WAR, DICTATORS, THE MACHINE, AND FIGURE SKATING - II

 

Read Part 1 of this series here

THE DEATH STAR

The season immediately following Alina Zagitova and Evgenia Medvedeva’s 1-2 at the Olympic Games in South Korea saw a slight cooling in what had seemed like Russia’s march to domination. Medvedeva was nursing injuries and undergoing some personal turmoil. Zagitova was still the best skater in the field, winning the World Championships and two Grand Prix, but the Japanese skaters Rika Kihira and Satoko Miyahara were giving her a run for her money. Kazakhstan’s Elizabeta Tursynbayeva and Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto were also making a mark. Kihira would even end up defeating Zagitova at the Grand Prix Finals.

Alina Zagitova, World Champion.
Yes, she really was that cute.

But it was the Junior Ranks that were truly showing where the future lay. Every important Junior event, barring one, were won by one of the 3 skaters who comprised ‘3A’, culmninating in Alexandra Trusova winning the Junior World Championships. 

 

The season that followed would be complete domination by 3A. Between them, they won every Grand Prix, culminating in standing on the Grand Prix Finals podium together; Kostornoia in gold, Scherbakova in silver and Trusova in bronze, and repeating the feat at the European Championships, with an identical podium. Alina Zagitova, once the Queen of the sport, was relegated to fighting for silvers and bronzes.

Alena Kostornoia

What powered this? Well, the answer was – Quads. I touched briefly upon this in my earlier essay, but maybe it’s time to delve into the subject in a little more detail. 

 

Figure skating is not a race or a throw or a lift or a jump where time taken, distance thrown, weight lifted or height jumped gives an objective winner. It is a ‘judged’ sport, and in a judged sport, winners are decided by points assigned by judges. Over the years, as the sport’s governing body, the ISU, sought to make the judging process more and more transparent and objective, a lot of the sport became mathematics rather than art. The skating routine was broken down into ‘elements’. 

 

Jumps, when the skater left the ice and rotated in the air before landing.

Spins, which I hope is self-explanatory,

Step sequences, where skaters are judged on skating skill, based on how clean their edgework is and how intricate the patterns they draw in the ice are,  

Choreo sequences, the artistic interpretation of the music they are skating to.

Anna Scherbakova, mid-spin. A layback spin.

Each element is assigned a certain ‘Base Value’, meaning that a skater performing that particular element, as long as it was serviceable (no falls, wobbles) would get that Base Value marks. Executing it well would get an additional score as ‘Grade of Execution’. A failed element would result in a deduction from the Base Value. 

 

Naturally, the Base Value assigned to an element was higher, the more difficult the element was. And in general, jumps were considered the most difficult elements. Now there are various kinds of jumps, and each has a different Base Value, going from the relatively easier Toeloop (easier because it allows the skate to use the skate’s front end toe-pick to launch a jump) to the difficult Axel (the only jump where the skater has to launch forwards and do an additional half-rotation). Similarly, the more rotations the skater does in the air, the higher the Base Value, so a triple-loop would score higher than a double-loop, and so on.

 

Until 2019, no woman had successfully completed a Quadruple jump in competition. Surya Bonaly had tried, back in the early 90’s, but it was not fully rotated. Alexandta Trusova, however, was doing every Quad jump apart from the Axel, and while Scherbakova was doing just the one, it was far more stable than Trusova' who tended go all-or-nothing. Kostornoia did not have a Quad, but she had a beautiful and stable triple-axel.

 

In other words, what 3A brought to Figure Skating was akin to when graphite rackets were introduced to tennis in the 1980’s. Suddenly, it seemed as though the ‘field’ was using the equivalent of wooden rackets, though in reality, there was no change in the equipment, as such. 3A, all of whom trained with the same coach in Khrustalny, Russia, had simply taken the sport to another plane. 

Alexandra Trusova doing a quad. Don't let how easy
she makes it look deceive you. This is
INCREDIBLY difficult.

The emergence of Covid-19 devastated the 2020-21 season. The skaters were largely disallowed from travel, barely able to train, and competitions were curtailed. The Junior Season was hardly held at all. Evgenia Medvedeva formally retired. Kostornoia spent much of the season injured. 

In this curtailed environment, Anna Scherbakova moved into the dominant position and Elizaveta Tuktamshayeva, now in her 20's (practically ancient by Russian standards) returned to form, unveiling a fierce triple-axel and a mature musical interpretation that oft times showed up how inadequate Scherbakova and Trusova were in that department. 

Elzaveta Tuktamshayeva (Liza Tuktik)
The best skater to never go to the Olympics

At the end of the season, Anna Scherbakova won the World Championship, ahead of Tuktamshayeva and Trusova. This established Scherbakova as the firm favourite for the following season, and that season, 2021-22 was an Olympic year. But no matter who much the English-language press insisted Scherbakova was the favourite going into the Olympics, she refused to acknowledge it. 

Perhaps part of that was genuine modesty. To this day, Scherbakova is known for being gracious and diplomatic and highly intelligent. But part of it was surely that Scherbakova knew something they, the non-Russian press, did not. After all, the Junior circuit had been heavily curtailed that year, so perhaps they did not quite 'get' it, but Anna Scherbakova trained alongside Kamila Valieva, and she knew what was coming.

 

For in that year, the year before Russian forces were to invade Ukraine, Kamila Valieva was going to compete as a senior. And that was going to change everything.

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