Fight warm-up: how our figure skaters won the Olympic selection
Russian figure skaters returned to the international arena as successfully as possible, with a one hundred percent result. Adelia Petrosyan and Peter Gumennik won the short and free programs at the Olympic qualifying tournament, which was held in Beijing. However, not everything was perfect. Izvestia highlights the most important thing for Russian sports over the past weekend.
Imperfect rentals
Both Petrosyan and Humennik won their tournaments, which they should have done. But Petrosyan scored only 209.63 points, which is worse even compared to her performances at the junior Grand Prix until 2022. It needs to be added.
At the same time, Adelia made almost no mistakes — only a small blot on the lutz on the first day. If I had been more mistaken, I would have given away the first place.
"Of course, no one doubted that Adelia would be in the top 5, but it was also very important to win for inner confidence," Ilya Averbukh, a Russian choreographer and 2002 world champion, told Izvestia. — It's a good performance to start the season. There is still a lot of work ahead. The tasks are very high. In particular, Adelia is one of the favorites for Olympic gold. We will cheer and worry about the results.
Peter, unlike Adelia, did not have such pressure from his pursuers, so he took a chance on the free skate and went for a five-square. On the one hand, the result is positive — he stood up, did not fall, did not forget about the second grade and tried to invest in the program. But of the seven jumping elements, only three turned out to be clean, and it was not possible to attach a cascade to the last jump, which would have earned several more points. 262.92 is not the level of an Olympic medal, but with a clean rental, a Russian would have fought for 280.
"Peter had such a difficult program, he did a great job," said Honored Coach of the USSR Tatiana Tarasova. — They went to all the most difficult elements. Well done! The whole country was rooting for him. Everyone is calling, worried. I even burst into tears.
The logical predictions of our experts have also come true — Russians will not be judged abroad in the same way as at home, where their scores are often seriously overestimated.
At the same time, they do not cling to Russians for trifles. Petrosyan won a little bit against Gubanova and Hendricks, really making a similar program cleaner - no one intentionally underestimated her scores for her rivals. Humennik received three short cuts in the protocol, but, for example, in a controversial situation, he was not counted as falling — in general, there was no "murder". But the fact that programs need to be complicated, cleaned up, and invested in composition and presentation is indisputable.
ISU and foreigners have become kinder
It turned out that if an international tournament was held with the participation of Russians, then no one would fight in the subtribe and the integrity, as the ISU puts it, of the competition would be preserved. After the rentals of Peter Gumennik and Adelia Petrosyan, it remained to figure out how to allow the Russians to other starts.
Canadian Megan Duhamel speaks calmly about Russians, ISU employees have gone so far as to talk about the value of neutral athletes on the sidelines, and Luna Hendricks hugged Adelia Petrosyan.
Maybe this is a reason to dream and they will bring us back from next season? In any case, this tournament has definitely confirmed that Russian athletes have fans all over the world. The rentals of Petrosyan and Humennik were watched by 300 thousand people on YouTube, which is almost as many as all the leaders at the last World Cup without Russians.
But there were also organizational rough spots, which show that although the ISU is being reformed, many stables still need to be cleaned. First, they put up a Humennik rental for a Ukrainian song on social networks, then they delete it. Finally, the story of the AIN anthem in honor of the Russian victories turned out to be quite surreal. No one understood what kind of music was turned on even after the tournament. It seems to be something new created by ISU. But not the anthem of the neutrals.
In general, the Russian figure skating school is fine, but not everyone was allowed to participate in the Olympics because of the Chinese. In addition to Petrosyan and Gumennik, Anastasia Gubanova from Georgia, Victoria Safonova from Belarus, and Stefania Yakovleva from Cyprus were close to the Olympics, but she was controversially bypassed by a local Chinese woman. According to my information, Czech Georgy Reshtenko was also unhappy with the refereeing, who stopped a few points short of the quota, and the Taiwanese took it.
Spaniard Asaf Kazimov is going to the Olympics in dancing, but Swede Nikolai Mayorov is not going — he and his partner Reitan lost 0.23 points... of course, the Chinese, who were sixth after the first day (the Swedes were third). Finally, Karina Akopova, who transferred from the Russian national team to Armenia, won a ticket to Milan in pairs. / Nikita Rakhmanin, but they also lost to the victorious Chinese. Thus, China also secured a place in the team tournament.
The next tournament, where Russians will face foreign rivals, will be held in Milan in February 2026. We are going back to isolation for six months.
Olympic Qualifying Tournament
Women
1. Adelia Petrosyan (Russia) — 209.63
2. Anastasia Gubanova (Georgia) — 206.23
3. Luna Hendricks (Belgium) — 204.96
4. Victoria Safonova (Belarus) — 181.91
5. Zhang Ruiyang (China) — 179.76
Men
1. Peter Gumennik (Russia) — 262.82
2. Kim Kyung—hyom (Korea) - 228.60
3. Donovan Carrillo (Mexico) — 222.36
4. Kirill Marsak (Ukraine) — 217.57
5. Li Yuxiang (Taiwan) — 216.98
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
