- Joined
- Jul 28, 2003
Here is an Artur Werner article on Euros: http://ptichkafs.livejournal.com/30457.html (the link contains hyperlinks, pictures, etc).
In Zagreb, filling orders from papers and answering questions at the conference, I was dreaming of coming back home on Sunday, relaxing for a day, and getting to write about the championship on Tuesday. Unfortunately, due to the never-ending diabetes and its aftermath, my body needs ever more time to restore itself, and during the first few days my tired brain categorically ref used to order my hands to write something readable. After passing the mid-week point, it suggested I forget about the championship, and talk to my readers about the “before and after”. So, I had to find a compromise to prevent my CPU from combusting altogether. Maybe in a year or two, it will forbid me such trips altogether.
Of course, there were happy moments and the championships, but they were rather limited. Let’s take the example of pair skating, which was again won by Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy. On the one hand, I rejoice as someone who lives in Germany and who helped Aliona end up here. On the other hand, the part of memory spared by sclerosis suggests that a certain group of Ukrainian girls had three equally talented ones: Savchenko, Volosozhar, and Chuvayeva. Alenka was split off from Morozov, chased away, and practically driven abroad; Tanechka Chuvayeva was later directed into professional skating. As to the ever-innocent Tanechka Volosozhar, she is still struggling along her Via Dolorosa to the long deserved podium with a heavy cross on her back that her lovely coach put there. I have no idea why does Galina Kukhar hold onto Stanislav Morozov so much, and under different circumstances I might have delighted in such loyalty to a student. In this particular situation, though, a question arises – is it worth it? Is it worth it to sacrifices the hopes of three ladies – Aliona Savchenko, Tatiana Volosozhar, and Galina Kukhar herself – to the hopes of one partner? The time that could suggest a positive answer has almost passed, and I am just sad as I see this. To be fair, there are no suitable replacements at this point either – there is a great deficit of decent male partners nowadays.
The top two Russian teams did not disappoint, but neither did they charm me. Neither one seems convincing. The style of Maria Mukhortova and Maxim Trankov resembles their predecessors at Oleg Vasiliev’s camp evermore; this is especially true of Masha, who should just change her last name to Mukhorototmianina. The team lacks individuality, and there is nowhere it cold acquire it, as Vasiliev controls them with an invisible joystick, and creates them in the image of his previous students.
There is no doubt that Yuko Kawaguchi is a talented and hardworking skater, but her dark head against the Russian bogatyr Alexander Smirnov looks, to put it mildly, as incompatible as “Chio-Chio-San” on the stage of a Hicksville’s theater of proletariat. Tamara Nikolayevna Moskvina will have to come back with a unique image; otherwise the team will be like the Kuril Islands[ii] – neither Russian not Japanese.
Arina Ushakova and Sergei Karev did quite well at their first Europeans. The second Ukrainian team of Ekaterina Kostenko and Roman Talan didn’t get very high, but neither team has yet acquired the experience of surviving the terrarium and battling the authorities.
Ladies’ skating brings to mind an old joke: “Are you a perfectionist?” “No, I’m a satisfactorer!”
Unfortunately, those made up the majority. Obviously, I greatly respect the now two-time European champion Carolina Kostner, whom I remember from when she first appeared at Michael Huth’s rink in Oberstdorf. Every time I visited that Bavarian village, I watched the youngest representative of a famous Tyrolean athletic family grow, gain mastery, struggle, transform from a cocoon into a butterfly, spread her wings, and throughout all that time worked, worked, and worked. However, at twenty-one, Carolina still lacks the maturity that differentiates women’s skating from the girls’ skating of Sarah Hughes or Tara Lipinski. It is also lacking with the well refined Finnish skaters Laura Lepistö and Kiira Korpi; you can’t really see much maturity with the twenty-three year old Sarah Meier from Switzerland either. On the other hand, the Hungarian skater Julia Sebestyen skater maturely after going back to her coach Gurgen Vardanjan; however, her technique struggled along. There isn’t much to say yet about Nina Petushkova, as the fifteen-year-old schoolgirl is a raw material rather than a European level skater; she should not have been sent to such an important competition, and was sent there only because there was no other choice. On the other hand, the seventeen-year-old Ksenia Doronina visibly improved, going from the twenty-eighth place at Europeans last year to this year’s ninth. Rumors say that Piseev is so unhappy with her results as to threaten to send someone else to Worlds. However, whom can he send? Arina Martinova is under constant repair, Aliona Leonova is indignant, and Katarina Gerboldt likely couldn’t place above Annette Dytrt. There is, of course, Olga Naidenova, but she has been all but destroyed under his leadership, and can simply lack the fighting spirit. Other than Naidenova, he could send Elizaveta Tuktamysheva, but eleven-year-olds can’t go to senior championships yet, thank Cinquanta.
