Yana Khokhlova and Sergey Novitsky have to prove that they are Russia's best skating dancers this year.
Photo: ITAR-TASS
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Intl. Figure Skating Season Starts
The Skate America tournament in Everett, Washington, the first event in the commercial Grand Prix series, marks the beginning of the figure skating season. The Russian team will be represented in the forms of the sport. Maria Mukhortova and Maxim Trankov will participate in pairs; Maria Monko and Ilya Tkachenko, winners of the juniors tournament last year and debuting as adults, will take part in dance, and Andrey Gryazev will skate single.
This season, which will be decisive in setting the stage for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, will not see some of the familiar leaders of the sport. Canadian world champion Jeffrey Buttle has announced his retirement. Shortly after Buttle, Swiss two-time world champion and all-around skating darling and legend Stephane Lambiel also bowed out of the rink amid reports of chronic back pain. Judging from the published lineup, it seems that Olympic champion Evgeni Plushenko is not making his much-awaited comeback. He has been quite tied up with matter far from sports. Therefore, Asian, and particularly Japanese skaters can be expected to dominate in singles.
Russia’s main hope is its dancers, especially European champions Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin, the newly formed duo of Natalia Linichuk and Alexey Gorshkov and European and world bronze medalists Yana Khokhlova and Sergey Novitsky. In addition to them, Zagreb bronze winners Yuko Kawaguti and Alexander Smirnov and Maria Mukhortova and Maxim Trankov will try to make a way for themselves. Kawaguti and Smirnov are being coached by Tamara Moskvina, who has great confidence in them and in Mukhortova and Trankov.
New International Skating Union rules prevent the top three skaters from the previous year from facing off against each other, thus allowing lower-ranking skaters mire opportunity to compete with them directly and move up the ranks. As a cost-cutting measure, the ISU has reduced the number of judges from 11 to 9, leading to discontent in countries with highly developed figure skating.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 24, 2008
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