As the European champion, bronze medalist of the 2022 Olympics in the team tournament Mark Kondratyuk said in the podcast of another titled figure skater and coach Maxim Trankov, “Free program” on Channel One, “in no way is it a reproach to the girls, but the focus has shifted to men’s skating, which now has more drive.”
Mark Kondratyuk believes that the focus has shifted from women’s skating to men’s skating. There’s more drive there now. Photo: RIA Novosti
Actually, Mark will be one of the brightest stars of the stage in Magnitogorsk. And Kondratyuk demonstrated this attitude for the season at the national team’s test skates in mid-September in St. Petersburg, when in his free program he performed five quadruple jumps and, in addition, two axels of 3.5 revolutions. Let us remember that Olympic champion American Nathan Chen and world champion Japanese Shoma Uno jumped in five quadruples each. And at the 2024 World Cup, an American with Russian roots, Ilya Malinin, did six quads in his free program.
– It turned out what I wanted to do, what I prepared. “Achieved one of my goals,” Mark said then. – I definitely don’t want less than four quadruples a season. Ideally, five quads.
And already at the next pre-season tournament, Kondratyuk kept his word. He won the Grinkov Memorial Tournament by performing the same set of ultra-si jumps: five quads and two trixels. True, on the quadruple flip the judges noted an unclear edge, and on the quadruple sheepskin coat – an under-rotation. But we hope that Mark will gain form and momentum and show a clean performance.
In the meantime, he is stirring up interest in himself. Two weeks ago, for example, he published a video of himself jumping three quadruple Salchows over oilers in training. “Black Friday – three Salchows for the price of two,” Mark captioned his post with humor.
Kondratyuk jumped five quadruples in his free program, Semenenko tried to do six
However, the performances of other participants in the men’s tournament in Magnitogorsk are no less intriguing. At the Panin-Kolomenkin memorial in early October, Evgeniy Semenenko tried to perform six quadruple jumps in his free program (he did a flip, a loop, a cascade Salchow, a sheepskin coat, but doubled the Lutz and fell from a solo Salchow). As a result, I became third with a score of 301.66 points. And 18-year-old Nikolai Ugozhaev unexpectedly won, also with a score of over 300 (303.45). These guys will take to the ice at the first stage of the Grand Prix. We are waiting for Magnitogorsk Stars to really light up.
Where will we watch?
Saturday, October 26, Channel One
15.40. Figure skating. First stage of the Russian Grand Prix.
Sunday, October 27, Channel One
15.00. Figure skating. First stage of the Russian Grand Prix.
Source: rg.ru
