Russian teens hog skating spotlight
Kaetlyn Osmond in third after short program
G A NGN EU NG • Battle of the Brians, move over. Battle of the Carmens, outta the way.
The OAR War is on. And it’s about to get cute.
Effusive Evgenia Medvedeva threw the gauzy gauntlet down at the spritely feet of her buttoned- down teammate and rival Alina Zagitova — seriously, she’s 15 and over- uses the word “indeed” — as the Russian teenagers hogged the post- short program media spotlight from Canada’s Kaetlyn Osmond.
Worr y not, Canadian skating fans, Osmond rocketed into third spot on the strength of an aggressive, speedy, spectacular short program that scored 78.87 points and was probably worth more, and she will have plenty to say about the order of things come the free skate.
But on Wednesday, the Olympic Athletes from Russia took 14 of the 15 minutes of fame afforded the top three in a short program at the Games.
Medvedeva smiled through her entire declaration of war, which she made in passable English. A child soldier has never looked so sweet.
“Last time I hear so many news of Alina Zagitova and Evgenia Medvedeva are really opponents off ice, on ice,” Medvedeva began. “No, we are humans. We are friends. We are girls. We are young girls. We can talk about everything to each other and when we take the ice, this is sport, real sport and we must fight.
“Ever y competitions I feel are like a little war. This is sport. This is war, and we must show our best no matter if you are nervous or not. When you take the ice, you are alone. Yes, your friend is competing here, but you must do the fight.”
Do the fight? Absolutely. Do the fight with Lutzes and Salchows, loops and Axels and layback spins. Bring it.
Oh, she talks a good game, but there is absolutely no malice on which to base this battle. They are teenage girls who share the same coaches, spend tons of time together and like one another. Those other battling skaters — Brians Orser and Boitano, Katarina Witt and Debi Thomas — were not nearly that close.
You get the feeling these two tiny Russian girls will be celebrating together, in whatever age appropriate way they can, should the standings hold up.
Zagitova repeated through an interpreter that the two are good friends off the ice.
“On the ice during the competitions I personally get this feeling of rivalry, but it’s not a bad or negative, like malicious feeling of rivalry,” said Zagitova. “But it is there.”
Oh yeah. And it’s good for the sport. Medvedeva skated first in the final flight, and wasn’t happy with her triple- triple combination. The judges didn’t hate it but she scored 81.61 points and that wasn’t going to hold up to the technical excellence of her younger teammate.
She laid down a triple Lutz- triple loop combo and bazinga, the lead was hers.
She comes to her first Olympics with a pretty good backstory. She broke an arm and a leg a couple of years ago, had to stop training for awhile, and found out one of her coaches, Eteri Tutberidze, wanted to throw her out of their program. Turns out the kid wasn’t serious enough about training. Give or take the limbs thing.
“She wanted to let me go even before I broke my leg and arm,” said Zagitova. “She wanted to let me go. I didn’t work hard enough. I didn’t understand the seriousness of it all. In this group no one forces you to train, it’s up to you to train or not to train.”
She decided to not to train. To quit. Go home. Then she decided to keep training and her coach took her back and, indeed, everything was peaches.
She might e ven have smiled. But on Wednesday, while Medvedeva was yukking it up, Zagitova reined in her emotions.
“I am indeed very calm when i t comes to t hose things. I don’t show my emotions. I don’t splash them around, as it were. This is how I am. This is my nature.”
This is also the future of skating in the ladies discipline. Medvedeva is 18. Osmond, who won a silver medal at the 2017 worlds behind Medvedeva’s gold, is 22. Canadian Gabrielle Daleman, who took the bronze at those worlds but sunk to seventh in the short program here after putting a hand down on the triple- triple combo, is just 20.
This is going to be fun to watch for a good, long time. Osmond isn’t a spectator though. She takes a back seat to nobody.
“I wasn’ t going to shy away from anything in my program. That’s the way I’ve been practising at home, attacking every element, and leaving nothing behind, and that’s exactly what I did.”
She isn’t scared by the Russian dolls, who seem to win everything these days and may well take the Olympic gold and silver here.
“They’re always at the top of every event so it’s really inspiring,” said Osmond. “It’s not so much intimidating being on the ice with them, but knowing that I am able to compete at their level, to compete on the same ice as them, it shows that I have the same strength.”
Daleman trails in seventh, with just 68.90 points. That takes her out of the medals, and she was hyper-critical of her performance of Carmen, which was flawed only by a hand down on the back end of a triple-triple combination to kick it off.
“That was just it,” she said, when asked if there was more to her distress than just the one mistake. “I’m very hard on myself. I always have been. Overall I wasn’t happy with it because that’s my jump. It’s just a stupid mistake.”