Surprises of single skaters: Kondratyuk’s back let him down, Mozalev’s shoelaces ruined

The fifth stage of the Russian Grand Prix in figure skating in Samara officially brought Gleb Lutfullin to the top of our men’s figure skating. The competitors were eminent: Mark Kondratyuk, Alexander Samarin, Andrey Mozalev. Gleb defeated everyone, for the first time performing four jumps in four turns in one free program. He called the ice in Samara convenient.

And even at the moment when nothing prevents you from rejoicing at the victory – and even over such rivals as Kondratyuk and Samarin, Gleb Lutfullin, who won first place, considers it necessary to recall the shortcomings. He says: he showed in Samara “more or less” a clean skating of a free program, but, for example, rotations need to be tightened up. Although the jumping part was a success – I’m happy for it. He was also surprised: at the fifth stage of the Russian Grand Prix, he had his first start not only with the execution of four jumps in four turns, but also without fatigue.

And the winner did a quad loop, a sheepskin coat, a triple axel – a double sheepskin coat, a triple axel, a quadruple salchow – a double sheepskin coat, a quadruple salchow … Then again I remembered coach Alexei Mishin. He said that he praised after the short program. And he outlined an action plan: “we will work further, become even better.”

Alexander Samarin showed the performance of a quadruple lutz – a triple sheepskin coat, a quadruple lutz with an error on landing, a triple axel … And after the performance he threw a topic for reflection into the masses: someone says that he skates for the sake of clean skates? “Liars”.

And he also admitted that he was not very tired, he was not worried, somehow everything was calm. But there is a problem – this is the second half of the program, and “it’s not that“ physics ”, just training is one thing, but skating an arbitrary at competitions is another. “In training, not a drop of sweat can come out of you, but at the start there is adrenaline that will squeeze you out.”

Andrey Mozalev was let down in Samara by shoelaces. But, in his own words, he was 100 percent ready in Samara. The rental was stopped, then continued, the result – the fourth place. He fell while performing a quad salchow, made a quad toe loop – a triple toe loop, fell from a quad toe loop, backed off the triple axel with his hand on the ice … The lace cost Andrei five points for interrupting the performance and he received two more points for falling.

After the free program, he explained: the lace flew off the hook on the boot, it was necessary to stop to tie it. It was, according to him, a shame, because the salchow performed perfectly, but as a result he fell. The rest of the mistakes after the pause were due to the fact that I was in a hurry when I was tying my shoelaces, I felt that the leg was “falling through”. He said that he had stopped wrapping shoelaces with tape to prevent such situations two years ago, but, apparently, he was wrong. I admitted it was a mistake, “I will be more attentive to the Russian Championship, I will wrap it with tape again.”

Mark Kondratyuk this evening in Samara fell from a quadruple lutz, performed a quadruple sheepskin coat with problems, and everything else was difficult. The program was very difficult, it seemed that the skater was covered with severe fatigue. It wasn’t Mark’s day at all.

After the speech, Kondratyuk said that he was glad that he was able to do almost the maximum “of the opportunities that he had.” It turns out that there are problems with the back, which, apparently, have worsened. Before the free program, he did not do jumps in training, he did not try quads during the warm-up. “I thought if I jump them before the rental, I won’t be able to do it during the free program.”

The skater said that on the day of the free program he tried to do everything he could to alleviate the situation: massage, freezing the back. “The problem has been dragging on since morning, I hope it’s nothing serious, but there haven’t been such exacerbations yet.”