The Georgian sweetie Elene Gedevanishvili fully lived up to her federation’s expectations. Seventh place at eighteen years of age is a decent position for a future ascent. Among others, the only memorable one was the Belarusian Julia Sheremet, the main cause of her coach Nina Ruchkina’s heart attacks. She is a talented skater, but she is rather an anarchist. The coach is at the rink as the skater just sets out to that same rink. It may be time for the Belarusian skating federation to introduce switching as the last resort educational argument. You can’t sit on the ice with a spanked butt – it’s both painful and ridiculous.
No surprises were expected in men skating. Without the Plushenko ace, one of the jacks was supposed to be crowned king – either Brian Joubert or Stephane Lambiel. That’s how it was discussed. However, the press supposes but the ice predisposes. The Czech joker Tomas Verner confidently won the European title, getting back to his country the designation it lost 15 years ago.
Lambiel and Joubert settled for the lower steps, while the Petersburg skater Sergei Voronov literally hung onto their hills, as he defeated Joubert in the free skate. If Alexei Urmanov’s student can fully recover from a serious injury and get back into shape, then in Gothenburg he could well compete with the US champions Evan Lysacek and Johnny Weir. As for Andrei Lutai, he could have done much better. In the second tier, both Germans were nice to watch, as both Peter Leibers and Clemens Brummer skated better than ever before. The same goes for the Belarusian Alexander Kazakov, who has learned a lot from Alexei Urmanov. And, as they say, that’s it, folks.
It’s now time to move onto dance. The biggest problem of this discipline is that it’s nearly impossible to objectively rank the free dances. Who do you compare pears with plums? What’s better – “Swan Lake” or “Dirty Dancing”? Foxtrot or Hip-Hop? Even so, the judges must make the difficult and no always fair choice, based largely on their own tastes, likes, and dislikes.
Nonetheless, final placements look fair to me, despite Khokhlova and Novitksi skating their free even better than they did in Paris (where they won over Delobel and Schoenfelder), but being marked lower. Their program has some holes unfilled by technical content, and this time the judges did not ignore them.
Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin won the gold European medals. They won, rather than just received them, as the still injured Shabalin, not yet restored from his surgery, could only skate with the help of the god of medicine Asklepius and his Russian team prophet Victor Ivanovich Anikanov. In the original dance, Maxim’s knee was so unbending that the dancer could not even reach it with his hand. Likewise, he skated the Waltz Masquerade with visible pain. Most likely, as Maxim ages, his legs will retaliate for such harsh treatment, but asking the eternal question of “was it worth it?” we should say – probably, yes. An athlete works his whole life for a record, and he can’t miss a chance to earn the gold medal of the continent’s champion for the first time in his life. Next season can see new times and new names. Perhaps, new marks will be introduced for the taste in the choice of costumes and hairdos, which would push Domnina and Shabalin out of the top twenty. As to consequences, history of the sport has many invalids from among the champions, but let’s hopes that Shabalin will avoid such fate. Medicine is already performing miracles, and it is sure to develop further with time.
Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder led in the compulsories and the original dance, but lost the free. Obviously, the French were not weaker than they were last year in Warsaw where they came in first; neither did their Classical style deteriorate. However, I think that their 2007 European title became the apex, after which the only way is down. The thirty-year old dancers have been showing the same judges their skills for the past eleven years, and you can’t exclude the fact that the judges’ eyes have just gotten used to it. In 2000, when the superb Lithuanian team of Margarita Drobiazko and Povilas Vanagas finally got their World bronze medals in Nice, it was clear that they got the prize largely for their accomplishments in figure skating in general, and that it will be their first last. That’s what happened, so I suspect that on the edges of the Warsaw medals you could read something like “Thanks you and good bye”. In the near future, the abbreviation “D/Sh” will mean Domnina/ Shabalin, not Delobel/ Schoenfelder. It’s too bad the French federation doesn’t put more values on their very good teams of Pechalat/ Bourzat and Carron/ Jost.
