At the World Figure Skating Championships in Milan, the Russians won a total of two medals. Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov won silver and on Saturday Mikhail Kolyada won bronze.
For a 23-year-old athlete from St. Petersburg, who had already won bronze medals at the European Championships twice. And this is his highest achievement in personal competitions. Tarasova and Morozov in turn rose to a higher level compared with the last year’s World Cup in Helsinki. Finally, for the named athletes, the tournament in Milan was a definite compensation for the failure at the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang.
This time there is no Gold in the the Russian skaters’ medal haul, which disconcerted us a little. After all to good quickly you get used to it. You see, in recent years, the medals were won in ladies’ singles. In 2015, gold was won by Elizaveta Tuktamysheva, then two times in a row by Evgenia Medvedeva, who is now absent due to the injury.
Zagitova’s failure is a sensation. But it is also a reminder that there are no guaranteed victories in sports, and that stable high achievements, demonstrated by Medvedeva for a long time, and by Zagitova this season, deserve great respect.
Last time Russia was left without Gold at the World Championships was not so long ago, four years ago in Saitama, Japan, where Ksenia Stolbova/Fyodor Klimov and Yulia Lipnitskaya won silver medals. A similar result, two second places (Tatiana Volosozhar/Maxim Trankov and Alena Leonova) was two years earlier in Nice.
In 2011 in Moscow Russians won one silver and one bronze medal, as this time, in the same disciplines! Then Volosozhar/Trankov also were second, and Arthur Gachinsky was third in men’s singles. By the way, since then up to now, we did not win any awards at the World Championships in the men’s singles.
If we look back through history, we find that in 2007 in Tokyo, Russian figure skaters won no medals. Thus cognition comes through comparison.
It is gratifying that in a year in Saitama Russia will be represented by three instead of two singles. To get the maximum quota places, it is necessary that the sum of the two country’s best skaters’ positions did not exceed 13. Kolyada and Aliev fulfilled this condition 3+7. We avoided the loss in women’s figure skating as well. Despite Zagitova’s failure, the sum of positions of her and Sotskova is exactly 13 (5+8). Alas, in Ice Dancing and at the next World Championships our country will be represented by two duos, because Alexandra Stepanova/Ivan Bukin and Tiffany Zahorski/Jonathan Guerreiro took 7th and 8th places.
