Figure skater Alina Zagitova wins Russia's first gold medal

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February 23, 2018 6:48 AM

Technically, Russia did not win its first gold medal at these Winter Olympics on Friday.

Strictly speaking, Alina Zagitova, the 15-year-old victor in women’s figure skating, competed as a neutral “Olympic Athlete From Russia.”

But a nominal barring of Russia from the Olympics for operating a doping scheme at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, was more of a semantic prohibition than a complete ban. One hundred sixty-nine Russian athletes were permitted to compete here. And there was no question which country Zagitova represented in winning her gold medal with a score of 239.57 points as fans chanted her name and waved the Russian tricolor.

“In our souls we know,” she said recently.

Her friend and training partner, Evgenia Medvedeva, took the silver medal with 238.26 points while skating as Tolstoy’s tragic Anna Karenina. Kaetlyn Osmond of Canada won the bronze with 231.02 points.

Zagitova became the second-youngest women’s skater to win Olympic gold with a program of shrewd design, remarkable stamina, precise jumping and inevitability that comes from youthful certainty. What she lacked in the full elegance that comes with maturity, Zagitova compensated for with a keen understanding of skating’s rules.

In her balletic “Don Quixote” routine, she landed all 11 of her jumps in the second half of her four-minute free skate. This is known as back loading and is meant to gobble up a 10 percent bonus awarded for each jump beyond the halfway point of a routine, as skaters’ legs begin to tire.

Meanwhile, Medvedeva landed three of her 11 jumps at the beginning of her program and repeated two triple jumps — the flip and the toe loop — while Zagitova repeated the more difficult and higher-scoring lutz and flip.

Some find the beginning of Zagitova’s routine — limited to spins, footwork and choreography — to be a somewhat tedious preamble. But she and her coach have cleverly taken advantage of the rules as currently written.

“If I had the tenacity to do all my jumps in the second half, I think I’d get that done,” said Mirai Nagasu, the American who finished 10th.

American Bradie Tennell finished ninth, while Karen Chen of the United States was 11th.

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