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The third stage of the Russian Grand Prix in a row surprises with the women's short program, and with a minus sign. The trend toward a reduction in technical difficulty that began in Krasnoyarsk continued in Samara — despite a worthy start list by name, none of the participants was able to cleanly perform the only ultra-c allowed in this segment — a triple axel. After the jumping boom, when in our figure skating complex elements were not jumped except by those who did not aspire to anything, it is unusual to see a figure skater with triple jumps in the intermediate first place.
The technical decline in adult competitions is especially noticeable against the backdrop of the Samara junior competitions. The entire top three (Alisa Dvoeglazova, Lidiya Pleskacheva, Ksenia Tsipukhina) with pure ultra-cs, outside the top three there are also several girls with quads and triple axels of varying degrees of success (Maria Mazur, Alisa Yurova, Nadezhda Ponteleenko, Ulyana Vasilyeva). Until recently, we could see something similar at the Russian adult championship, but everything is going to the point that this year only Adelia Petrosyan will surprise with jumping content.
The current national champion Sofya Akatieva could brighten up the situation in Samara, and in the season as a whole. By the age of 16, student Eteri Tutberidze had mastered serious technical content, including several types of quadruple jumps and a triple Axel, and this has repeatedly brought her good results. Two seasons ago, she was the absolute leader of the international junior standings and the most technical figure skater of the new wave, but when she reached the senior level, problems hit her too.
Last season was spent battling a summer cut on my knee in training. An accidental and not very serious, as it seemed at first glance, injury unsettled her until the Russian Championship. But then another decline followed. And in the summer of this year, Sophia received a new injury — this time a stress fracture of the foot, from which she has not yet been able to fully recover. At the end of November the situation worsened, and now we are talking about the fact that the skater risks missing the entire current season.
All this suggests the excessive danger of quadruple jumps, but are they so fair? The generation of Alexandra Trusova, Anna Shcherbakova and Kamila Valieva, who put women's ultra-si on stream, did not break by the age of consciousness and retained the ability to perform complex jumps even after 17 years.
Conversations about the risk of injury as the cause of all ills can also hardly be considered valid. At least, neither Yulia Lipnitskaya, nor Alina Zagitova, nor Evgenia Medvedeva did quadruple jumps — and yet this did not prevent the first two from leaving the sport quite early, and the latter ending her career due to back pain. Ksenia Sinitsyna, who won the short program in Samara, said that two months earlier doctors were unable to diagnose a fracture of her foot bone in a timely manner. And such stories happen all the time. Figure skating in general is a dangerous sport, and you don’t have to do anything difficult to do it. You don’t even have to jump — just remember the terrible fall from the support of Varvara Medvedeva’s girlfriend here in Samara, which miraculously did not end in failure.
With the exception of Akatieva, perhaps everyone we expected to see is in the ranks. Some, for example Maya Khromykh, are still continuing the process of getting in shape, but globally we have not lost anyone. So what's the deal? The reason is quite banal — the “failure” between one outstanding generation and another. Some call this a generational change, but in the current context it is hardly appropriate to talk about this. Because there is no new generation at all yet — with the exception of Adelia Petrosyan, Veronika Zhilina and the same Sofia Akatieva, over the past year or two, no girls have emerged from the juniors ready to fight for first place. Therefore, the “middle class” is responsible for the general level of competition in women’s single skating, which has not undergone significant changes. They skate great, but are they really that much better than what we are used to seeing at the international level? Of course not.
And that's normal. Moreover, this was expected. It was foolish to hope that the Trusovs, Valievs, Shcherbakovs and Zagitovs would appear every year, and with the introduction of a new age limit, the natural process of changing shifts became even more difficult. But there is still no need to panic. No matter how painful it is to observe the lack of ultra-si in women now, we must remember that better times for our figure skating will certainly come. And for those who doubt this, look at the juniors in Samara. We just need to wait for them to become adults.