Tatiana Tarasova said the women’s skaters ‘would have no chance of winning first place’ if Russian athletes had been allowed to compete
Iconic Russian coach Tatiana Tarasova has criticized the ongoing World Figure Skating Championships in Montpellier, questioning the achievements of women’s singles leader Kaori Sakamoto while highlighting the absence of Russian stars.
“Among those who skated, the Japanese skater was the best,” Tarasova noted to RBC-Sport after the women’s stars performed their short skate routines on Wednesday.
“But we have the experience of the Olympic Games. If our girls took to the ice, she would have no chance of winning first place.”
Top Russian skaters such as Beijing 2022 team event gold medalist Kamila Valieva plus women’s singles event gold and silver medalists Anna Shcherbakova and Alexandra Trusova are absent from the ongoing World Championships in France due to an ISU ban on Russian athletes imposed in response to the military operation in Ukraine.
While Tarasova said that Sakamoto “did everything cleanly” to lead the way in her short program, she described the Japanese star’s routine as a “skate from 20 years ago”.
“All the elements were done, but there were no elements of the highest complexity, and our girls strive and do the highest complexity, [to] develop in technical perfection,” Tarasova said, with there also no triple axels performed by any of the women in France, unlike the Russian elite such as Valieva.
