The Russian Championship was held without Trusova: what surprised Akatiev, Valiev and Tuktamysheva

Tangled in time

They performed one after the other. And everyone wanted to win. And everyone wanted to win. We are strong in our affections. Experienced together with Liza Tuktamysheva over the years of her unique career and officially in just one and a half adult seasons with Kamila Valieva are unreal emotions. They say nerve cells don’t regenerate. The ones we’ve lost are of a different sort. Departing from us, they are forever stuck in the sports formula.

Yes, we are strong in affection, but there is also sports justice. The one that the true viewer never gets sick of. She is not concerned with the frantic battles of fan clubs, which protect their own idols with all their might and words even from hints that they are not the best. And this justice made me worry about Sonya Akatieva, Sonya Muravyova, Adelia Petrosyan, Sonya Samodelkina, Nastya Zinina …

Akatieva won, having just entered the adult ice – and only at home tournaments, at the international one, if our skaters had it now, she would not be allowed. And they won’t let go for a long time. (Because Sonya was born on July 7, and according to ISU rules, a 15-year-old who was born after July 7 cannot compete among adults, his exit is only the next year. And there was also a change in the age limit: this season girls starting at 15 years old, the next – from 16, in the 24/25 season – 17. So at the Olympic Games in Milan 2026, seventeen-year-olds will be the youngest.)

Torn in estimates and desires, to whom should I give the first place in Krasnoyarsk, I thought about the time trap for our women’s single skating: does it exist or not?

On the one hand, our singles figure skating hit her. The generation that deafeningly smashed the elders has already grown up, and now it is fighting the younger ones, which should also smash. It seems that they should: learned by the same methods, tempered even more, because they are not the first, they do not fly away into space, which is frightening. Yes, and the word “puberty”, which is harsh and cruel for athletes, is not yet for them, therefore there is no suffering with the transition from one body to another.

True, in fairness, at the Russian Championships in Krasnoyarsk there was none of the famous trio TShKK, even if the figure skaters themselves – Trusova, Shcherbakova and Kostornaya – especially did not like this name that quickly stuck into life. An individual sport, what is already there.

Alena Kostornaya performs in the show after an injury, Anya Shcherbakova also performs there after the operation. But Sasha came to Krasnoyarsk and even practiced, showing both unsuccessful attempts of the quadruple lutz and successful ones – the main weapon for the battle with competitors. But then the coach Svetlana Sokolovskaya also showed, but already a photo with a thermometer – 39.4. With such a temperature on the ice, there is nothing to do. (By the way, the disruption of the free program by Sofya Samodelkina in Krasnoyarsk, Sasha’s classmate, occurred for the same reason – the temperature rose, I even had to return the ticket.) There were no Maya Khromykh and Daria Usacheva, who cannot return to the competitive ice after injuries.

But the pedestal of Krasnoyarsk turned out to be unique. Connection of times in one specific place. Yes, fifteen-year-old Sonya Akatieva won the Russian championship. I lost the free program, but I won in two programs. Wonderful Akatieva: light, graceful, flowing over the ice. Still not so relaxed off the ice, not a laugher, which she was from the very first appearance at press conferences, Kamila Valieva. Sasha Trusova, not restrained in concise comments. Anya Shcherbakova, not striving to convey her thoughts as accurately as possible. But already – the conqueror: both ice and hearts. At the age of 12, she landed a triple axel at the official start. The first at the official start performed an axel and three quadruple jumps. Supersonic is her common name.

But on the podium – and Liza Tuktamysheva. Sonya says about her: “I was born in 2007, and Lisa has already competed at the Russian Championship (the debut took place at the end of 2008 – ed.), This thought shocks me.” And he admits: I want to ride for the same long time.

Liza is a dream come true for many skaters who couldn’t survive the crazy turbulence of women’s singles. They could not live – and in front of everyone, this painful stage of growing up for athletes. When you know where you were just now, how you were capable of great things. And the body, obeying nature, suddenly throws you from the great to the terrible. Going nowhere. Those skaters who did not endure shocking failures, did not learn to get high from performances, keeping in mind – of course, keeping! – this very, whether it is sometimes wrong, the result. Because it is he who, rightly or not, puts it up the stairs.

Steps are not important if there is such a people’s love as Tuktamysheva’s? It is not true. Lisa’s strength is also in this: she does not lie – either to herself or when answering questions. In Krasnoyarsk, she was asked: skaters often say that the main goal is to skate cleanly. “Of course, the place is more important, everyone is cunning,” Lisa herself did not cunning.

In Krasnoyarsk, Lisa impressed with the free program. She was so much herself that jumping seemed to be just an accompanying element. So she said: she wanted to enjoy, trust herself, “not to think so much about what she did, what she didn’t do, to give free rein to the body so that it floats in the program, like in a river.”

And she also clarified: she decided not to risk it, “I hope that next year I will prepare a quadruple.” She didn’t change herself. First, clearly outlined the plans. Secondly, it challenges again. Having brought the axel to perfection in three and a half turns, he does not refuse further complication. And in this case, reference to the age of Elizabeth is required: 26 years.

“If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t skate like this,” Lisa told young Sonya and Kamila (who is only a year older than Akatieva). And she was glad that the difference in the scores of the three medalists was not cosmic: “I already told Camila that this is another victory for me: I came so close, for a long time or even never there was such a small gap.” For comparison: 249.74 (85.59 + 164.15) points for Akatieva; 247.32 (76.61+170.71) – Valieva; 241.72 (82.98 + 158.74) – at Tuktamysheva.

