aKmila Valieva led the Russian women to a podium sweep at the ISU European Figure Skating Championships in Tallinn (EST) on Saturday. Anna Shcherbakova moved up from fourth place to claim the silver medal while Alexandra Trusova earned the bronze – like they had two years ago. It was the eighth podium sweep for the Russian women at the ISU European Championships.
Skating to Bolero, Valieva hit a quad Salchow right out of the gate, but then fell on her triple Axel. The 2020 World Junior Champion recovered instantly to produce a quad toe-triple toe another quad toe and five more triples. However, one of them, the Salchow in a sequence did not count. The Russian Champion collected a level four for her exquisite spins and footwork and scored 168.61 points. Overall she accumulated 259.06 points to take the title in her debut with 22 points to spare.
“I am so happy, there are so many emotions that I can’t put them into words,” the newly minted European Champion said. “The medal means that I don’t just come to the practices for nothing and I guess the most important for me is not to burn out after this season, to calm down as much as possible and try to make the audience happy with my performances. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, I live with today but am so happy with today being at the European Championships, it’s a childhood dream.”
Shcherbakova opened her program to “Master and Margarita” and “Lacrimosa” with a quad flip and followed up with seven triples and level-four spins and footwork. The 2021 World Champion earned 168.37 points and got 237.42 points overall.
“Place and scores after the short program were not important for me at all, I was very upset about my skating, and that’s why yesterday was quite hard in terms of my thoughts, I was thinking a lot, worrying a lot, so I am very glad that today I coped with all that,” the 17-year-old shared.
Performing to “Cruella”, Trusova completed a quad flip, quad Salchow and five triples. However, she fell on a quad toe (q) and a quad Lutz attempt (downgraded). The 2021 World bronze medalist netted 159.23 points which added up to 234.36 points overall.
“I am not happy with the skate, I wanted to do it all, but only two quads worked,” the two-time World Junior Champion admitted. “I was pleased with the quad Salchow. It was gone for a while and now it’s back. However, I should had done all, I should had done five quads and I did only four.”
Loena Hendrickx (BEL) slipped to fourth after missing two jumps (207.97 points). Ekaterina Kurakova (POL) produced a strong performance to finish fifth on 204.73 points. Ekaterina Ryabova (AZE) pulled up to sixth (196.75 points).
