Trusova and Shcherbakova appeared in the reserve of the Russian national team: are the fans happy

Women’s single, as always, was in the forefront. Sofia Akatieva, Kamila Valieva, Anastasia Zinina, Sofia Muravieva, Adelia Petrosyan, Elizaveta Tuktamysheva – this list of team members, of course, is far from what the fan wants to see. (Junior girls: Alina Gorbacheva, Maria Gordeeva, Veronika Zhilina, Nadezhda Ponteleenko, Lyubov Rubtsova, Sofya Titova.) One would like to say with our wealth of talents: how small!

But they compiled it based on the results of the Russian Championship-2023: the top six. (As in other sports. However, for example, the dancers Vasilisa Kaganovskaya and Valery Angelopol, who missed the national championship due to the illness of their partner, still got the victory in the final of the Russian Cup. And the duet entered the main team instead of Alexandra Prokopets and Alexandra, who took sixth place Vaskovich.)

There are few named names for fans, but the official team is not rubber, even in such a troubled time when the team is a very relative concept. True, something else is not at all conditional: the financing of athletes. That is, for starters, the same rates of the Center for Sports Training of National Teams, around which passions have recently flared up with verbal shooting in biathlon. And money for fees, costumes and all sorts of expenses that the ice actively eats up in the name of the result. There are no trifles in sports, and even more so in figure skating, which borders on art.

Anna Shcherbakova did not perform at all last season. There was nothing to count on here, and there was nothing to worry about either. Still, the Olympic champion, not offended by the sponsors, will be able to find the means to return, if anything, even without the CSP rate.

Not included in the national team and Alexander Trusov. No, at first she tried to compete in the season. Not to say that it was tearing the veins directly, but after such Olympic Games with all the well-known events around women’s single skating, and around Sasha specifically, of course, he required a special recovery. Alexandra rode two stages, did not win a single one (third and second places), withdrew from the Russian Championship and then drove to various shows. Argument presented: the restoration of the back, the injury required a sparing regimen.

These two surnames, along with a few others, were especially haunting. And now the Ministry of Sports of Russia, as promised by the FFKKR, has updated the list of candidates for the Russian national figure skating team for the 2023/24 season. Anya and Sasha got into the reserve team, as well as Maya Khromykh and Veronika Yametova. (In men – Gleb Lutfullin and Ilya Yablokov, duets of Alexandra Stepanova and Ivan Bukin, Karina Akopova and Nikita Rakhmanin, Daria Boyarintseva and Roman Pleshkov. The ranks of juniors were replenished with Alisa Dvoeglazova, Taisiya Korobitsina and a pair of Varvara Cheremnykh – Daniil Butenko).

So now the stands of different Russian cities have the hope of seeing titled figure skaters who “yes” and “no” during the season and after it did not say anything about the end of their careers. We will consider entering the reserve list as the signing of an agreement on sports intentions. At least until we are told that it is not.

It is, of course, not enough for us. And where, for example, are Ksenia Sinitsyna, Sonya Samodelkina… With the six at the Russian Championship, everything is clear, but why is preference given to Maya Khromykh, who missed the entire season due to an injury? The reserve line-up is a list of skaters decided by the coaching council. The answer is the same: everyone cannot be pushed into the national team for the potential and love of the stands. And this is the happiness of our figure skating. And this is the pain and motivation of individual skaters and their coaches.

Therefore, let’s calm down on the conclusion: the season will begin and everyone (both from the approved members of the national team and those not included in the lists, but who do not have a profession because of this ban) will be put in their places already on the ice.

Preliminary tournament schedule for the 2023/24 season:

Test skates of the Russian team: Moscow, September 16-17

Russian Grand Prix

1st stage: Ufa, October 13-16

2nd stage: Omsk, October 20-23

3rd stage: Krasnoyarsk, October 27-30

4th stage: Kazan, November 10-13

Stage 5: Samara, November 17-20

6th stage: Moscow, November 24-27

Final: Moscow, March

Russian Jumping Championship

Nizhny Novgorod (or St. Petersburg): December 1-4

Russian Championship-2024

Chelyabinsk, December 20-24

“Russian Challenge”, show program tournament

St. Petersburg, January 19-22

Championship of Russia among juniors

Saransk, February 5-9

Spartakiad of the strongest

Chelyabinsk, February 13-18

Senior Russian Championship

Kazan, April 1-5