Talking about the Lithuanians, this year showed a marked improvement in the Lithuanian team of Katherine Copely and Devidas Stagniunas. It shows the excellent work of American coaches Elena Garanina and Valeri Spiridonov.
It’s too bad that, like always, Russians Ekaterina Rubleva and Ivan Shaefer were sacrificed, and did not make it into the top ten. However, given three participants or teams, the third is always used for bargaining. There was also an interesting rivalry between the two Ukrainian teams – Anna Zadorozhniuk/ Sergei Verbillo and Alla Beknazarova/ Vladimir Zuev. The latter, ending up in fourteenth place, impressed me more by their technique and the speed of execution; however, the former, ending up in eleventh, showed more artistry. That’s hardly surprising, as the team trains with Nikolai Morozov, who learned from Tatiana the mastery of hiding faults and highlighting the strengths.
Like always, one could really enjoy the English team of Phillipa Towler-Green and Phillip Poole. Daughter and student of the legendary dancer Diana Towler, together with her partner showed a beautiful and noble program, and skated, like always, with much joy. This is a prime example of the Olympic mantra “Participation matters more than winning”.
I was specifically asked to pay attention to the Belarusian team of Ksenia Shmirina and Egor Maistrov, which I have done. Recently, the kids started training with the great ice dancer Irina Lobacheva, but whatever improvements they might have made would only be seen by an extremely trained eye. In principle, Shmirina and Maistrov is an equation with three unknowns, where the third unknown is Irina Lobacheva herself. World champion and Olympic silver medalist, a charming woman, faithful wife, and attentive mother is yet to show herself as a coach, and experience shows that the more brilliant skaters usually make mediocre coaches. And vice versa.
Due to permissiveness of the ISU president Ottavio Cinquanta, European and World championships are becoming ever more boring because along with the true athletes who have rightfully won their right to participate in a tough battle, they also feature a fair amount of rather useless “legionnaires” who’ve been bought to allow the functionaries to attend those championships. Today, any skater whose country doesn’t want him can easily buy himself a passport of some banana or oil republic, and tire the audiences under its flag.
For example, the Baku sultanate was represented in Zagreb by a Muscovite Danil Privalov, who made his miserable way through all the figure skating schools of the capital of his now partial homeland. Many coaches gladly took on a promising boy, and equally gladly parted ways with him, realizing that those promises would always remain just that. Perhaps Danil could have done something useful, but he was retrieved, dusted, and given a Muslim passport under the name of Danilagi Privalogly, and put into pair courses at the CSKA with Alexei Chetvertukhin, who at one time trained very decent Canadian skaters. However, it was soon apparent that this athlete’s place was not in the athletic, but rather in a construction division, and he was given an early release. The young man was than taken under the wing of Vladimir Kotin and his chief Elena Tchaikovskaya. Clearly, they won’t make Danilagi into a champion, but Kotin can well use that bunch of sheep’s wool to knit himself a scarf or a pair of socks. Privalov had no problem falling to 27th place in the short, and relaxed for the rest of the championships; however, his Azerbaijani chaperon Gyapik Kupliev smiled on the tribunes like a horse from a cookie. Using such leftovers of the figure productions of Russia and the USA, a merchant of Turkish cloth or Azerbaijani passports get an opportunity to close his shop at one of the Moscow market twice a year, change his dirty robes for a clean suit with a label of a team leader, and go to European and World championships. There, he’ll share a table with the people who won’t ask him for a price of raisins, or why it’s so expensive.
But Shaitan[iii] take them, the Azeri. World championships will see even more leaches who’ve attached themselves to figure skating. Meanwhile, Russian skaters will have even less chances to leave Gothenburg with medals. In ladies’ skating especially, Russian tam will have to work hard, or the placement will be composed of two numbers the first of which will be a two. World championships are likely to be another celebration of skaters from the USA, Canada, China, Japan, and Korea. Princess Victoria has promised to attend the opening ceremonies. Her name means “victory”. Whom will be Swedish victory smile at?
From Wikipedia: “The bogatyr … was a medieval Russian heroic warrior, comparable to the Western European knight errant.”
[ii] Kuril Islands have been contested for awhile between Russia and Japan. The territory is currently part of Russia, though most of the world (including EU) believes it should belong to Japan.
