Photo: Valery Sharifulin/TASS
We used to think that pair skating is our everything. Like Pushkin. It's hard to argue with that. For almost half a century, great figure skaters, starting with Lyudmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov, taught the country to win and made a kind of cult out of the most technically complex and traumatic kind. So piercing and dashing did not shine either native men-singlers, and even more so girls who only eight years ago cut through the golden Olympic window. However, many people forget that in dances the USSR and Russia did not give up their positions for quite a long time. Let's remember.
- Innsbruck-76 — Lyudmila Pakhomova/Alexander Gorshkov.
- Lake Placid-80 — Natalia Linichuk/Gennady Karponosov.
- Calgary -88 — Natalia Bestemyanova/Andrey Bukin.
Then the Soviet Union collapsed, but the dance union on ice remained victorious.
- Alberville-92 — Marina Klimova/Sergey Ponomarenko.
- Lillehammer-94 and Nagano-98 — Oksana Grischuk/Evgeny Platov.
- Then there was silver in Salt Lake City by Irina Lobacheva and Ilya Averbukh,
- and in Turin-2006 Tatyana Navka and Roman Kostomarov brought their favorite gold back home.
And since then, we have not developed a serious romance with dance. Only Tatyana Navka's romance stuck together, who, not without the help of her husband Dmitry Peskov, is touring the world today with the Navka Show ice project. But unlike money, it does not bring fame. At the Games in Vancouver and Sochi, Oksana Domnina/Maxim Shabalin and Elena Ilyinykh/Nikita Katsalapov took bronze, respectively. And at the Korean festival, for the first time in history, Russia whistled past the podium in this kind of program.
What the Olympics! We haven't bothered to perform twizzles, step sequences and lifts in golden style on the world stage for ten years.
And in general, for two five-year plans, domestic dancers snatched off only two planetary medals. And only last year, the reigning champions of the continent Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov broke away from the US and Canadians by 6.5 points and tried on the big rock and roll crown in Stockholm. In fairness, it must be said that there were no long-term leaders and trendsetters — the French Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Sizeron — in Sweden. But the main thing is that our duet, which the judges finally accepted and appreciated, received psychological confidence.
True, fans on the eve of the 2022 Games were worried about the physical readiness of their favorites. Vika suffered with her knee for a long time, and due to a back injury in Nikita, the tandem was removed from free programs at the Russian Cup stage and at the December domestic championship. By the way, when information appeared last week that doping was found in one of the skaters of the Russian national team, many at first thought of Katsalapov: they say that he was treating his back in the wrong way … But they sinned against him, as it turned out, in vain. But coach Alexander Zhulin, in turn, sinned on the ice outfits of his wards, which is why the costumes for both performances were changed right during the season. But this issue was sorted out.
The performance of Vika and Nikita in the team tournament set them up in a lyrical mood, although they lost both in rhythm dance and in an arbitrary number to their star-striped rivals. But it was clear: the guys are able to tighten up and add when it is really needed. Personally.
And the Saturday show of “katsalapiks”, as the fans affectionately call them, was even liked by people behind the monitors (88.85). Napoleon's compatriots, who did not participate in the commander, did not doze off either: for their chic slippery presentation, they received completely cosmic marks (90.83). However, such a gap under the current refereeing system did not look critical. Even despite the fact that behind the cold scenes, already during the Olympics, gossip did not stop circulating that gold was also in dancing for Russia, which was going to chop off valuable curly circles in three out of five types, would be too fat an achievement.
< p>And, by the way, it’s good that the Russian duet was preparing for the decisive battle, not knowing the results in the Valieva case, which could both inspire a feat and hit the nerves thoroughly (just in case, I’ll inform you that a high commission allowed Kamil to a personal tournament , but did not approve the results of the team show). At the same time, Sinitsina and Katsalapov, who went out on the ice after the Americans, perfectly heard how a small audience squealed after the announcement of the scores of Chok/Bates and Hubbell/Donoghue, who gave out the skates of life.
And the Russians couldn't falter one iota, otherwise they risked not slipping to the podium.
Personally, I sat down on a chair only when Sergei Rachmaninoff's music died down. Alexander Zhulin, almost balding even more and rushing about at the side, proudly raised his clenched fist. After all, few believed in this pair of his, formed in 2014 and who missed the previous White Rally … The half-empty hall applauded. The judges were not greedy (220.51 on the sum of two programs), and Vika's silver dress could become gold.