January 4-8, I believe, in St. Petersburg.
Any sign of Plush???
I think dance, pairs and men's at Russian Nationals will be very interesting this year. I honestly couldn't even tell you the name of one Russian lady that's competing.
do you have a view of the juniors in the russian national what kind of result you expect.
. I think the Junior ice dance competition will be more intriguing than the Seniors.
t!
Russian national in dance the 3rd spot will be contested by 3 to 4 equal teams two of which will be
Anachtasiya Platonov-Alexander Grachev
Natalia Mikhailova - Andrei Maksimishin
OK..i am lead to believe Anachtasiya Platonov-Alexander Grachev are a better team then B/S..and they training under the same coach..but time will tellYes, these teams are 'reconstituted' from Platonova / Maksimishin, Mikhailova / Sergeev and Romanovskaya / Grachev.
BUT
Platonova / Maksimishin and Mikhailova / Sergeev had disappointing results when they moved up from Junior to Senior in the 2006-2007 season, and Romanovskaya / Grachev floundered as Seniors after winning JW.
So I'm not convinced that either of the new teams are going to be any better than Bobrova / Soloviev (who had a pretty good Senior debut).
There is a person who has a huge responsability that the state of the Russian ladies is this bad and deteriorating season after season. I won't give any name, but you could imagine who this person is.
Russian women were quite strong from 1994 through 2006, with Markova, Slutskaya, Butyrskaya, Sokolova, Soldatova and Volchkova.
During that period, Russian women earned 114 medals (44 gold, 40 silver and 30 bronze), including:
63 GP event medals (27 gold, 21 silver, 15 bronze)
13 GPF medals (4 gold, 4 silver, 5 bronze)
25 European medals (10 gold, 9 silver, 6 bronze)
11 Worlds medals (3 gold, 4 silver, 4 bronze)
2 Olympic medals (1 silver, 1 bronze)
...Men is always a crapshoot. Any of Griazev, Voronov, Uspenski, Dobrin, Lutai could win. But they are all so inconsistent!
.... Besides, it is not like Russian women were that strong either.