Yesterday the Channel One Trophy competition ended at the Megasport Sport Palace in Moscow, a new national figure skating competition, which saw the great Russian names of figure skating on ice competing in two teams – blue VS red. The two teams were captained by the Olympic medals of PyeongChang 2018, respectively gold and silver in the individual competitions, Alina Zagitova (two-time world champion, and double Winter Olympic silver medallist) for the Red Machine team and Evgenia Medvedeva (two-time world champion, and double Winter Olympic silver medallist) for the Time of Firsts, who however did not participate in the race but only performed from one point of artistic view.
Alina Zagitova 
Evgenija Medvedeva
All the skaters’ coaches, including Eteri Tutberidze and Evgeni Plushenko, were also on hand to cheer their skaters on. The competition saw three men, three women, two pairs and three ice dance pairs competing in short, free programs for each team. The prize pool was 10 million Russian rubles (U.S. $ 136,000).
TEAM ZAGITOVA: (Ladies) Anna Shcherbakova, Kamila Valieva, Daria Usacheva; (Men) Dmitry Aliev, Makar Ignatov, Andrei Mozalev; (Pairs) Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov, Daria Pavliuchenko and Denis Khodykin; (Ice dance) Tiffany Zagorski and Jonathan Guerreiro, Annabelle Morozov and Andrei Bagin, Elizaveta Khudaiberdieva and Egor Bazin
TEAM MEDVEDEVA: (Ladies) Alexandra Trusova, Elizaveta Tuktamysheva, Maiia Khromyk; (Men) Mikhail Kolyada, Alexander Samarin, Mark Kondratyuk; (Pairs) Aleksandra Boikova and Dmitrii Kozlovskii, Anastasia Mishina and Aleksandr Galliamov; (Ice dance) Alexandra Stepanova and Ivan Bukin, Anastasia Skoptsova and Kirill Aleshin, Sofia Shevchenko and Igor Eremenko.
The Russian figure skating federation organized the competition following the cancellation of the European Championships, originally set for Zagreb this month. The competition followed the ISU rating system. Within the competition there was also a jumps section, where, however, the squads were divided in a different way, according to a sort of “Battle of the Sexes”: the jumps competition saw the men competing against the ladies. The ladies’ team won, but the result was not a real surprise, with the ladies’ skaters – who aside from Tuktamysheva have all trained at Eteri Tutberidze’s Sambo-70 Crystal school – being able to put in big jumps that the men have some way to go to match.
In this one-of-a-kind jumping competition, Russia’s ladies singles figure skaters outshone their male counterparts. For their win, the ladies received a prize of one million Russian rubles (around U.S. $13,500).
Eight skaters, four representing each team split by gender, were selected to go head-to-head over three rounds, with the ladies’ team triumphing thanks to the big-jumping Alexandra Trusova, Anna Shcherbakova, and Kamila Valieva.
They, along with the 2015 European and world champion Elizaveta Tuktamysheva, combined to see off the men by 246.30 points to 194.78 as Mikhail Kolyada and Dmitri Aliev faltered.
The competition also included a vote by the audience of Russian television viewers. The prize was awarded to Time of Firsts. They have all won for now but the appointment for these great athletes, who at the moment do not know competitors of the same level, is for next year’s Olympics.
