Ladies’ competitions have concluded in Beijing. Alena came in 3rd in the free skating and won the bronze medal!
After the short program Alena seemed to stand only an off chance to win a
medal. To achieve it she had to skate her free program clean and with
maximum complexity. Though today Alena didn’t manage to do all the
elements perfectly, her clean 3T+1Lo+3S combination and right-edged
(like the one in the short program) Lutz, alas with a mistake on the
landing, as well as the attempted 2A+3T in the second part of the
program are noteworthy. Once again Alena got low components score, which
affected the overall free skating result: only 97.82 and the third
place in FS. Still, she moved two places higher, surpassing Bingwa Geng
of China and the American Mirai Nagasu, who was in the first place after
the short program but messed up her free skating. Alena’s well-deserved
bronze is a quite decent result for her in these competitions.
Even
though it is clear that Alena has a lot of work to do from the
technical point of view, her emotional and artistic performance today
can surely be regarded as a small victory. Now it is safe to say that
Alena is capable of interpreting the character conceived by her
choreographer, and that, therefore, the talk about changing the free
program in the beginning of the season was pointless.
"Frankly speaking, it wasn’t my best free skating. Though I did a
combination of two triple jumps, which, of course, gladdens me, there
were a lot of shortcomings as well. There is a plus side in it, because
now I know what things I need to work on. And I’m determined to be more
confident and relaxed at competitions from now on, so that I can succeed
myself and not thanks to other people’s mistakes."
Ladies’ competitions have concluded in Beijing. Alena came in 3rd in the free skating and won the bronze medal!