Rostelecom Cup 2019: Previews and Predictions

It’s Rostelecom Cup time, so please save all SWR (Skating While Russian) jokes until the end of my predictions. Here we go…

MEN

GOLD: Alexander Samarin (RUS)

SILVER: Dmitri Aliev (RUS)

BRONZE: Makar Ignatov (RUS)

Here’s my first of two Russian sweep predictions. Believe me it brings no pleasure to predict Samarin to win anything, as he continues to skate with all the personality of a bag of synthetic sponges. But he’s got the quads, and he’s got more consistency than the guy I’d rather see on top (Aliev). As for the GP rookie Ignatov—he won Nebelhorn earlier in the season, and followed that up with a silver at the Denis Ten Memorial. So he may be new to this particular competition, but I’m not sure that’ll stop him from a podium finish.

UNLESS Shoma Uno has a MUCH stronger outing than he did in France a few weeks ago. So… eyes on Uno for this one.

LADIES

GOLD: Alexandra Trusova (RUS)

SILVER: Evgenia Medvedeva (RUS)

BRONZE: Satoko Miyahara (JPN)

Sasha Trusova’s the one with the most quads, and even when she blows one on occasion (as she did at Skate America), she doesn’t seem rattled by it. Medvedeva wasn’t her best at SkCan, but I guess I’m hopeful that she’ll be back on it in her home country. If she ISN’T, all I can say is… your move, Mariah Bell.

Eyes on: Yuhana Yokoi, a 19 year-old from Japan making her senior GP debut here (she’ll also be at NHK Trophy next week).

PAIRS

GOLD: Boikova/Kozlovskii (RUS)

SILVER: Stolbova/Novoselov (RUS)

BRONZE: Tarasova/Morozov (RUS)

There are no Chinese pairs team competing at Rostelecom, and neither the U.S. nor Canada are sending teams that are likely to contend for the top spots. That’s why I’m calling for a Russian sweep—even though one of the teams, Ksenia Stolbova/Andrei Novoselov, is making its debut here. Of course we know Stolbova from her very successful partnership with Fedor Klimov, but he retired in September 2018. She began training with Novoselov shortly thereafter.

Eyes on: Lu/Mitrofanov of USA, a still-young team (17 & 22) who finished 6^th at Nationals and has done as well as 6^th on the GP circuit.

DANCE

GOLD: Sinitsina/Katsalapov (RUS)

SILVER: Gilles/Poirier (CAN)

BRONZE: Hurtado/Khaliavin (ESP)

To be clear: I think G/P could win here as they did at Skate Canada, particularly since Sin/Kat didn’t exactly win in convincing fashion at Cup of China last week. But I don’t want to jinx ‘em by calling it. So someone let them know, please… I’m willing to take one for the team if they’d like to prove my official prediction wrong!

Eyes on:  The Anastasias. The other two Russian dance teams at this event are Anastasia Shpilevaya/Grigory Smirnov and Anastasia Skoptcova/Kirill Aleshin. I don’t think either team are at the level yet where they’ll be medal contenders, but if they get there (especially if they get there at the same time), I may have to do a separate blog post on how to tell one “Anastasia S.” from the other.