Born on 7-7-2007 in Moscow, Russia’s rising star Sofia Akateva started skating at the age of 4 with coach Oksana Bulycheva at Sambo 70, where she currently practices under the guidance of Ėteri Tutberidze’s team. At the recent ISU Junior Grand Prix 2021 events, in Krasnoyarks and Gdansk, Sofia placed first, gaining two consecutive victories in the JGP events, which for her automatically means qualififying for the upcoming final in Osaka next December.
Her Personal Best Total Score (233.08 – JGP Krasnoyarks) appears in 8th position in the ISU Statistics, where, in the women’s section, we find in this order Kamila Valieva (#1 with 265.08 points), Alena Kostornaia, Anna Shcherbakova, Alexandra Trsuova, Alina Zagitova and Elizaveta Tuktamysheva, followed by Rika Khira. If we compare Sofia Akateva with these 6 girls from Russia and Japanese Rika Khira, we find that the 14-year-old is the only athlete to have entered this ranking with a Best Score recorded in a junior competition.
In this statistic, immediately after Akateva we find Kaori Sakamoto, Maiia Khromykh and Evgenija Medvedeva.
In Gdansk, Sofia gained the record of being the first female skater to perform a triple Axel and three clean quadruple jumps in one program (a quad toe-triple toe, quad salchow and quad toe-Eurler-triple- Salcow combination).
“I managed to skate cleaner in Poland, because I’ve worked with my coaches on the mistakes I made in Krasnoyarsk,” Akateva shared. “It also helped me that this was my second competition, I was less nervous. I don’t think about setting records. I just love what I’m doing and I love difficult jumps. It is nice that I was able to do something that I haven’t done before.”