How Russia’s Anna Shcherbakova Received Gold in Ladies’s Determine Skating

Anna Shcherbakova, 17, of Russia, landed two quadruple jumps and acquired the best creative marks to win the Olympic girls’s determine skating competitors on Thursday. The heavy favourite — her teammate and coaching accomplice Kamila Valieva, 15 — stumbled from the start and fell on a quad toe bounce to complete a disappointing fourth amid the maelstrom of a doping scandal.

Anna Shcherbakova, left, and Kamila Valieva.

Chang W. Lee/The New York Occasions

Shcherbakova, who was second to Valieva after the brief program, opened her free skate assuredly with a quad flip-triple toe mixture and a separate quad flip. The reigning world champion, she once more delivered on the game’s greatest stage.

In essentially the most formidable leaping competitors within the historical past of girls’s Olympic determine skating, nobody carried out extra audaciously than one other Russian teenager, Alexandra Trusova, who tried 5 quads, landed three cleanly (together with a salchow) and completed second.

Trusova gained the free skate, however she trailed Shcherbakova by greater than 5 factors after the brief program and couldn’t make up the hole within the mixed rating.

Trusova’s technical supremacy was not matched by her detached artistry. However quad jumps performed by the Russians have revolutionized girls’s skating. By no means had 5 quads been tried by a skater in a girls’s competitors on the Video games.

Kaori Sakamoto, 21, of Japan didn’t try a quad bounce or a triple axel, essentially the most troublesome triple bounce, however skated with velocity and reliability and completed third, receiving the second-highest element, or creative, scores to Shcherbakova’s within the free skate.

As a result of Valieva didn’t end among the many high three, a medal ceremony was scheduled to be held; earlier, the Worldwide Olympic Committee had stated it might cancel the ceremony if Valieva made the rostrum.

After a assured opening, Shcherbakova landed two mixture jumps and a triple lutz within the second half of her four-minute routine, when bonus factors are awarded as skaters develop drained. She additionally acquired the best general creative scores for such components as skating expertise, efficiency and musical interpretation.

Within the group competitors, Valieva turned the first woman to land a quad on the Olympics. However a day later it was revealed that she had examined constructive for a banned coronary heart remedy. She was permitted to proceed skating when an arbitration panel dominated that to droop Valieva in the course of the Olympics, earlier than her case was resolved, may trigger her irreparable hurt.

Valieva took first place within the brief program however skated nervously from the start within the free skate, performing underneath intense scrutiny and stress. She barely held on for her opening quad salchow, then stumbled out of a triple axel and put her hand to the ice. She additionally stepped out of a quad toe in a mixture bounce, placing each palms to the ice after a triple salchow. She later fell on one other quad toe.

Getting into the Olympics, Valieva had been thought of by many the best skater of all time, despite the fact that she made her debut on the Olympic-level skating circuit solely final October. However after Thursday’s efficiency, Valieva waved her arm as if in disgust. After she left the ice, she cried.

All three Russian skaters have the identical coach, Eteri Tutberidze, who might be investigated by Olympic, skating and anti-doping officers, together with different personnel of their Moscow coaching camp, after Valieva’s constructive check. Shcherbakova and Trusova haven’t failed a drug check, however their performances will inevitably increase questions, particularly after Russia’s state-sponsored doping system was revealed after it hosted the 2014 Olympics in Sochi.