Valieva enjoys, but “does not run after jumps”: Kazan surrendered without a fight

… This is some kind of mystery of a part of our society. Why is Camila’s leadership in the public space over and over again questioned by someone? A new trend called “beat your own, so that even strangers feel ashamed”? What are we hitting for? Was it in the short program that Valieva should have lost to Ksenia Sinitsyna, who took third place, or Veronika Yametova, who became second? Or in the free program, in which she again failed only a quadruple sheepskin coat? Seriously?

If we are to chase excesses in the assessments, then we need the average temperature of our refereeing in the hospital. Home tournaments are generally a special genre of refereeing, and in the conditions of the suspension of our athletes, fixing amounts above world records is, we will consider, an element of moral compensation. And there is no need to worry that the athletes will get injured later, going out on the international ice and seeing lower scores there. They also know how to count and think.

The Olympic Games are over. For the most discussed type of figure skating – women’s singles – for absolutely all Russian participants, they have become the most difficult test. Each of them – Kamila Valieva, Anna Shcherbakova and Alexandra Trusova – had their own Games. Each got its own stressful blow to the body.

It turned out that Anna’s knee, which required surgery, saved the Olympic champion from demonstrating what she would have recovered after a break by November. The time when skaters usually started at the ISU Grand Prix, and now they compete at the Russian Grand Prix. Got rid of the hate for a while.

But Camila and Sasha now get pretty much after each exit to the ice. Both are only looking for lost ultra-c elements, and of course they don’t show the kind of skating that is still very vivid in everyone’s memory. And even they have a different level of readiness: Sasha has just started recovery, the problems are visible even without a thorough analysis. And Kamila is ready to win even without the most difficult jumps, which the stage in Kazan has now shown.

Behind the ratings of fans from the category of “like or dislike” (and here the level of competence is not even important – usually, the less a person is familiar with the rules, the more violently he attacks with negativity), we all often forget that there are professionals behind the edge of the ice. And it is the coaching staff, and we are talking about coaching stars and the highest level of competence, who chooses at what speed, when and how to bring athletes to peak form. How to save so that the desire to move on does not disappear.

If now our leaders competed at international competitions, their level of readiness would be somewhat different. But the home season provides not only the opportunity for a more relaxed performance, but also a real recovery without the usual for sports “to be in time”, because it is simply impossible not to be in time.

Camila and Sasha are led to the restoration of form without forcing events. Let the viewer can’t wait to see the usual “space”, but thanks to the coaches for this. “Everything will be fine, well done, that I arrived,” for example, such words of coach Sokolovskaya for Sasha Trusova after the program are not at all an accident. And no one took away the right of the same Valieva to fight in a light (for herself) mode. Yes, Camila is inferior today – but so far only to herself, last year. But the skating class is not just words.

We have a unique opportunity to watch how skaters get in shape from start to start in order to reach its peak for the Russian Championship and then for the Grand Prix finals in March. And this is by no means a belittling of the level of home starts. This is an opportunity for skaters to regain themselves. And – to return to us the same space.

And for those athletes who do not have a shocking Beijing behind them, only declaring themselves or reminding themselves after the break, no one bothers to chop with a sword at every stage, proving their right to fight. Which, by the way, is what, for example, the same Veronika Yametova does, who strives for medals with spontaneity and energetic pressure on the ice. She has already broken through, having won silver in Kazan and having reached the Grand Prix finals based on the results of two stages.

In the short program of the Kazan performance, Kamila performed almost perfectly all the elements, showing both excellent spins and a technically competent track. The only roughness was on the landing after the lutz in the combination. The athlete herself voiced it: “the Lutz-toe loop cascade was“ so interesting, ”as my coaches said. I saved him, I’m happy with it. A common mistake is to throw the body on the first jump.

But she also said something else: “I’m starting to have fun, and not just run after jumps.” She said that she was restoring quadruple jumps. Sheepskin coat – without a fishing rod. The rest are at work: “Everything is fine on the bait, as usual, slowly. I will look at the state.”

The quadruple sheepskin coat at the Moscow stage in the program of Camila failed again, as in Moscow. At the warm-up in Kazan (as well as in Moscow), we saw him, and at the box office we fell, almost twisted the triple lutz at the end of the program and “walked” the path to the third level. Valieva was the last to perform, allowed herself, under the cries of “let’s do it again”, waiting for the assessment, to go back to the quadruple. And then – and again. Failure. But the coaches and Kamila herself smiled, and the audience in Kazan went wild with delight. Although someone immediately saw in this disrespect for the rules. (Somewhere, after all, you need to put your five cents of hate.)

And, by the way, after the program, Kamila told reporters that even in Moscow she asked if it was possible to do this – to show the jump after the rental, if a fine would follow. And, if I hadn’t performed last, I could have interfered with someone, I wouldn’t have done it. And I went to the sheepskin coat, because it was a shame that I did not perform it in the program.

Camila broke away from second place by more than thirty points. The third was Ksenia Sinitsyna, who returned to the competition after a rather long absence. The figure skater did not perform at open skates, in the summer she tried herself in pair skating, however, this idea quickly canceled itself. “I realized that pair skating is not mine. It is unusual to ride together, there are omissions. There was fear, for me – a quadruple jump is better than a throw.

Kazan showed already in the short program that Svetlana Panova’s student is in good shape. Last year’s “Lullaby” by Tchaikovsky performed by Xenia again fascinates. We are used to always admiring how Mikhail Kolyada (or his music) absorbs music, and so the same thing happens with Ksyusha. (Of the errors, under-rotation was visible on the second jump in the lutz-toe loop combination performed in the second part of the program, errors in the steps on the track (loss of levels).

“The task in the free program is to show a new program, you need to skate it cleanly. And the quadruple jump – yes, I train, sometimes it works out, sometimes it’s not very good. ” Sinitsyna presented the beautiful and again tender free program, but again she failed to perform without mistakes.

Veronika Yametova appeared at the stage in Kazan outside of the plan. “I happened to be here. The girls withdrew from this stage due to injuries. We got a call and were asked to speak here. Two stages in a row is not difficult, on the contrary, you get involved. And Veronika got involved so much that, compared to the stage in Sochi (where the short one was not perfect), she scored five points more in the technical part and added three points to her components.

The skate in the free program was more difficult, Yametova herself called it “not bad”, promised to remember the shortcomings in order to work on them. Veronika also said that she would “set a triple axel” for the Russian championship, work is already underway on the ultra-c element. Having used two stages of the Grand Prix (each participant has the right to compete in the series only twice), he will perform until the December Russian Championship at competitions in the Sverdlovsk region and is going to “learn something new”, that is, quadruple jumps. And, apparently, the truth is that Hurricane is her middle name.