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Two-time world champion and Olympic silver medalist Evgenia Medvedeva turned 23 years old. For a couple of years she has not competed in professional tournaments, although she has not yet announced her retirement. The main business of the skater at the moment is the famous TV show on the main channel of the country. Sport tells in detail how Medvedev has changed during this time.
Sports journalists are sometimes skeptical about television ice shows. Not to the phenomenon itself. It's great that former athletes have the opportunity to monetize success and bathe in audience love for many years. Skepticism is born from the aplomb that accompanies it all.
Artists who started skating a month ago cannot receive «sixes». After all, this is the highest possible score in the old judging system, the highest bar that only champions could achieve. The irreconcilable Tatyana Tarasova should not suddenly play the fairy godmother, who has a carriage with a coachman for each «Cinderella».If you turn off the snobbery and regret that in prime time on Saturday on the central TV channel they show shows with artists in the scenery, and not competitions, then the effect of the «Ice Age» is enormous. The project has been running intermittently since 2006. It was launched in the wake of the super-successful Olympics in Turin. Since then, there has been no sport in Russia that could be compared with figure skating in terms of regularity and volume of spectator interest. Results, media coverage, sponsors deservedly and fairly came to the «figurine».There are also hidden effects of the TV show. Thanks to the free creative format of the numbers, famous athletes open up from a new perspective. One of the most striking examples in the entire history of the project is Evgenia Medvedeva. It turned out that before the «Ice Age» we knew nothing about it at all.
Medvedeva appeared in the project last year. As partners, she got a complex character, not the strongest physically and generally not very reliable, but wildly charismatic Danya Milokhin. Many of Zhenya's personal fans were not imbued with sympathy for Dana and considered him unworthy to simply hold the hand of a figure skater of this level. If we sum up the reaction of the jury, the results of the show and the ratings, then Medvedev and Milokhin matched perfectly. They gave each other exactly what they both needed.
No one could dance funk in shiny leggings like these two. I would not have played school graduates who believed in the dream in the room for the song «Zurbagan». Such crazy Joker and Harley Quinn, as well as exemplary tragic Bumbarash, would not have happened. Although there were always many great artists in the Ice Age, Medvedev and Milokhin brought the organicity of what is happening on the ice to another level.
Zhenya's story is also unique because she is a single skater. It is especially difficult for them to pair with a non-professional. There are no skating skills, support calls have not been developed, there is no such desperation as experienced guys have. Therefore, in the history of the «Ice Age» there were so few representatives of single skating. The winners of all seasons are dancers and greenhouses, with the exception of Adelina Sotnikova. Medvedeva and Milokhin did not win in 2021 either, but reached the final and took third place.
Single skaters in their usual role do not need to share the ice, the attention of the public and even the responsibility for performances with someone. It is incredibly difficult to break this inner feeling of a hermit, but Medvedeva succeeded. True, before participating in the project, she had the opportunity to practice in pair skating with the World Championship and Olympic medalist Alexander Enbert.
Such an experience can be considered both a plus and a minus. That's why. Reliability and safety can be measured in «enberts» — Alexander is so good in this indicator. After such a partner, it was a real feat for Zhenya to rise to high support in the hands of Dani Milokhin.
In one of the passes, Medvedev and Milokhin fell. Danya lifted Zhenya in support at high speed and did not hold him without proper preparation. The leg went off from the loss of balance. He didn't even try to regroup, so he took most of the blow. Zhenya did not fall out of the image for a second, did not show fear or confusion. Rising off the ice, the skater smiled in a way that only Amazons can.
How did we know Zhenya Medvedeva from her sports career? She has always been smart and serious. She did a hundred times more and better than measured by natural abilities. I squeezed everything out of every start. Her main talents are her character and rare diligence, although in figure skating it is not customary to be surprised at her ability to work.
She was quite musical, quite clean in lines and posture, very artistic, but nevertheless went down in history thanks to unthinkable technicality and stability. It was Medvedeva who started our belief that skaters can skate without any mistakes at all.
Although Zhenya and her coaches were thoughtful about the selection of images, for her they were always a little secondary compared to the complexity of the programs. Therefore, all the artistic virtues were so powerfully manifested in the matured athlete precisely in the «Ice Age» next to Milokhin. He seemed to show her how relaxed you can relate to life. That work is also fun, and not just plowing on the way to medals. . It’s just that this text is not about him, but about her, so we won’t analyze his changes in detail. Medvedeva made Milokhin fall in love with figure skating so much that he agreed to go into the second season, although he quickly ran away. Participation in the «Ice Age» Zhenya continues with Fedor Fedotov — the winner of last season, paired with Tatyana Volosozhar.
In the heyday of Medvedeva, she herself has a gigantic role. Zhenya for many years, having already stopped competing, did not sit idle for a minute. All her activities, experiments with work, appearance, style, erudition, an updated social circle, coupled with a unique fearlessness, give results. If they did not surpass sports success, then at least they caught up with them. Medvedev is an excellent reference for young figure skaters, confirming that there is a happy life after the end of a career
The opinion of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors