The Russian Figure Skating Championship starts in Chelyabinsk on December 21

Russian Figure Skating Championships, which starts on Thursday in Chelyabinsk, has special significance for the most talked about Russian athlete today, Kamila Valieva. There, the 17-year-old figure skater will try to regain the title of national champion, which she lost due to a positive doping test. The competition among sports pairs also promises to be rich in intrigue, where for the first time since the beginning of the season two of the strongest duets will meet – Anastasia Mishina with Alexander Gallyamov and Alexandra Boykova with Dmitry Kozlovsky, as well as competitions for men. There are seven people vying for victory at once.

In former times, national championships were considered fundamentally important starts for figure skaters: it was for them that those who later defended the honor of the country at the European, World and Olympic Games were selected. Now the weight of the Russian championship has grown even more – for domestic athletes, this is, without exaggeration, the main start of the season. In fact, the only titles that are at least somehow quoted abroad are played out there. In addition, the results of the Russian Championship – in the event that Russians are suddenly allowed to participate in international tournaments next season with minimal quotas – cannot be ignored when distributing these same quotas.

It is also interesting that in Chelyabinsk, for the first time since the beginning of the season, the main stars of domestic figure skating will collide: at the stages of the Russian Grand Prix series, the leaders were specially separated.

In particular, there will be the first face-to-face meeting of the two strongest sports couples – Beijing Olympic bronze medalists Anastasia Mishina with Alexander Gallyamov and 2020 European champions Alexandra Boykova with Dmitry Kozlovsky.

Several circumstances add interest to this fight. So, until this season, both pairs trained under the guidance of one coach – Tamara Moskvina, who trained a whole galaxy of Olympic champions and world champions. However, at the end of last year, Boykova and Kozlovsky, who appeared in Moskvina’s group earlier and, in fact, together with her grew to titles, made a sensational transition to Eteri Tutberidze, who is just beginning her journey in pair skating.

Another interesting point: although Mishina and Gallyamov have consistently outperformed their sworn rivals at international tournaments in recent years, Boykova and Kozlovsky have more victories at national championships – two, including last year’s, against one. It is possible that in Chelyabinsk Boykova and Kozlovsky, who have increased the technical complexity of their programs since the beginning of the season due to jumping elements and have more innovative performances, will again be able to get ahead of their main competitors.

Another couple is doomed to close attention – Alena Kostornaya, who once shone in singles skating, with her husband Georgy Kunitsa. The athletes have been skating together for less than a year and are not yet aspiring to the podium: they have quite a few weak points – paired elements, such as twist and todes, sag, plus experts talk about a lack of skating. Meanwhile, due to purely executed jumping elements, in which they are ahead of even the mentioned top pairs, Kostornaya and Kunitsa will fight to get into the top five.

Serious intrigue is also swirling in the most unpredictable genre today – men’s single skating.

There is not one or even two bright favorites, and in the list of possible contenders for gold, along with already familiar names, there are many new ones. Among them is the name of the main hero of the Grand Prix series, Vladislav Dikidzhi, who demonstrates incredible stability in the performance of quadruple jumps. He is the only man to win both of his events in the series. Roman Savosin, once considered an outsider of the national team, also made his mark this season with a colorful production to the tunes of Adriano Celentano.

The silver medalist of the 2022 national championship, Petr Gumennik, will also join the race for medals, who achieved an amazing achievement at the Grand Prix stage in Saransk: according to the sum of two programs there, he managed to overcome the mark of 300 points – this is the third result of the season in the world.

The long list of favorites also includes Alexei Mishin’s wards – last season’s Russian champion Evgeny Semenenko with Matvey Vetlugin, as well as several veterans of the national team – Dmitry Aliev, who distinguished himself with the composition “Lube” “And the River Flows”, the most component figure skater Alexander Samarin and the star of the Beijing Olympics Mark Kondratyuk.

A clearer situation emerges in the women’s singles competition, where several leaders did not make it this year.

The current Russian champion Sofia Akatieva is missing the current season due to injury. The most experienced representative of the national team, Elizaveta Tuktamysheva, decided to take a break from her career, as did the silver medalist of the Beijing Olympics, Alexandra Trusova: now among her priorities is participation in the show and recording songs.

In Chelyabinsk, the main fight will traditionally be between two of Eteri Tutberidze’s wards – her next super junior, 16-year-old Adelia Petrosyan, and the most famous Russian athlete today, Kamila Valieva.

According to the results of the Grand Prix series, Petrosyan is the only athlete who, not least due to her anthropometric parameters (the athlete’s height barely reaches 1.5 m), produces quadruple jumps and a triple axel. The matured Kamila Valieva, on the contrary, has recently had difficulties with ultra-si elements: two attempts at quadruple sheepskin coats – not a single one was successful. In general, Valieva has recently had some difficulties with jumping: for example, at the Grand Prix stage in Kazan, she miscalculated, performing an extra sequence, and showed her worst result since 2019, and in Moscow she fell with a triple Lutz.

But, despite the fact that the base cost of Kamila Valieva’s elements is lower, she cannot be written off. The athlete’s main trump cards are high components, loyalty of the judges and two memorable performances. In the short program she performs in a tight red dress to the blues, and in the free program she skates to the soundtrack to the film “Black Panther.”

In addition, for Kamila Valieva this tournament has a very special meaning. The fact is that the European champion and Olympic champion in the team still have not had victories at national championships. In January of this year RUSADA canceled the athlete’s result at the 2021 championship, which was victorious for her, and a year ago she lost to Sofia Akatieva and was left with only silver.

Ekaterina Remizova