Anastasia Gubanova leads after the short program at the European Championships 2023 in Espoo.
At the European Figure Skating Championships in Espoo, Finland, the women’s short program competitions ended. The best result was shown by former Russian skater Anastasia Gubanova, acting for Georgia. Luna Hendriks of Belgium got the second place after she made a mistake on cascade. The third place went to the Swiss skater Kimmy Repond.
The free skating program will be shown on Saturday, January 28.
Anastasia Gubanova commented on her performance in the short program at the European Championships.
“I’m rather satisfied with the skating. Yes, there was a problem on rotation, but in general, I made it.
To be honest, I was very nervous before the start, the preparation was very hard mentally, I can’t say that I was one hundred percent ready for this tournament. But this is my second European Championship, so I somehow found the strength to calm down. I tried to enjoy myself.
Together with my coach, we prepared for the competition as usual. Of course, we paid a lot of attention to transitions and jumps.
Do I feel like a favorite? Well, I can feel it, but it doesn’t bother me,” said Gubanova.
And the current athletes of Tutberidze’s group had the most unlucky day. Daniel Grassl, who moved to Moscow three weeks ago, snapped a quadruple lutz with only two twists in the air. According to the rules, such a jump went under full nullification.
“It’s a long process, I liked working with Eteri, and in the future I plan to continue to train with her. Over time it will definitely get results. Training with Tutberidze is hard. She is very demanding, but it motivates me, so that’s great. I’m looking forward to getting back on the ice with her and training even more vigorously,” Grassl said after the skate. So far, the Italian is in eighth place with a score of 77.03.
Nika Egadze of Georgia is only twelfth. The skater fell off a quadruple loop and a cascade instead of a 4-3 turned out to be only 4-2 – 72.96 points.
Maurice Kvitelashvili said he is unable to train normally due to ongoing health problems. The athlete is troubled by bone marrow inflammation. In Finland, he didn’t manage to make even one jumping element cleanly. 70.55 points – fourteenth place.
It is interesting that Sergey Dudakov and Daniil Gleichenhaus, who led their skaters out, did not sit with them in the kiss-and-grasp while waiting for scores. The singles skater from Georgia was supported by the president of the federation Mariam Giorgobiani, and Daniel by ex-partner Nicole Della Monica, who in all likelihood is also present as a functionary.
At the same time, a screenshot of the broadcast of Daniel’s performance appeared on the Internet. It looks like the names of Tutberidze and Gleichengauz were not on the plaque, it was just left blank.
After the performance, the figure skater admitted that he faced a lot of hating in his address:
“It was very difficult to go out on the ice today because I was getting so many angry messages. I tried to disconnect from it, not to watch anything, because it’s painful for me. I will continue to work even harder to find extra motivation,” Daniel said.
According to the results of the short programs Xiao Him Fa looks a little more convincing in the fight for the gold of the European Championships. However, the Frenchman’s advantage is not so big to relax. In men’s single skating, even 10-20 points can easily be won back. So in the free skating the struggle will be even more interesting.
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