What is the Russian analogue of the figure skating Grand Prix? There are no rules yet, participant lists will not appear soon

We wrote about this in the spring. As informed people told me, at that time representatives of our federation calmed the excited public of figure skating in sports schools, promising them new competitions no worse than these Grands Prix. Even then, in March, it was clear that the Russian analogue of the series would still be. The only question is why the President of the Russian Figure Skating Federation (FFKKR) Alexander Gorshkov denied everything?

Probably because the creation of an alternative Grand Prix was a plan “B” in the event of a permanent international ban on our skaters. At the time it became public knowledge, the International Skating Union (ISU) Board of Directors had yet to decide on a constitutional amendment giving the right to suspend entire countries with the words “because “. Apparently our officials had a slim hope that everything would be okay, so they apparently didn’t want to go ahead with a confrontation with the ISU.

A confrontation on this subject is inevitable if we are talking about a tournament with international status. Much, of course, depends on its structure. If everything is framed as open internal competitions (something like the same Russian Cup, but with expanded functionality), then it will be difficult to dig. Even more difficult if the foreign skaters who will participate are declared out of competition or something like that.

And foreigners are currently planning. According to , the FFKKR management really hoped to bring figure skaters from China to our Grand Prix – moreover, there was a desire to see representatives of the Georgian national team. This was indirectly confirmed by the general director of the federation, Alexander Kogan, who, when announcing the creation of the tournament, indicated that he hoped that Russian and foreign skaters would take part in it.

If, however, our Grand Prix will be an international event in its own right, it will need to be certified by the ISU. Otherwise, according to our information, the union will certainly have questions – both to the organizers and to the participants among the foreign teams. And if there is little that can harm our side in the current realities, then sanctions for skaters and foreign federations are definitely unnecessary. They can be completely different, up to the suspension of competitions under the auspices of the ISU.

This is the first difficulty we will face when organizing a new event. It does not make much sense without foreigners – it would be possible to leave the Russian Cup and establish a prize fund within its framework, no one would notice the difference. The great word “Grand Prix” requires scale, it can only be ensured in two ways: either by a large representation of the participants, or by a powerful show on large halls. With the latter, they are already reviewed – most stages of the newly formed series will take place on the modest arenas of Major Hockey League (VHL) clubs.

The second difficulty is that it is not clear for whom all this is done. At that same federation reporting and election conference, Kogan literally said that he hoped our best skaters would compete in the Russian Grand Prix. Then this sentence touched me, but in general, if you think about it, everything is quite logical.

After all, the federation itself has no idea about our stars’ plans for their future life. Recently, Alexandra Trusova announced that she will be preparing for the new season. By the way, she did this not far from the long jump sector at junior athletics competitions, where she was one of the participants. Before that, Sasha noted that after the Olympics she wanted to try new things as much as possible – and this was clearly not about the new Grand Prix.

However, we haven’t even heard that from Anna Shcherbakova and Kamila Valieva yet. It’s possible that the girls are calmly preparing for upcoming competitions without further ado – just as it’s possible that Anna’s recent request not to ask her about figure skating at a charity event actually means more than we all think.

Obviously, without our Olympic troika, it is in women’s singles (the rest of the sports are still below the hearings) that there will be no point in bothering with the organization. I admit that the viability of the project depends on their final decision. At the moment it only has a preliminary schedule and host cities – everything else will have to wait.

How much is an interesting question. Now the federation does not even have an approximate list of potential participants. And that’s logical – in mid-June it’s too early to think about such things. For example, the ISU releases distributions for its Grand Prix events only closer to July.

We will have more. Several sources I’ve interviewed say they don’t expect specific rosters with the Russian Grand Prix cast until at least the end of the summer. It seems to me that the federation will wait until the last moment – at least until the test skates of the Russian team, which are still to be held in Moscow at the end of September. Then it will be clear which of the stars is actually ready to enter the season, what form they are in general and who you can really count on.

But what if there is hardly anyone to rely on? I guess no one knows the answer to this question yet.