2020-21 Russian Ladies' Figure Skating

[Elana]

Anyway, congratulations in advance to tomorrow's winner Sasha and Aliona and Liza for the silver and bronze respectively.

Well, this aged nicely.

 

[TripleAxelQueens3]

okay well if they were trying to be fair today, then why wasn't Liza Nugumanova's PCS higher?

 

[flanker]

St. Petersburg beat Moscow here

This is where you realize that Moscow is Tutberidze.

 

[Tolstoj]

Poor Sasha! She probably wasn't feeling well, something must've happened in the background...
Hope she'll get over this bad day quickly and return with vengeance at RusNats.

In a way i think this is good.

Now we'll see the character, and if she can move on from this with a strong skate at Nationals.

With her arsenal she can still beat anyone, but they need to sort it out.

 

[silveruskate]

I'm really liking Aliona's FS more this time, it looks much fuller and even regal. She just doesn't have the stamina or conditioning since so many of the jumps to me looked UR or close.

Well deserved for Liza!! I hope she feels happy with this success after everything that has happened before.

 

[McBibus]

what was rectified in Aliona's TES?

 

[Vemvane]

Congratulations to Liza! What a performance she had, bringing down the house, and well done to her for landing all three of the triple axels across both programmes! That was wonderful to watch.

Aliona and Sasha were both very good sports when losing, particularly Sasha. She has a lot of pluck to go for the technical elements, and the same courage came out waiting for her scores, and when she received them. She is made of stern stuff, to be able to smile even when disappointed.

And that was a wonderful Rostelecom Cup for Anastasiia Guliakova - moving all the way up to the podium! Well done to her - consistent in the SP, and then making the free programme so fun to watch.

 

[Novalis]

My prediction for tomorrow: Alyona will skate clean, but it won't be enough to keep Sasha at bay. Sasha will fall with one quad, but otherwise solid. Liza T will not be clean, not even close, but she'll do enough to claim 3rd spot.

Yeah okay, let's just forget about this post

 

[TripleAxelQueens3]

Today was obviously a very off day for Sasha, and honestly, I'm glad she doesn't have any competitions in the coming month, and thus cna take some time to practice or heal if she has an injury. She's still the quad queen.

 

[Edwin]

We must hope Aleksandra's ankles survived all this, not to mention her nerves. This is not what she came here for.

Hopefully we will hear soon from press reports what went wrong.

Some will thrive under less coaching pressure, others collapse, but this competition has me wondering ....

Still, it is only the start, there is enough time to work things out, on how to tune in this particular athlete or that.

Chakra, again?

 

[TripleAxelQueens3]

oh yeah but I'm very happy for Gulyakova! First GP outing and a bronze medal (and with this level of competition)? Amazing!

 

[silveruskate]

So sad for Sasha, that 4S just set the tone.

 

[TripleAxelQueens3]

what was rectified in Aliona's TES?

Apparently two URs and a flip edge call

 

[Novalis]

So sad for Sasha, that 4S just set the tone.

But man it was high in the air. I was surprised she didn't land it

 

[Vandevska]

Omg the Empress is back! It really sucks that Sasha had a meltdown and that Aliona couldn't do enough to win, but I feel really happy for Liza! I hope this gives her even more motivation for the future.

I feel like Sasha is her own worst enemy. It was kinda clear to me that she wasn't at 100% like during her last competition, so I don't understand why would they go for 4 quads. I wanted to congratulate them on making a smart choice with changing the 3lz-3lo to 3lz-3toe but here we are..... Hope they will take a step back, do a good analysis and a good plan for the future. Apart from the wrong edge on the flip, I'm starting to see underrotations (or at least q) on her triples and that's not good.

Aliona could've won like nothing but she left too many points on the table with stsq2 and the lost levels on the spins. The q (or underrotation) calls certainly didn't help either. I think this problem stems from her having a delay in rotation this season, and while it's impressive it's not the most efficient way to get a jump done cleanly unfortunately.

I enjoyed Liza's program so much, gonna go rewatch it again and again

 

[drivingmissdaisy]

Yikes. It would have been interesting to see Anna here to have a side-by-side look against the former Eteri skaters. I wonder if either of them are questioning their decision to leave.

 

[Tolstoj]

I'm really liking Aliona's FS more this time, it looks much fuller and even regal. She just doesn't have the stamina or conditioning since so many of the jumps to me looked UR or close.

Well deserved for Liza!! I hope she feels happy with this success after everything that has happened before.

I thought the jumps looked great, apart from the first lutz maybe. (apparently she got an UR on the second flip which i didn't notice).

The program needs adjustments, the ending in particular with 2 back to back spins not the best, the steps sequence was not great here (she even stumbled).

It's a good program but Alyona is arguargbly the best russian skater artistically, hopefully more will come as she is getting fitter. It's not bad now tho all things considered.

 

[Novalis]

TeamMishin won men and ladies

 

[meadow]

Yesterday was a little bit dull to watch, but today
I'm not a fan of Liza FS but today she really was on fire and she deserved to win in my opinion. I didn't think the judges would go for it, though, that was a surprise! I thought Alena's reputation would save her (I thought the same for Sasha).
Alena FS was way better than in the 4th stage of Russian Cup and today she seemed more prepared. Even if the program is not the best she was a joy to watch as usual, but without the 3A the technical advantage wasn't there.
Guliakova was really really good! I don't usually follow her closely, but today she totally deserved the third place. As for Liza, I didn't think they would put her above Sasha, but for once the judges positively surprised me.
Sasha clearly had a rough day, I think she seemed off from the warmup. The program was painful to watch today, I hope she's not too disappointed. It was good to see her smile in the kiss and cry, but a skate like that could really shake her confidence... I hope that's not going to happen.

 

[TripleAxelQueens3]

Yikes. It would have been interesting to see Anna here to have a side-by-side look against the former Eteri skaters. I wonder if either of them are questioning their decision to leave.

oh my god these are the comments i was just waiting for. ONE bad skate. Sasha had bad skates under Eteri right? And Eteri isn't a magical wizard, she can't just whisk away q's and edge calls. We really need to stop looking at one bad competition and using at as precedence for a skater's entire career.