[iii] Muslim entity analogous to Saitan.
Whom will Victoria smile at?
In Zagreb, filling orders from papers and answering questions at the conference, I was dreaming of coming back home on Sunday, relaxing for a day, and getting to write about the championship on Tuesday. Unfortunately, due to the never-ending diabetes and its aftermath, my body needs ever more time to restore itself, and during the first few days my tired brain categorically ref used to order my hands to write something readable. After passing the mid-week point, it suggested I forget about the championship, and talk to my readers about the “before and after”. So, I had to find a compromise to prevent my CPU from combusting altogether. Maybe in a year or two, it will forbid me such trips altogether.
Of course, there were happy moments and the championships, but they were rather limited. Let’s take the example of pair skating, which was again won by Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy. On the one hand, I rejoice as someone who lives in Germany and who helped Aliona end up here. On the other hand, the part of memory spared by sclerosis suggests that a certain group of Ukrainian girls had three equally talented ones: Savchenko, Volosozhar, and Chuvayeva. Alenka was split off from Morozov, chased away, and practically driven abroad; Tanechka Chuvayeva was later directed into professional skating. As to the ever-innocent Tanechka Volosozhar, she is still struggling along her Via Dolorosa to the long deserved podium with a heavy cross on her back that her lovely coach put there. I have no idea why does Galina Kukhar hold onto Stanislav Morozov so much, and under different circumstances I might have delighted in such loyalty to a student. In this particular situation, though, a question arises – is it worth it? Is it worth it to sacrifices the hopes of three ladies – Aliona Savchenko, Tatiana Volosozhar, and Galina Kukhar herself – to the hopes of one partner? The time that could suggest a positive answer has almost passed, and I am just sad as I see this. To be fair, there are no suitable replacements at this point either – there is a great deficit of decent male partners nowadays.
The top two Russian teams did not disappoint, but neither did they charm me. Neither one seems convincing. The style of Maria Mukhortova and Maxim Trankov resembles their predecessors at Oleg Vasiliev’s camp evermore; this is especially true of Masha, who should just change her last name to Mukhorototmianina. The team lacks individuality, and there is nowhere it cold acquire it, as Vasiliev controls them with an invisible joystick, and creates them in the image of his previous students.
There is no doubt that Yuko Kawaguchi is a talented and hardworking skater, but her dark head against the Russian bogatyr Alexander Smirnov looks, to put it mildly, as incompatible as “Chio-Chio-San” on the stage of a Hicksville’s theater of proletariat. Tamara Nikolayevna Moskvina will have to come back with a unique image; otherwise the team will be like the Kuril Islands[ii] – neither Russian not Japanese.
Arina Ushakova and Sergei Karev did quite well at their first Europeans. The second Ukrainian team of Ekaterina Kostenko and Roman Talan didn’t get very high, but neither team has yet acquired the experience of surviving the terrarium and battling the authorities.
Ladies’ skating brings to mind an old joke: “Are you a perfectionist?” “No, I’m a satisfactorer!”
Unfortunately, those made up the majority. Obviously, I greatly respect the now two-time European champion Carolina Kostner, whom I remember from when she first appeared at Michael Huth’s rink in Oberstdorf. Every time I visited that Bavarian village, I watched the youngest representative of a famous Tyrolean athletic family grow, gain mastery, struggle, transform from a cocoon into a butterfly, spread her wings, and throughout all that time worked, worked, and worked. However, at twenty-one, Carolina still lacks the maturity that differentiates women’s skating from the girls’ skating of Sarah Hughes or Tara Lipinski. It is also lacking with the well refined Finnish skaters Laura Lepistö and Kiira Korpi; you can’t really see much maturity with the twenty-three year old Sarah Meier from Switzerland either. On the other hand, the Hungarian skater Julia Sebestyen skater maturely after going back to her coach Gurgen Vardanjan; however, her technique struggled along. There isn’t much to say yet about Nina Petushkova, as the fifteen-year-old schoolgirl is a raw material rather than a European level skater; she should not have been sent to such an important competition, and was sent there only because there was no other choice. On the other hand, the seventeen-year-old Ksenia Doronina visibly improved, going from the twenty-eighth place at Europeans last year to this year’s ninth. Rumors say that Piseev is so unhappy with her results as to threaten to send someone else to Worlds. However, whom can he send? Arina Martinova is under constant repair, Aliona Leonova is indignant, and Katarina Gerboldt likely couldn’t place above Annette Dytrt. There is, of course, Olga Naidenova, but she has been all but destroyed under his leadership, and can simply lack the fighting spirit. Other than Naidenova, he could send Elizaveta Tuktamysheva, but eleven-year-olds can’t go to senior championships yet, thank Cinquanta.
