The “blue” team of Olympic champion Anna Shcherbakova won the fourth Channel One Figure Skating Cup, which ended on Sunday in St. Petersburg. The second was the “red” team of ex-world champion Elizaveta Tuktamysheva, the third was the “white” team of Olympic champion Alina Zagitova. The tournament included incredible performances, unusual competitions, and surprises, but most importantly — a celebration, after which no one remained indifferent.
The captain's competition that opened the Sunday program of the Channel One Cup began with a surprise. In two competitions — overcoming an obstacle course and collecting toys from the ice at speed — Anna Shcherbakova was unable to compete due to injury. But at the same time, Anna Shcherbakova still competed with Alina Zagitova and Elizaveta Tuktamysheva. Paradox? Not at all. The thing is that the Olympic champion was replaced by her full namesake — the champion of Russia last season in ice dancing among juniors, performing in a duet with Yegor Goncharov.
““She warned me in advance that I would not be able to skate,” she revealed secret captain of the «blues». — And the idea to invite Anya Shcherbakova appeared last night. Many thanks to her and her partner, they only found out about it yesterday and agreed to fly in and support the team.»
Shcherbakova Jr. did not disappoint — she worthily replaced her eminent namesake. She was especially successful in the competition, in which the figure skater who collected the most toys from the ice in a minute won. Anya managed to make two passes in a minute to the half of the skating rink where the plush creatures were scattered for the captains. Tuktamysheva also showed excellent results in this process.
But Zagitova was let down by the wrong tactics: she decided to stuff stuffed dogs under her T-shirt, after which she encountered unexpected difficulties in getting them out. The stubborn little animals didn’t want to fall out, which is why Alina had to fiddle with her T-shirt for extra time and at some point even lift it a little higher than she probably would have liked. As a result, Zagitova was late for the second round of collecting toys and took last place in this competition. But the Olympic champion redeemed herself in a quiz on knowledge of facts from the life of her team’s skaters — here she was at her best.
However, the leadership was still retained by Shcherbakova’s team, which was better on the first day of the tournament. But the preliminary schedule indicated that after free programs in ice dancing and pair skating, the pursuers would reduce the gap. The first discipline confirmed the forecast: the “blues” Sofia Shevchenko and Andrey Ezhlov predictably lost to both the “whites” Sofya Leontyeva/Daniil Gorelkin and the “reds” Ekaterina Mironova/Evgeniy Ustenko. But in the free program of sports pairs, the first representatives of Shcherbakova’s team, Elizaveta Osokina and Artem Gritsaenko, set the bar so high with a clean skate that neither the “red” Yulia Artemyeva/Alexey Bryukhanov, nor the “white” Natalya Khabibullina/Ilya Knyazhuk could overcome it.< br>The approximate status quo remained even after the final competition at this tournament — the “challenge” of the fans. Each team had one fan representing them and competed in the crocodile game, a quiz about facts about their captains, and how to lace speed skates. However, Zagitova’s team managed to get closer to the leaders by one point, after which it became clear that only the “Whites” have a real chance of catching up with Shcherbakova’s team.
And the first figure skater of captain Zagitova, who performed in the free program — namely Margarita Bazylyuk — under the furious screams of Alina, she cleanly performed the skate with quadruple jumps and a triple axel. She showed a result that was not surpassed by anyone, including the Russian champion Adelia Petrosyan, who tore off one of her quads. But Zagitova’s team was unable to overtake the leader — its second figure skater Alina Gorbacheva made several mistakes and ended up in last place.
However, before the last event of the program, the “whites” still had a chance of winning — unlike Tuktamysheva’s team, which only had to fight for second place in the men’s free program. Even the incredible performances of 14-year-old juniors Arseny Fedotov and Lev Lazarev could not help her win — later Elizaveta even offered to give them a separate prize. Zagitova’s hopes for the final success of her skaters were finally destroyed by the magnificent Daniil Samsonov from Shcherbakova’s team, who amazed him with three quadruple jumps, which he managed for the first time after recovering from a serious injury. Well, the not very successful final performance of Roman Savosin sent the Whites to third place.
“»I'm overwhelmed with emotions, I'm incredibly proud of the guys from my team, they showed up at every performance, fought, everyone did their best, they put all their strength into the team. I'm glad that I was with them at that moment, «I tried to support them, they're all incredible guys. But we're all one big team, we were worried about everyone (the opponents), there were a lot of cool skates, and I'm glad that I could be there and experience all the emotions,» concluded Shcherbakova, who also won as captain and in the second Channel One Cup.
There really were so many impressions that the skaters did not want to leave the ice for a very long time. At first they took photographs in teams, and then mixed into one blue, red and white pile. There were hugs, laughter, tears — but only happiness. For the victory, Shcherbakova's team received 10 million rubles, Tuktamysheva's team for second place — 8.5 million, Zagitova's team — 7 million. But this was the very case when happiness is not in money, but in simple human communication, which is priceless.