Valieva “went into a sheepskin coat”, Kolyada lost tango: results of the first stage of the Russian Grand Prix

Crazy house without tango

This time the men’s single skating brought the participants of the stage to the ice not before, as is usually the case, but after the women’s single. Gleb Lutfullin became an undoubted discovery for many in Moscow. It’s not for nothing that coach Alexei Mishin has long (seemingly always by chance) twisted his name into a conversation about men’s single skating.

Lutfullin was fourth after the short program, he was poor in judges’ marks for the components, but he completed two quads. And in the free program, the skater has already performed four quads, two cleanly, two with flaws. And he scored points that made absolutely all competitors think (more than 170).

Sasha Samarin entered the free program, at least to defend the third place obtained after the short program. Performed Lutz in four turns performed by Sasha – a handsome man. But then the skater fell, and made mistakes, and even made an extra jump, which remained completely unscored. He called his mistakes “kindergarten.” There were many losses, Lutfullin eventually lost.

Dmitry Aliev took second place after the short program. “In the room in the morning I thought that I would kiss the ice in case of a successful rental.” Not at the maximum one hundred percent, but such a rental happened. And Dima kissed the ice. Because “three quads is cool.”

It is difficult to disagree with Aliyev. He has a very beautiful program, and we have not seen such a series of jumps for a long time. But he was tired, it was evident, strongly, the second part turned out not at all flawlessly. “I am satisfied with the first half, there was a mood of inner silence, the mood was to trust myself. In the second half, he energetically let go of himself, so he blurred trips on triple jumps. But I’m on the right track.”

It’s hard to say what the mood of Mikhail Kolyada was, but there are hardly any skaters who go on the ice with the desire to fill up all the elements. Aliyev’s scores (182 points) should have mobilized Kolyada to fight for first place. But Misha, who was leading after the short program (although he did it without a four-turn jump), did not make five out of six jump elements in the amazing free dance “Tango in a Madhouse”. The tango is gone.

Three falls – and Kolyada was beaten by Daniil Samsonov, who, after a long break, returns himself to the competitive ice, not trying to do either a quadruple or a triple axel. Mikhail’s laconic answers after the failure: “healthy” and “it happens.” The explanation is accepted because there is no other anyway. “Childhood injuries” come out, to such an extent, “falling” skates, of course, do not happen regularly with Misha, but stability is not his forte. And so it happened that Alexander Samarin still held third place.

“I’m not a flower”

Kamila Valieva, under endless talk about the proceedings with her positive doping test, returns elements of ultra-si to the programs. There is no triple axel yet, but there was already an attempt to perform a four-turn toe loop in Moscow. Camila was asked: maybe it was not necessary, why risk something? She answered immediately: “No, what are you! On the contrary, I really wanted to do this jump, so it didn’t work out.” She is glad that she “went into the sheepskin coat”, although it was very exciting for her, as if she was jumping for the first time. “But it worked out during the warm-up, so everything will be fine.”

Camila says that she will continue to restore the triple Axel and quadruple salchow, “slowly go to her form.” What wants a lot, but must move forward carefully. “In Kazan (her second stage of the Grand Prix will be held there. – Ed.) Let’s see what content will be.”

She also said: “I am not a flower to please everyone. And not everyone likes flowers. It was a commentary on the controversy surrounding the Olympic experience program: should it be skated again and again? Camila says: if I didn’t want to, I didn’t skate. And the opinion of some fans cannot influence the decision. And the fact that she cried at open rentals, showing the program to the audience for the first time, was “surging”. Now everything is calmer. But the desire to tell about myself through the program remains, so I am ready to perform it all season.

Kamila Valieva won this stage, still losing the free program to Sonya Akatieva (244.66 vs. 236.68). Third place went to Anastasia Zinina (200.43). The debate whether Camila should have lost more points in the free program to Sophia, who made both a triple axel (she fell on it in the short program), and two quadruple jumps, albeit with under-rotations, can continue in the stands without getting tired. The judges will probably also discuss.

But the performance of the girls on the Golden Skate of Moscow, their first full-time official competition (although Kamila and Sonya train on the same ice at Khrustalny) confirmed that there will be intrigues in women’s single skating this season. Sonya Akatieva got very close.

The opinion of the majority of experts: Camila won fairly. Sonya was not perfect, and Valieva’s break after the short program did its job. Aleksey Yagudin’s prediction that Akatiev will gain experience and “grow fat” may sound somewhat cynical in relation to figure skaters with their strict weight criteria, but it is absolutely fair. In the second half of the season, we simply will not recognize Akatieva in terms of confidence and emotions.

The debutant of adult competitions herself says that she will try to do what she can. You just need to “think even less (before entering the jumps), calm down as much as possible.”

shock of four

Pair skating suddenly blew itself up in front of the audience. Nothing foreshadowed surprises in the distribution of medals – and this, alas, was even embarrassing. There are few participants, the silver medalists of Pkin-2022 are beyond competition. But Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov managed to skate a free program in the worst style of Mikhail Kolyada.

After the short program, they were in the lead, eight points ahead of Natalia Khabibullina and Ilya Knyazhuk. And in the free program, everything turned out to be bad, that jumps, that emissions. “It’s a shame, I don’t want to say anything,” Zhenya said. And Volodya stated: they were well prepared. And, it seems, both were in some shock from the second, and even so obtained, place.

The same state was experienced by the winners Khabibullina and Knyazhuk. Only the shock was already, according to them, complete. “We don’t really understand what’s going on. We just did what we can. We didn’t expect this.”

growth stimulus

In dancing, the strangest season has begun, probably for all foreseeable years. There are no leaders, there are new duets made up of dancers who have already tried their hand, and juniors breaking onto adult ice. Only four duets took to the Moscow ice.

The first are the stage winners Annabel Morozov (we still need to ask Annabelle, the daughter of our coach Morozov, if it is possible to return the letter “a” to the surname, as it should be in Russian) and David Narizhny. This was the first appearance of the duet in front of the stands, due to the injury of their partner, the dancers were forced to miss open rentals. (Hot heads immediately saw this as a potential change of citizenship.)

Having won in Moscow, the duet was satisfied with how the first competitions went. “Not perfect, of course, but it was important to finally show our couple. We’re happy to ride with each other.”

And everyone is happy with the new duet. True, even if this is not the main thing for the domestic season, the ratings are confusing: for rhythm dance, debutants on our ice receive almost the same points as at the just past first stage of the ISU Grand Prix world championship medalists Madison Chock and Evan Bates.

The second, that is, juniors, who boldly entered the adult ice, include Vasilisa Kaganovskaya and Valery Angelopol. The students of Angelica Krylova have already fallen in love with the audience. The programs were shown with zest. Now it remains to gain rating points. By the way, the prize money for the second place of the stage is not considered an incentive for growth. They say that for such a young couple as they are, there can be only one incentive: to skate beautifully and cleanly, not to let the coaches down and to do everything to make the duet known.

… The next stage of the Russian Grand Prix under the attractive name “Velvet Season” will be held in Sochi on October 28-30. And the past stage, according to the mood, gets the popular name “Crazy Ice” or “Crazy”. We are overjoyed that the ice has broken, the figure skaters are on the move and the starts have begun. Judges – from the desire, often not at all supported by performances, to line up everyone in accordance with the rating. Athletes – from the surprises that the ice so often likes to reward and punish.