Not in one gate

So is it or not, this time trap, which many have been talking about in recent years: will the champion be replaced by the one who enters the adult ice tomorrow? On a bare fact – in Krasnoyarsk it happened just like that. Does this confirm the “trap” itself?

The time that the baby boom of quadruple jumps and three-and-a-half-revolution axels brought us very quickly accustomed us to how great our modern single skaters perform. A program without ultra-c? Now it is always an opportunity to wrinkle the nose: vigorously (like Veronika Yametova rushing at speed), elegantly (like Ksenia Sinitsyna), and – out of the fight for the podium. (In sports, anything is possible, you can also win locally on the failures of your rivals, but we still take the option of not disrupting ultra-c elements, but their execution.)

Time spoiled, but still did not give an opportunity for global conclusions from the accumulated statistics. There is not enough data, and there are too many millions of emotional stories unfolding before our eyes and affecting careers. Either putting these careers on pause, or bringing them into the category of the former.

Could, for example, Evgenia Medvedeva stay in sports if she didn’t go overseas to Brian Orser? Or do not happen then a pandemic? Would Sasha Trusova make her way easier or not without changing coaches and approaches to work? And so on – questions of doubt can be asked about any of the champion athletes who did not keep themselves in sports. However, here, too, not everything is so simple. There is never naked sport. He is a component of life, and life, as you know, is still the inventor of plots.

But one thing is clear: elements of ultra-si have entered the ice life of our single skaters, regardless of age and coaching group. And now, when, having overcome age-related changes and psychology, those who were among the first to be trained in the cosmic, and those who are already on the paved path, mix, they nevertheless begin to fight with each other. And this fight is not one-sided.

Akatyeva’s lead in points is negligible. It is difficult to say what Sasha Trusova would have shown in Krasnoyarsk, as well as to understand her future path in figure skating in general. And the Beijing events are still not experienced by the participants of the Olympic Games. But Kamila Valieva has definitely returned to wrestling at the highest level. The debutantes of adult ice, who could intervene in the fight for the podium, have not yet been able to do it decisively. But the students of different coaching schools (Sonya Muravyova trains with Evgeni Plushenko, Adelia Petrosyan with Eteri Tutberidze, Sonya Samodelkina with Svetlana Sokolovskaya, Anastasia Zinina with Alexei Vasilevsky), having filled themselves with losing bumps in Krasnoyarsk, will not stop. As well as those athletes who were in the top ten strongest single skaters of the Russian Championship, the level of which the world can only envy.

In the meantime, the statistics are as follows: a figure skater from Khrustalny won the Russian Championship for the eighth time in a row. Evgenia Medvedeva did it in 2016 and 2017, in 2018 Alina Zagitova won, then Anna Shcherbakova did not give up the title three times, last year Kamila Valieva became the champion of Russia.

“Stronger than a year ago”

“Butterfly” on the axel in the short program cost Camila gold, make at least not three, but two turns, it would not be zero points, but scored the very ones that were not enough to win. Or maybe she didn’t allow that double flip instead of the triple one in the free program and a couple of errors. None of the medalists had impeccable performances. But what level are we talking about!

The third championship of Russia Valieva, her big box of wisdom already. “The coaches didn’t focus too much on the mistake in the short program, they laughed more at it. But we will work as always.”

Two quadruple jumps, a magical program that you perceive already without anguish, but with bated breath. I don’t know, maybe I have bad taste, but I absolutely don’t understand when reproaches from the series fly at Valieva’s productions this season: it could have been better, not a fountain, and indeed, everything is a repetition. Let someone else do it.

It doesn’t matter now who was the first to come up with the idea of ​​a free program – to show what happened in Beijing. But now all the disputes: it is necessary – it is not necessary, acceptable – not acceptable, animals or people in the coaching staff, behind. It seems that everyone needed this shock therapy on ice: from Camila to us. And it did work.

There was no hood pulled over Valieva’s face in Krasnoyarsk at the end of the program. And it was – absolutely natural, she just took it with two fingers, showing the audience. Camila took off her hood. That’s what she said: there’s no need for it anymore.

Yes, she is different. She grew up in her soul through the pain experienced, quickly matured, managing not to lose herself, funny and spontaneous, in the stream of biting headlines and accusations. And, it seems, she quickly realized the wisdom of life, which Liza Tuktamysheva formulates over the years on the ice as follows: “The success of longevity in sports is a sleep pattern, a diet, love for yourself, love for your work, and you need to … treat everything a little easier – it’s just a sport.”

After Kamila’s free program, which Krasnoyarsk saw, many people again had eyes in a wet place – from Valieva to coaches: Eteri Tutberidze, Daniil Gleikhengauz. Probably, Sergey Dudakov’s soul also wept (he was not shown in close-up). Camila herself will call it “the remnants of those emotions”, noting that even the place – Krasnoyarsk – reminds me of Beijing. Before the Olympic Games, the team went through acclimatization in Krasnoyarsk. “No, these are not even tears of bitterness. Tears of joy, tears of gratitude, because now I am stronger than I was a year ago.”

… And then there were demonstration performances. And Camila enchantingly became the Wednesday girl from the Addams Family, gothic and black humor, zero emotions on her face. The hand on the side performed a solo and pushed the girl – black bangs, two braids – onto the ice. So Daniil Gleikhengauz had fun. Entering the image, Camila doused everyone with contempt. It was very funny. And she held on. The dance of Wednesday – that girly girl – is the hit of the season.