The newly-minted medalists are not only beautiful and talented. Girls are united by the fact that they are all from sports families. Carolina Costner took over the baton from her mother, who rode in the 70s. Her father, a famous hockey player, defended the honor of Italy at the world championships and the Olympic Games. These same species are held in high esteem by the parents of Sarah Meyer, and her aunt is training her. But at Kiira Korpi, her father, being a mentor of the women's national hockey team of Finland, led her to the bronze medals of the Olympics-98.
Sports genes affected during the free program. After a short with a symbolic margin of 0.03 points, Meyer was in the lead. Following her settled Costner. A little further away was the Georgian Elena Gedevanishvili, who was breathed in the back by Hungarian Julia Sebestien, Kiira Korpi and Russian Alexander Ievleva.
The Hungarian figure skater had to open the performances of the final six. The 2004 European Champion was a pale shadow of herself three years ago.
Then Costner, the bronze medalist of the 2006 continent championship and the standard-bearer of the Italian national team at the Winter Games in Turin, appeared on the ice. At the Olympics, Carolina failed - ninth place. In September last year, the skater injured her ankle and only a month ago she started skating again. The break was beneficial: on Warsaw ice, she managed six triple jumps, including the starting stage 3-3-2! A pink dress literally soared over the ice rink. Seeing the mark for the technique, the athlete got up to get a better look at it. At this moment, the scores for the program components arrived, which also turned out to be very high - and joy was decorated with Costner's face.
Performing after such an extravaganza is not an easy task. Kiira Korpi at first could not cope with her, having missed the Rittberger in a cascade with a sheepskin coat. But then the figure skater pulled herself together, gained momentum, and eliminated the cascading gap. And although there were flaws at the Finnish box office, she collected the necessary complexity bit by bit. As for femininity, lyricism, sensuality of composition, this cannot be taken away from Kiira.
I could not stand the comparison with the brilliant hire of the Italian and Sara Meyer. Only four of her jumps were counted as triple - the Swiss had problems with trips. In general, it’s a sin for Sarah to complain about this season: she won her first tournament at the Russian Grand Prix and became the third in the final of the “Champion Series”.
Yelena Gedevanishvili, who then went on the ice, was unanimously called the opening of the previous European Championship. In Lyon, a 16-year-old girl on the run took fifth place. Recently, the name of the Georgian figure skater is increasingly mentioned in the political context. It is known that Elena’s parents were deported from Moscow, that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili took her under guardianship, that the athlete had been training in the USA recently ... The program should have put all the points on “i” in flamenco rhythms. Alas, the audience did not see anything incendiary: a fall, undercuts - and Gedevanishvili fell back to eighth place.
Following the example of Kiira Korpi desperately struggled with an unfulfilled element, salchow, Alexander Ievlev. Alas, this struggle was not successful. The vice-champion of Russia also had other mistakes.
If it were possible to combine the short program of Ievleva with the arbitrary Sokolova, it would have been great. Having rolled back with mood, on the rise, Elena finally at least pleased the audience. In general, one has to accept it as a fact: in the absence of the seven-time European champion Irina Slutskaya, this type of figure skating, our girls for the first time since 1993 were left without medals.
Olga GONCHAROVA