- Joined
- Feb 24, 2012
Exactly. Considering how many talented juniors they had at the time it baffles me that they would give her junior worlds AND senior worlds. Especially considering how close in time they were and another athlete could have been more prepared for senior worlds or she could have focused exclusively on senior worlds.
She’s a very talented skater and if she were from any other country she’d likely be national champ. But I consider her unexceptional by Russian standards. She is similar to Sofia, but I prefer Sofia as I feel she has a better performance quality (she’s got spunk and can sell her program) and Sofia is more consistent.
The other thing I find suspicious is that she only narrowly beat Alina at Russian Nationals by less than a point. RusFed could easily have propped up their olympic champion to give her more confidence going into the remaining competitions, to save face, and shut down any questions about whether Alina should be sent to worlds. But they didn’t. They propped up Stasya to boost her to first in seniors. They’ve shown they have no problem boosting certain skaters or suppressing other skates’ scores. So to me that indicated that they really wanted to justify sending her the big competitions.
Despite my concerns about puberty affecting Russia in particular they have a huge pool. It is sad when a skater like Alena Leonova are all but a memory though they skate on. One wonders what was going on in the minds of Anna P and Elena R. coming back from injury and seeing such a huge competitive circle of skaters. Maria Sotskova, Konstantinova and Sofia in any other country but Russia and Japan would be threatening to win Nationals. But against the current crop they are rather bland with nothing artistically or technically to make them stand outs in Russia. Forget about Gubanova, Sera? et al. Russia has the 3A's, Evgenia, Liza and Alina. Making top ten at Russian Nats is quite an honor. It says a lot when it is highly possible that the current world and bronze medallists may not make the 2020 world team. Poor Sofia European champion and somehow gets forgotten in the dust. I am sure a lot of countries would be envious of the situatin in Russia.