Elizaveta Tuktamysheva won the short program at the Grand Prix stage in Moscow. She was ahead of the strongest rivals — the new wave figure skaters Sofya Akatieva and Sofya Muravyova by a crumb of a score. Now everything will be decided in the free program on Sunday. There Tuktamysheva, even with two axels, will not be easy.
However, Liza is still the first today, to the delight of many figure skating fans. Why is she so loved? Perhaps she is perfect in her imperfection. Liza is perceived by us as a close friend or sister, causing warm feelings. Tuktamysheva is not an unattainable child prodigy or an exotic butterfly. She is an earthly girl, a housemate, a former classmate.
Of course, we can note the extraordinary mind of a genius and wish to save the brittle colored wings of a butterfly. But we truly penetrate and perceive someone else's success only when we can understand its organic nature. As in the case of Lisa.There is one problem with Lisa's popularity. Since everything seems to be clear about her, every perfect rental by Tuktamysheva makes the journalists who write about him want to remember the images that have become clichés over a long career. «Empress», «Queen Elizabeth» — that's it. You also need to be surprised by age and motivation. God, God, 25 years old woman, and she is still not in the dustbin of history. Looks even better on the ice than at 18. Still full of desire to perform.
This is all irony. The personality of Elizabeth Tuktamysheva deserves much more of our attention. The desire to focus on age and vitality is understandable. Before us is a museum exhibit — a figure skater who continues her successful career at the age of «deeply over 20». However, the emphasis, brought to the point of absurdity, devalues all her work on herself. A giant leap in development and a real role in the world female loner.
She can not be called the grandmother of figure skating. The epithet belongs, by the way, to Lisa herself, who has always been distinguished by self-irony. But she can say that because she doesn’t repeat this from interview to interview, she doesn’t think about it every day when she comes to training. Journalists should not replicate this. Because «grandmother» (in the sense of age) deserves special treatment, indulgence, protection and help in crossing the road. Grandmother obviously loses to 15-year-old girls in the ability to spin smartly and jump high. Of course, this characteristic has nothing to do with Tuktamysheva and her real level of skill. crawl. Not because she won the gold of the world championship with a triple axel in the short program, when 8-year-old Sofya Muravyova was cramming the multiplication table.
Tuktamysheva is cool right now, in her great shape, with cool programs and confident elements. With his «just about to come» quadruple sheepskin coat and textbook trixels. Kruta without discounts on the year of birth, experience, missed Olympic opportunities and the abstract desire of the public to repay what they deserve. Lisa, like other people of all ages, needs only equal rights, freedom and justice. She does an excellent job with the rest.