s what happened. Sofya Akatieva, who has not lost a single start in the last two seasons and has a reed-like physique, coped with two quadruples and a triple axel. Kamila Valieva, who went on the ice right after her and looked like a completely grown-up, figured girl against the background of her opponent, fell from the only declared quad – a sheepskin coat.

However, Valieva, whom the audience was definitely waiting for more than the others and met with numerous flags and posters with images of the athlete, won, and mainly thanks to the second mark – for presentation and artistry. The program about the Olympic drama that erupted in February, which was subjected to conflicting assessments by experts (especially foreign ones), was rated extremely highly by the arbitrators. The athlete herself likes her very much, as the skater reported in the mixed zone. “I read a lot of hate in my direction and in the direction of the coaches about the program, but the opinion of the fans does not affect in any way. I’m not a flower to please everyone, ”the figure skater snapped.

Ekaterina Remizova