The Georgian sweetie Elene Gedevanishvili fully lived up to her federation’s expectations. Seventh place at eighteen years of age is a decent position for a future ascent. Among others, the only memorable one was the Belarusian Julia Sheremet, the main cause of her coach Nina Ruchkina’s heart attacks. She is a talented skater, but she is rather an anarchist. The coach is at the rink as the skater just sets out to that same rink. It may be time for the Belarusian skating federation to introduce switching as the last resort educational argument. You can’t sit on the ice with a spanked butt – it’s both painful and ridiculous.
No surprises were expected in men skating. Without the Plushenko ace, one of the jacks was supposed to be crowned king – either Brian Joubert or Stephane Lambiel. That’s how it was discussed. However, the press supposes but the ice predisposes. The Czech joker Tomas Verner confidently won the European title, getting back to his country the designation it lost 15 years ago.
Lambiel and Joubert settled for the lower steps, while the Petersburg skater Sergei Voronov literally hung onto their hills, as he defeated Joubert in the free skate. If Alexei Urmanov’s student can fully recover from a serious injury and get back into shape, then in Gothenburg he could well compete with the US champions Evan Lysacek and Johnny Weir. As for Andrei Lutai, he could have done much better. In the second tier, both Germans were nice to watch, as both Peter Leibers and Clemens Brummer skated better than ever before. The same goes for the Belarusian Alexander Kazakov, who has learned a lot from Alexei Urmanov. And, as they say, that’s it, folks.
It’s now time to move onto dance. The biggest problem of this discipline is that it’s nearly impossible to objectively rank the free dances. Who do you compare pears with plums? What’s better – “Swan Lake” or “Dirty Dancing”? Foxtrot or Hip-Hop? Even so, the judges must make the difficult and no always fair choice, based largely on their own tastes, likes, and dislikes.
Nonetheless, final placements look fair to me, despite Khokhlova and Novitksi skating their free even better than they did in Paris (where they won over Delobel and Schoenfelder), but being marked lower. Their program has some holes unfilled by technical content, and this time the judges did not ignore them.
Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin won the gold European medals. They won, rather than just received them, as the still injured Shabalin, not yet restored from his surgery, could only skate with the help of the god of medicine Asklepius and his Russian team prophet Victor Ivanovich Anikanov. In the original dance, Maxim’s knee was so unbending that the dancer could not even reach it with his hand. Likewise, he skated the Waltz Masquerade with visible pain. Most likely, as Maxim ages, his legs will retaliate for such harsh treatment, but asking the eternal question of “was it worth it?” we should say – probably, yes. An athlete works his whole life for a record, and he can’t miss a chance to earn the gold medal of the continent’s champion for the first time in his life. Next season can see new times and new names. Perhaps, new marks will be introduced for the taste in the choice of costumes and hairdos, which would push Domnina and Shabalin out of the top twenty. As to consequences, history of the sport has many invalids from among the champions, but let’s hopes that Shabalin will avoid such fate. Medicine is already performing miracles, and it is sure to develop further with time.
Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder led in the compulsories and the original dance, but lost the free. Obviously, the French were not weaker than they were last year in Warsaw where they came in first; neither did their Classical style deteriorate. However, I think that their 2007 European title became the apex, after which the only way is down. The thirty-year old dancers have been showing the same judges their skills for the past eleven years, and you can’t exclude the fact that the judges’ eyes have just gotten used to it. In 2000, when the superb Lithuanian team of Margarita Drobiazko and Povilas Vanagas finally got their World bronze medals in Nice, it was clear that they got the prize largely for their accomplishments in figure skating in general, and that it will be their first last. That’s what happened, so I suspect that on the edges of the Warsaw medals you could read something like “Thanks you and good bye”. In the near future, the abbreviation “D/Sh” will mean Domnina/ Shabalin, not Delobel/ Schoenfelder. It’s too bad the French federation doesn’t put more values on their very good teams of Pechalat/ Bourzat and Carron/ Jost.
