Figure skater Gritsaenko talks about broken shoelace in the Chechen Republic: ‘At the next start I thought something might happen again’

Figure skater Artem Gritsaenko playing in tandem with Elizaveta Osokina explained to how the situation with a broken shoelace at the 2024 Russian Championship affected them.

At the Russian Championship in Chelyabinsk, Osokina and Gritsaenko took eighth place. During the free program, the athletes were forced to stop the performance after the first element due to Gritsaenko’s broken shoelace.

— Let’s move on from pleasant thoughts about the sea to unpleasant memories of the Russian Championship. Recreate the moment with broken lace.

— Of course, we were worried before setting off. We got to the start, we calmed down, we pulled ourselves together. We reached the first element, then the lace suddenly broke. No one could have predicted this; such situations never happened, even during training.

We found ourselves without a stunt and tried to earn as many points as possible on other elements, but that didn’t really help us. The stunt had a cost. We received many discounts for discontinuing the program.

— From the outside, you seemed pretty confident.

– Surprisingly. In fact, I had a terrible panic. Of course, I understood what to do in such a situation. I contacted the judges, they gave me time. Then he turned to the technical staff to resolve the problem. Everything went smoothly. From the outside it looked like we were training him.

— If such an incident happened not at Russian competitions, but at international competitions, would you be able to navigate it and explain the problem to the judges in English?

“I would just put my foot up and show the switchback.” The judges would understand everything.

— What did the coaches tell you after the performance?

— Lisa and I were very upset after the rental. They weren’t very talkative. But after a while we called the coaches and talked. Nobody scolded anyone, they supported us. Everyone understood perfectly well that this did not happen on purpose and that this would not be our last Russian championship.

— Did the incident leave an imprint? Were you afraid that something would happen again the next time you left?

“At the next start I thought something might happen again. But as soon as we started skating, I let go of the situation and realized that at the Russian Championship it was an accident. I am no longer focusing on this situation,” Gritsaenko told .