Irina Slutskaya Jumps to First Place
// Figure skating world championship
Irina Slutskaya, whose performance in Moscow was simply perfect, became the first skater in the history of Russian single women’s skating (including Soviet times) to win the title of twice world champion on Saturday. A day earlier ice dancers Tatiana Nevka and Roman Kostomarov defended their champion title. So, Russians are leading in all three events.
Slutskaya, who was 2.83 points ahead of Sasha Cohen after two events, was the last one to perform. This obviously put extra psychological pressure on her. “I hadn’t watched my main competitors skate, but knew what their scores were,” she will say later.
When she came out on ice, there was no single indifferent person at the arena. The whole country was supporting Slutskaya, who had struggled with a heart ailment, by reason of which, she had missed all last year’s competitions, except for the world championship (where she finished ninth), and who had not lost a single start she took part in this year. While waiting for her turn on the last event Slutskaya could see very well, what it took for her coach Zhanna Gromova, producer of her program Igor Bobrin and choreograph Margarita Romanenko to hide their emotions from her. Slutskaya braced herself and looked confident – maybe because she was successful at the Novogorsk pre-championship training, or maybe because half an hour ago during warm-up she had felt a burst of energy and realized she was in the best shape she had ever been.
A month before, when Slutskaya won her sixth continent title, her skating, was far from flawless. Realizing that, she made it known that she would prepare some complicated elements for the worlds, although did not specify what they would be. Now Slutskaya’s secret weapon was revealed – two cascades – triple lutz – triple ritberger (the hardest element in modern women’s skating) and triple Salchow and a triple Salchow-triple ritberger-double toe-loop. After brilliantly performing both, Slutskaya must have felt freer on ice, so instead of the announced triple lutz she also made a triple ritberger. The new system is unforgiving to such liberties, but Slutskaya’s punishment reflected only on the sum of her points, which could have been just a little higher, although her score was already the record.
“When I realized that what I had feared the most was already behind, and I had done the jumps, I started crying. So, I was still crying when I went into the final step sequence followed by spins,” Slutskaya admitted. One could see how she tried her hardest to hold back the tears on the pedestal. It was later, that she called her feelings indescribable, and her second gold medal – the most precious in the whole collection. “I wouldn’t wish it on anybody to go through what I have in my career,” Slutskaya said. “Nobody among my skater colleagues, had to come back so many times and through so many hard moments like I did. When at last I was all shaking and crying in the arms of my genius coach, Zhanna Fedorovna, who was also nervous, could only ask why I had decided to do the extra ritberger. The most important thing for me now is that I will become a role model for people, who don’t believe they can overcome their infirmity and come back to normal life. God, may I not be the last one.”
While Slutskaya has all reason to think herself a hundred-percent victor of the Moscow Championship, that is not the case for Tatiana Nevka and Roman Kostomarov, who made four mistakes, although minor, in their performance. They are somewhat unhappy with it themselves, not counting the judges and their many fans in bewilderment over their performance to Tosca. Finally, after the last official competition this season, they themselves admitted that they chose a wrong kind of program. “When we were preparing it, we based it on music, rather than elements, which is the traditional way ice dance performance is planned,” Navka said. “In addition, we were too absorbed with the image of Tosca, which is very hard to express through technical means we have at our disposal. We had realized the difficulty of our situation in January at the Grand Prix in Japan, where we won silver, so we switched the elements of the program. We will correct ourselves before the Olympic season, and will plan our future programs in a totally different way.”
The confusion with Evgeny Plushchenko, who withdrew from the championship because of a groin trauma, and according to different sources was supposed to go to St. Petersburg last Thursday, continued with another story. Ari Zakarian, Plushchenko’s manager said that on his way to the airport, or maybe the train station – it is not clear what means of travel he had chosen – Evgeny turned around his car and headed for the Central Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics together with his coach Alexey Mishin. The x-ray did not show whether Plushchenko had torn the groin muscle. “If it is torn and requires a surgery, it’s better to have it done in Germany,” Zakaryan said on Saturday. “However, I don’t think that Plushchenko will recover in the time for the Olympiad. At least the history of figure skating has no precedents of athletes coming back and performing at the same level as before, after such surgery. In any case, Zhenya is receiving treatment and has already cancelled his performance, scheduled for Monday in St. Petersburg. I don’t think he will be going on the Collin’s Tour, which has scheduled the first performance for March 26. He may lose a lot of money, but what matters most in this case is his health.”
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Table of Medals
Gold Silver Bronze Total
1. Russia 3 1 0 4
2. Switzerland 1 0 0 1
3. USA 0 2 1 3
4. Canada 0 1 0 1
5. Ukraine 0 0 1 1
6. China 0 0 1 1
7. Italy 0 0 1 1
Valeria Mironova
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 21, 2005
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