Talking about the Lithuanians, this year showed a marked improvement in the Lithuanian team of Katherine Copely and Devidas Stagniunas. It shows the excellent work of American coaches Elena Garanina and Valeri Spiridonov.
It’s too bad that, like always, Russians Ekaterina Rubleva and Ivan Shaefer were sacrificed, and did not make it into the top ten. However, given three participants or teams, the third is always used for bargaining. There was also an interesting rivalry between the two Ukrainian teams – Anna Zadorozhniuk/ Sergei Verbillo and Alla Beknazarova/ Vladimir Zuev. The latter, ending up in fourteenth place, impressed me more by their technique and the speed of execution; however, the former, ending up in eleventh, showed more artistry. That’s hardly surprising, as the team trains with Nikolai Morozov, who learned from Tatiana the mastery of hiding faults and highlighting the strengths.
Like always, one could really enjoy the English team of Phillipa Towler-Green and Phillip Poole. Daughter and student of the legendary dancer Diana Towler, together with her partner showed a beautiful and noble program, and skated, like always, with much joy. This is a prime example of the Olympic mantra “Participation matters more than winning”.
I was specifically asked to pay attention to the Belarusian team of Ksenia Shmirina and Egor Maistrov, which I have done. Recently, the kids started training with the great ice dancer Irina Lobacheva, but whatever improvements they might have made would only be seen by an extremely trained eye. In principle, Shmirina and Maistrov is an equation with three unknowns, where the third unknown is Irina Lobacheva herself. World champion and Olympic silver medalist, a charming woman, faithful wife, and attentive mother is yet to show herself as a coach, and experience shows that the more brilliant skaters usually make mediocre coaches. And vice versa.
Due to permissiveness of the ISU president Ottavio Cinquanta, European and World championships are becoming ever more boring because along with the true athletes who have rightfully won their right to participate in a tough battle, they also feature a fair amount of rather useless “legionnaires” who’ve been bought to allow the functionaries to attend those championships. Today, any skater whose country doesn’t want him can easily buy himself a passport of some banana or oil republic, and tire the audiences under its flag.
For example, the Baku sultanate was represented in Zagreb by a Muscovite Danil Privalov, who made his miserable way through all the figure skating schools of the capital of his now partial homeland. Many coaches gladly took on a promising boy, and equally gladly parted ways with him, realizing that those promises would always remain just that. Perhaps Danil could have done something useful, but he was retrieved, dusted, and given a Muslim passport under the name of Danilagi Privalogly, and put into pair courses at the CSKA with Alexei Chetvertukhin, who at one time trained very decent Canadian skaters. However, it was soon apparent that this athlete’s place was not in the athletic, but rather in a construction division, and he was given an early release. The young man was than taken under the wing of Vladimir Kotin and his chief Elena Tchaikovskaya. Clearly, they won’t make Danilagi into a champion, but Kotin can well use that bunch of sheep’s wool to knit himself a scarf or a pair of socks. Privalov had no problem falling to 27th place in the short, and relaxed for the rest of the championships; however, his Azerbaijani chaperon Gyapik Kupliev smiled on the tribunes like a horse from a cookie. Using such leftovers of the figure productions of Russia and the USA, a merchant of Turkish cloth or Azerbaijani passports get an opportunity to close his shop at one of the Moscow market twice a year, change his dirty robes for a clean suit with a label of a team leader, and go to European and World championships. There, he’ll share a table with the people who won’t ask him for a price of raisins, or why it’s so expensive.
But Shaitan[iii] take them, the Azeri. World championships will see even more leaches who’ve attached themselves to figure skating. Meanwhile, Russian skaters will have even less chances to leave Gothenburg with medals. In ladies’ skating especially, Russian tam will have to work hard, or the placement will be composed of two numbers the first of which will be a two. World championships are likely to be another celebration of skaters from the USA, Canada, China, Japan, and Korea. Princess Victoria has promised to attend the opening ceremonies. Her name means “victory”. Whom will be Swedish victory smile at?
From Wikipedia: “The bogatyr … was a medieval Russian heroic warrior, comparable to the Western European knight errant.”
[ii] Kuril Islands have been contested for awhile between Russia and Japan. The territory is currently part of Russia, though most of the world (including EU) believes it should belong to Japan.
[iii] Muslim entity analogous to Saitan.
