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Post by Admin on Dec 25, 2020 19:45:48 GMT
Mikhail Kolyada is Russian national champion once again. The 2018 world bronze medallist in figure skating was near to his vintage best in two days of skating at the Russian national championships, finishing as the standout performer in a topsy turvy men's event. His 296.15 gave him a win by more than 30 points, for his third national title and first since the 2017-18 season. Twenty-year-old Makar Ignatov won his first national medal by finishing second (265.37), while 17-year-old Mark Kondratiuk was the surprise of the competition, capturing bronze (260.31). Lausanne 2020 Youth Olympic Games silver medallist and reigning junior world champ Andrei Mozalev finished in fourth with a 252.92. The win at nationals solidifies what's been a resurgent season for Kolyada, who missed 2019-20 entirely due to sinusitis and subsequent surgery. Last month he won Rostelecom Cup in Moscow, as well. Kolyada rises to the challenge With reigning national and European champion Dmitri Aliev withdrawing from the event prior to it starting, eyes were fixed on Kolyada, who earlier this year switched coaches to the longtime elite mentor Alexei Mishin. And Kolyada delivered. After emerging first in the short program, Kolyada went from strength to strength in a beautifully skated free program, opening with a quadruple toe loop-triple toe loop combination, and then hitting a quad toe, followed by triple Axel. Skating to balletic, soft music from The White Crow, Kolyada tied his program together with strong jumps, beautiful spins and a level four step sequence. Kolyada's program component (artistic) score of 96.86 was 10 points north of any other competitor. The win assures Kolyada's place (unofficially) at the world championships in March, where he'll look to land back on the podium having done so in 2018 after he helped Russia to a team silver medal at the Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang.
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Post by Admin on Dec 26, 2020 4:02:07 GMT
Ice dance: Stepanova and Bukin are champs for the first time Stepanova and Bukin had six national medals to their names coming into this event: Two bronzes and four silvers, but they were finally able to break that streak with a victory in Chelyabinsk, skating to Moulin Rouge in the rhythm dance and a version of Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me a River" in the free. While their chief rivals, Alexandra Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov missed the event due to lingering symptoms of COVID-19, the duo was outright delighted, Bukin letting out a roar on the ice as they completed their free dance. Stepanova/Bukin received level fours for their opening twizzle sequence as well as three intricate lifts done in the program. Those marks, coupled with nines and 10s in the program components secured them the win by a 10-point margin over Zagorski and Guerreiro, who claimed their first-ever silver at nationals. Anastasia Skoptcova and Kirill Aleshin won the bronze, the 2018 Russian and world junior champs having issues on their twizzles, though they finished two full points ahead of the fourth-place team.
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Post by Admin on Dec 26, 2020 21:43:11 GMT
Honored coach of Russia Tatyana Tarasova told RIA Novosti that she congratulates two-time Olympic champion Evgeni Plushenko on his coaching success at the national championship.
Plushenko's student Alexandra Trusova won the bronze medal of the Russian championship, having coped with two quadruple lutz in a free program. The victory was won by Anna Shcherbakova, the second place was taken by Kamila Valieva.
"I also congratulate him (Plushenko), they did not lose this championship. In my opinion, today all the girls won. Sasha Trusova skated beautifully and in tune with jumps. Simply amazing," Tarasova told RIA Novosti by phone.
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Post by Admin on Dec 27, 2020 21:22:58 GMT
All eyes were not on Anna Shcherbakova heading into the Russian figure skating championships this last week in Chelyabinsk. They should have been. As she had done at the previous two nationals, the 16-year-old quadruple-jumping Shcherbakova cut through a competitive field of Russian skaters to rise to the top, becoming the first woman to claim back-to-back-to-back singles titles in nearly 20 years, since two-time Olympic medallist Irina Slutskaya did so from 2000-02. Shcherbakova was just one of many must-see moments from the annual event, which featured particularly strong ladies’ and pairs fields. Here, six takeaways from three days of outright competitive skating. The World Championships teams won’t be named just yet... but these nationals did give us a strong indication as to who we’ll see in Stockholm come March. Shcherbakova’s thrilling three-peat The final group of skaters in the ladies’ event was jaw-dropping, going from strength to strength to strength as Alexandra Trusova, Kamila Valieva, Shcherbakova and Daria Usacheva delivered 40 minutes of spellbinding performances to remember for skating fans. Valieva placed second and Trusova third with the one-two punch of Shcherbakova and Valieva bringing normally unflappable coach Eteri Tutberidze literally to tears. Trusova, now coached by Evgeni Plushenko, was the first of the three to skate and started with two quads. But it was her former training partner Shcherbakova who was clearly the best despite not being 100 percent after a recent bout of pneumonia. After her victory, it was reported by R-Sport that she had a fever before the short program but decided to compete. Shcherbakova told the Russian media after her winning free skate, “I was sure that I wanted to go out and show what I could do." And that she did. Combining her quad-jumping ways with a more mature artistic connection to her music and to the ice, she was the only skater to perform two different quads – Lutz and flip. With a free skate-best 77.09 program component (artistic) score, she secured a comfortable 10-point win overall.
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Post by Admin on Dec 28, 2020 20:53:59 GMT
What’s next for... Tuktamysheva, Kostornaia? The Russian Worlds team is up in the air for a couple reasons: Valieva is still only 14 years old making her too young to compete at a major international event.
That means the Russian Cup Final, a domestic event set for late February, will almost certainly decide who will take the last of the three spots in Sweden alongside Shcherbakova and probably Trusova.
Will Elizaveta Tuktamysheva or reigning European champion Alena Kostornaia be a part of that conversation? Kostornaia sat out nationals due to COVID symptoms, although she looked strong at Rostelecom where she finished second.
It was 2015 world champion Tuktamysheva who won Rostelecom in November, but she looked physically spent in both her programs in Chelyabinsk having been diagnosed with coronavirus in early December.
The 24-year-old finished a disappointing seventh and she'll need her triple Axel – and perhaps quad toe loop – to have a fighting chance.
Another name to consider: Elizaveta Nugumanova, 18, who finished sixth at nationals.
And what to make of Evgenia Medvedeva, the PyeongChang 2018 silver medallist, who watched the ladies’ free skate from inside the arena? More on her below.
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