The beginning of the way
Alina Zagitova was born in 2002 in Izhevsk in the family of hockey player Ilnaz Zagitov , who then played for the local Izhstal, which he also managed to train at the end of his career, and Leysan Zagitova.
An interesting fact is that the future figure skating star received the name only a year after birth, and they named her in honor of another famous athlete, Olympic champion in rhythmic gymnastics Alina Kabaeva.
Probably, in the hockey player’s family, the girl was doomed to skate, while her talent was obvious, but Zagitova herself was fond of drawing, and she tried to quit figure skating almost seven times before moving to Moscow.
The girl was in the capital at the age of 13, and she moved with her grandmother.
Eteri Tutberidze called the athlete, promising to watch it, and accepted her into the group at Khrustalny, however, not everything was going smoothly.
Despite the obvious talent, Zagitova did not show due perseverance, had problems with discipline and a desire to study, and was even expelled.
Junior success
However, the skater changed her mind, came to the mentor with confession, promising to implicitly carry out all the settings and recommendations, after which she was accepted back.
After that, a streak of successful performances began. The season 2016/17, a native of Izhevsk, spent in juniors, having managed to make her debut at the Russian championship in this age category at the beginning of 2016, taking ninth place in the tournament.
Already in August, Zagitova started at the first stage of the Junior Grand Prix in France and won a sensational victory there.
True, she did not manage to win the September stage in Slovenia, she remained only the third, but this was quite enough to reach the final of the series, held in Marseille and confidently won by a student of Tutberidze.
The second place in those competitions was taken by another Russian figure skater Anastasia Gubanova , but after her were the current stars from Japan - Rika Kihira and Kaori Sakamoto , who were behind Alina by more than 30 points.
Such a gap was made possible due to the fact that the Sambo-70 pupil in the UGP finals set junior world records in a short, free program and, of course, by the sum of the points.
After that, in December, Zagitova spoke at the country's adult championship, where it is not necessary, as at international starts, to reach the age of 15 for the right to participate.
As a result, Alina took second place, ahead of Maria Sotskova in a bitter struggle and yielding only to the unconditional leader at that time in world figure skating, another student of Tutberidze Evgenia Medvedeva .
Then Zagitova continued her junior season, winning the championship of Russia, the European Youth Olympic Festival, as well as the Junior World Championships, beating Marine Honda and Sakamoto in Japan, setting new records in the free program and in the total points.
Olympic triumph
The following year, Olympic, Zagitova made her debut in adult skating. She entered the year as a promising junior and brilliantly performed at the Lombardia Trophy Challenger, setting her three best career achievements.
The favorite of the season was still Medvedev, who, after two years of unconditional dominance in the world and domestic arena, should have seemed to crown all this with a gold Olympic medal, but the main student of that time Tutberidze received a stressful leg fracture, and her participation in the Games in Pyeongchang turned out to be generally in doubt.
Russia simply could not afford to miss the gold in its current form, and the Federation made a bet on Zagitova, whose score for the components increased sharply during the Olympic year.
However, even if the FFKR helped in some way with the 15-year-old star from Khrustalny, Alina herself had an important trump card: the most difficult program in women's skating then with a cascade of triple lutz and rittberger.
Zagitova won two stages of the Grand Prix, and then, in the absence of Medvedeva, the series finale, after which she became the champion of the country.
The real test and preview of the Olympic tournament was to be the European Championship in Moscow, where Zagitova and Medvedev, who had somehow recovered after her injury, were to meet for the first time in the competition as the two main (and only) applicants for Olympic gold.
The fight was very stubborn, but Zagitova won her by a slight margin, and then excelled at the Olympic tournament, ahead of her colleague by less than two points in the short program and showing (surprisingly) an absolutely identical result in arbitrary numbers!
Prior to this, Eugene and Alina in the national team also took second place in the team tournament, although the girls themselves confidently won their parts of the competition.
After the games
Apparently, thoughts about leaving began to visit Zagitova immediately after the Olympics, especially since the girl was in full swing with the restructuring of the body, and already by the World Cup, crowning the season, she had grown by several centimeters.
There was no Medvedev in Milan, but after a short program, Alina was inferior to Italian Carolina Costner , and although she did not show off at the box office, the Russian woman herself fell three times and remained only fifth.
By the next season, Alina had a rest and on the Challenger Nebelhorn Trophy installed three world achievements at once in the updated rating system, after which she won victories at the Grand Prix stages in Finland and Russia, however, she lost the final to Kihira.
It was the Japanese woman, who had reached the age of post-Olympic season for speaking at adult international competitions, now possessed the most complex program, having in the arsenal the triple axels absent from Zagitova. And let Rika jump them unstable, in the Grand Prix finals, she did it.
Alina did not work out with the Russian championship, where she was in the lead after a short program, but made a mistake in an arbitrary and immediately lost to the fourteen-year-old junior stars of the group Tutberidze Anna Shcherbakova , Alexandra Trusova and Alena Kostorna.
Then there was the European Championship, which was disastrous for Alina, where, despite a shortage in her strongest cascade, she was the leader after a short program, but in a random one she made a series of mistakes and lost in total to Alexey Mishin’s student Sofia Samodurova .
Later it will become known that Zagitova repeatedly tried to finish her career already in this period and even wrote a receipt for the federation that she committed to go and perform well at the World Cup.
Well, in Saitama, she kept her word. Zagitova soared on Japanese ice and, while almost all competitors, including Kihira, were mistaken, gave such rentals that she did not leave a chance even for Kazakhstan ward Tutberidze Elizabeth Tursynbaeva, who jumped into a quadruple salchow.
Last forces
Having designed the career “Grand Slam” (victories at the Olympics, World Championships, European Championships, Grand Prix finals and national championships), Zagitova entered the new season, although now there were already other favorites: the same Shcherbakova and Trusova with four jumps , as well as Kostornaya with a triple axel and fantastic componentization.
Alina said that she plans to learn the quadruple jump and triple axel and even tried to perform the latter. She honestly twice became the second after Kostornaya at the stages of the Grand Prix series and went in second place in the final after a short program.
Then there was a failure in the arbitrary and final sixth place, leaving Kiss and Cry and speaking on the air of Channel One.
Perhaps the departure of Zagitova is logical, although it is hardly an impulsive decision - after all, the posters of the show of Tatyana Navka and Alina have been hanging on the main poster for a month, and it is simply impossible to combine the show with the performance at the Russian championship ...
It is hard to believe that the Olympic champion will return to the competition and, moreover, will be competitive after a pause, but this is not so important.
Zagitova performed at the adult level for only 2.5 years and showed the world only six programs, but managed to win everything and become not just a successful athlete, but a whole phenomenon.
It is a pity that modern women's figure skating throws their leaders to the sidelines already at the age of 17 ...