Anastasia Shpilevaya & Grigory Smirnov

[sunn1ly]

Maybe because there are already two Russian teams at this event, they didn't have any chance to begin with. Such a pity that they had injury in their last Junior season and did not have the chance to fight on their own for the right of Grand Prix as seniors. The Federation does not appreciate them enough and chooses a team without history and results over their national junior champion from 2 years ago, youth Olympic champion a couple with better season results and total results and skills.
I guess I am mentioning this far two often but if nobody talks about it the Fed will just continue to disrespects the hard work of some in sake of the connections of other.

 

[The Finn]

Assuming they want to qualify for the Russian nationals they will be very busy for the next several days because they will skate at the Alpen Trophy and then they need to skate at the 5th stage of Russian Cup which will start on tuesday. So, they need to skate two competitions within 6 days. Obviously it helps that the 5th Russian cup will be held in Moscow which is probably why they didn't skate earlier Russian Cup events. They aren't on the preliminary entry list of 5th Russian Cup but those lists are never complete and since they have skated only one cup event so far it should be safe to assume that they will skate there.

Too bad that they aren't on the entry list of Golden Spin because assuming S/K will do fine in France then they will obviously WD from Golden Spin which means that there should be one open spot. Currently E/B is the only team on the sub list.

 

[The Finn]

They missed pretty much the whole last season and therefor it is great to see them back but still I feel a little disappointed to see that they are beaten by teams they should be beating. Today at the Alpen Trophy they scored about 3.5 points less than what S/E scored at the junior event. That been said, they did okay, not great but okay considering this was only their 3rd competition after their JGP event last season. They are 4th after RD with a score of about 63.5 points.

 

[sunn1ly]

They had a fall on twizzles. Even with this their score is 20 points higher than Morozov Bagin. They could easily have at least 10 more points without the error. Their tango was great. I would be frustrated if i have to skate in some Challenger while so much more weaker couple skate on GP. They were 4th. That said I did not expected they to beat neigther Macnamara Carpenter neigther Lautiault Le Gac . They have the skills to if they had the support of the federation. Nothing disappointing, apart from their absence from Rostelecom. The person from the Fed that has taken the decision to not give them GP should appologize them and the whole country and all the ice dancers because it was unfair and disrespectful for the Russian ice dance.

 

[The Finn]

Alpen Trophy was a very disappointing event for them. They were 4th.

RD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-moJwFZXt0
FD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmIUcJ1905U

At the moment it doesn't look like they will get a 3rd CS event but S/K will likely WD from Golden Spin, so, maybe S/S could be added there as a late entry. At the moment E/B is the only sub there. E/B was actually one of the entries for a while but then they got replaced by Morozov/Bagin.

 

[The Finn]

They are not on entry list of 5th Russian Cup and therefor they can't qualify for the Senior Nationals. They had all the time in the world to skate any Russian Cup event between 2nd and 5th event but they skated none. I wonder how this happened?

There is still a possibility that they will get invited to skate at the nationals though. The amount of teams taken to the championships varies, so, there is space if Fed wants to include them. Last year there were 13 ice dance teams but the year before that only 10 and so on. It is possible that they were already promised that they will be invited because of the Rostelecom thing. It is also possible that they had been given permission to miss the 5th event because they skated at the Alpen Trophy. Will have to wait and see how it goes.

 

[Mohacz]

I hoped they would participate in the Golden Spin of Zagreb, but I have just checked the entries and found out the Russian Federation decided to send there Morozov/Bagin. I don't understand insisting on this pair. They are quite mediocre and their level does not deserve to be rewarded with participation in a GP event or even B events if there are more and better pairs. It's true that Shpilevaya and Smirnov did not have the best performance last week, although I suspect that even if they had done well and beaten their SBs they still would not have medaled there.

 

[The Finn]

I hoped they would participate in the Golden Spin of Zagreb, but I have just checked the entries and found out the Russian Federation decided to send there Morozov/Bagin. I don't understand insisting on this pair. They are quite mediocre and their level does not deserve to be rewarded with participation in a GP event or even B events if there are more and better pairs.

Well, one needs to understand that when the factors are purely political then the results are totally irrelevant. Everybody knew what their level was before Rostelecom and it wasn't any surprise that they scored the worst score of the GP season out of all the teams, and that they also scored worst than any of the nine Russian junior teams who skated in the JGP season this season.

 

[The Finn]

At the moment it doesn't look like they will get a 3rd CS event but S/K will likely WD from Golden Spin, so, maybe S/S could be added there as a late entry. At the moment E/B is the only sub there. E/B was actually one of the entries for a while but then they got replaced by Morozov/Bagin.

Now S/K have WD but E/B is still only a sub, so at the moment Russia has only 2 entries. I really hope S/S would get/want that 3rd spot.

 

[The Finn]

Russia has done some changes to their Golden Spin assignments but in ice dance they still have only two entries. So, probably no S/S in Zagreb. They really would have needed to score above 170 points to have a chance to get a GP event because there is a big possibility that Morozov/Bagin will get the Rostelecom host spot next season also, and even if they don't then there will also be new senior teams who might get it if those teams don't get two GP events otherwise.

 

[The Finn]

YAY, they are on the entry list for the nationals.

https://fsrussia.ru/files/docs/competitons/1819/rus_nat_1819_training_groups.pdf

 

[aperon]

Russian Nationals 2019 https://biqle.ru/watch/-160970610_456240900

 

[The Finn]

2019 Bavarian Open. Sadly, there is no sound. They are 3rd after RD with a score of 65 points.

RD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imN2QD6YALg

 

[The Finn]

Yay, they won! They got a nice score also - 108 points in FD and 173 points in total. Great job!

 

[sunn1ly]

Congratulations for the win. Good score even with twizzles issues, the score would have been even better if clean

 

[aname]

Congratulations for the win. Good score even with twizzles issues, the score would have been even better if clean

I didn't even notice the FD twizzle blade grab problem until the slo-mos! Grigory did a really good job of hiding his mistake. Maybe the judges (as opposed to the tech panel) didn't really notice it either: they got +2.18 GOE on that element! http://www.deu-event.de/results/BO2019/BO2019_SeniorIceDance_FD_Scores.pdf

Looking at the RD PCS, a couple of the judges were really harsh on them, e.g. giving them 6.50s for skating skills (why?!?), so it was a relief to see that the FD PCS were better. I do feel bad for Turkkila/Versluis for that scary fall they had in the step sequence that dropped them to 3rd, but honestly S/S needed this win way more than T/V did. Good for them!

I really want to see this team on the GP circuit next season, I hope their Fed starts to treat them with the respect they deserve!

 

[sunn1ly]

Yeah good job from Grigory to mask the grab of the blade.I also noticed only on the review what happened. The short program scores were joke even with the twizzles mistake there. Maybe the judges will start to acknowledge them if they see them in more important competitions.

They have shown fair and square they deserve the GP spots. For me they are among the most memorable Russian couples, but we could watch them only on low quality live streams. Hope a video of their free dance emerge, I want to watch it again.

 

[aname]

Hope a video of their free dance emerge, I want to watch it again.

You can watch the archived competition stream on the Bavarian Open Dailymotion channel.

Link to the last competition day, including the FD event: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x725a3n

For S/S, scroll and start watching around the 6 h 22 min mark or so.

 

[The Finn]

2019 Bavarian Open

FD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAf7968VmUw

 

[The Finn]

S/S will be skating at the Universiade Because S/A have WD. Looking forward to see if S/S can beat E/B and/or P/M at the Universiade.