Figure skater Sofia Samodelkina who changed her sporting citizenship from Russian to Kazakh, said she needed to lose weight to be able to perform at a higher level.
In July, 17-year-old Samodelkina won the Kazakhstan championship. For the figure skater, this national tournament was the first after changing sports citizenship in 2023. The athlete was born in Moscow and has already participated in international competitions under the Russian flag.
— I really want to bring back quadruple jumps. I want my Lutz back, but my right leg has failed me time and time again. That’s right, she’s fine now, maybe she can return it. But the initial goal is to regain the triple Axel and quad Salchow, my “most dedicated jumps” that I have always jumped. But first you need to lose weight. It’s not easy, but it’s possible. Now I’m slowly increasing the triples to have a reserve.
I thought if you jump a million five-lap jumps, you’ll be on the podium. But that’s not true. It’s still not about ice jumping, but about figure skating – with graceful positions, spirals, paths. Developing and working on all this is easy for me, but we are trying and now we are working more on sliding than on jumping. There was some nervousness at the competition because I was jumping less in training than usual. If before I did 50 jumps, now I do 20. But muscle memory, which I trained for 13 years, also helps me.
— You said you didn’t want to stop figure skating because you love it.
— I always said I loved jumping. But I like the feeling itself, when you ride at high speed, drive in a circle, there is some kind of excitement in you. When you drive at high speed and make jumps, they turn out to be good, they fly. Since last season I discovered skiing. I started sliding more and I started enjoying sliding. I still don’t like rotations. But I think I will always love you. And vaulting has always been a priority,” Samodelkina said, as quoted by Olympics.com.
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Source : MatchTV
I’m John White and I’m an experienced journalist working in the news industry. My specialty is covering sports news, which I’ve been doing for over 6 years now. During this time, I have worked as an author with Athletistic, a popular online news website focusing on sports topics.
