Anna Shcherbakova repeated as Russian national champion, topping arguably the deepest field in figure skating on Saturday.
Shcherbakova, the 15-year-old Skate America winner, rallied from a 9.93-point deficit to Alena Kostornaia after the short program. She landed three quadruple jumps and prevailed by 2.04 over Kostornaia, who had two triple Axels in her free but no quads and minor landing errors.
Alexandra Trusova, the third member of the Russian Troika dominating the sport in their first years on the senior international stage, finished third. Trusova fell on her opening quad flip in the free in Krasnoyarsk.
Shcherbakova, Kostornaia and Trusova were 20 points clear of the rest of the field and made up the podium for a second straight year. They combined to win all seven titles on the top-level fall Grand Prix Series, including a podium sweep of the Grand Prix Final.
Yevgenia Medvedeva, a two-time world champion and Olympic silver medalist, withdrew hours before her free skate after struggling with boot problems this week.
“My feet are burning. I did everything I could,” Medvedeva said after her fifth-place short program, according to an RT translation.
Medvedeva, who last won a top-level event in November 2017, then announced she will not skate the rest of the season, according to Russian media.
Olympic gold medalist Alina Zagitova withdrew from nationals two weeks ago, saying she needed to find the motivation to compete again after placing last in the six-skater Grand Prix Final.
Each of the last 14 Russian women’s champions was 17 years or younger. Before that, Maria Butyrskaya, Irina Slutskaya and Elena Sokolova combined to win the previous 12 titles, all at age 20 or older.
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