Davydenko band

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Arseniy Dimitriev presented the most technically challenging FS skating in two seasons with two successfully landed quads, 4 C and 4 T. What a shame that the 3A was a fallen one, as in the short program. But for a junior who hasn't put so many quads into FS in a long time, it was a great skate. And with the quad he inserted in the FS, it was Arseniy's most technically intense skating.



I definitely like this program and the mood that Arseniy conveys during the skate, I like the performance on the step sequence.
Waiting for Arseniy at the Junior Championship of Russia!

 

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Best Frida of SPb

 

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Ksysha Queen

 

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Ksusha Gushina in SPb Championship





She`s dangerous!

 

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Ivan Ramzenkov (13 y.o.) on SPb boys and girls championship 2023



3A+3T, 2A, FCSp4, 3Lz, StSq3, CCoSp4, CSSp4, TES 44.51, PCS 38.41, total scores - 82.92

 

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My Pretty

 

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Congrats to Vanya on his victory with a smashing score 238.5! Three cleanly executed 3A's, including two cascades 3А+3Т - that's a very high technical level for a 13 y.o. kid.



Glad he was able to successfully recover from his injury and deal with the obvious growth spurt (the curse of those who follow juniors, always seeing favorites go through growth ailments). Best of luck at the Junior Nats, the Spartakiade, and all the starts of the season!

 

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Arseny Dimitriev and Andrei Mozalev on physical training again give reason

to have fun

Just look at his face...


Crab People

 

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FP Arseniy Dimitriev with RusJuniorNats. Very solid and confident skating for this guy, unfortunately, instead of 4C there was a pop and a few other mistakes happened, but the tenacity of this guy, who returns his quads, lost two seasons ago, is amazing.



At the very least, he shows that he can generally roll out a program with two quads and one 3A (last time the quads were successful, but the 3A was down). If not for the unfortunate loss of the stunt in the SP, he might have gotten more points. However, for this guy who did not do quads all last season and half of this season it is a very good result, especially if you compare it with his colleagues from the St. Petersburg team.

We are waiting for Arseniy at the senior championship, I hope he can show himself in the best light and get into the junior team (we have a pretty extensive junior team list, so...).

 

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Let's get right to the point, I want to lay my cards on the table and tell you why I'm promoting the Davydenko Band and going to promote it going forward, even if no new stars show up here and the main star finishes his career and the coach will only deal with solid middlings who will only be of interest to a limited audience.

So, cards on the table. If you really, not in words, appreciate diversity, if you believe that a man with any body is able to lead himself to victories - Kirill Davydenko is your ally. I admire his insistence on pulling opportunities out of athletes who were not born with the most suitable body for the sport. He found Andrei Mozalev promising, although already in his childhood, looking at his parents, it was very likely that this talented child would turn into a guy with a very dense torso and that would be a problem. He works hard with Arseny Dimitriev, who looks absurdly informal on the ice, too chubby and tall and therefore very coolly received by the judges. He works with Dmitry Sukhov, holy cow, when I see this tall guy with his long limbs do 3A it seems to me every time his legs get braided like Elsa's hair - but he has that 3A, damn it! They made it happen! He's working with junior Innokentiy Lungul, who at 12 is already taller and tighter in torso than many 15-year-olds, but even this kid can learn something now, like jumping all triple jumps, before moving on to pair skating, for example. He goes through all the hardest stages of growing up as an athlete with his students. There's hope for everyone, Davydenko says, everything can be overcome if there's effort and persistence. This guy doesn't pick his stars, but he tries to see a star in each of his students. That's really cool and deserves my respect.

Besides, where else would the flaws in an athlete be so great at turning into an asset? I mean, isn't this Dimitriev program adorable, I can't tell you how much I love it, it fits perfectly with his image on the ice and basically reveals him as a person (he's a known fidget and funny guy, just like his sister Arina). This season, each of the promising juniors was put on programs that would grace the older athletes as well, while emphasizing the individuality of each of them.

 

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Davydenko Band (senior group) in February 2023



1. Timofei Shelkovnikov. 2. Ksenia Gushchina. 3. Dmitriy Shelkovnikov. 4. Maxim Chernykh (Konstantin Supatishvili closes in). 5. Ivan Ramsenkov. 6. Dmitriy Sukhov. 7. Arseniy Dimitriev. 8. Kirill Davydenko. 9. Aleksandrina Degtyareva. 10. Denis Lunin. 11. Anton Shulepov. 12. Andrei Mozalev. 13. Igor Koscheev.

 

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Arseniy Dimitriev thanks the fans for their support during the Russian Junior Nats, and thanks Perm and its residents for the warm welcome and posted a some nice pics.

 

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St. Petersburg Junior Championship. 20.02.2023

After SP:
Ivan Ramzenkov (13 y.o.) -

3A (+2.24 GOE) 3Lo FCSp4 3Lz+3T StSq3 CCoSp4 CSSp4. TES - 45.21 , PCS - 38.83, TSS = 84.04




Dmitriy Shelkovnikov (14 y.o.) - 5th place

3A (-0,32 GOE) 3Lo FCSp4 3Lz+3T CSSp4 StSq3 CCoSp4. TES - 41.66, PCS - 39.08 , TSS = 80.74



Two members of the Davydenko band in the strongest warm-up, one with a virtual "small bronze medal"

Arseniy Dimitriev is in 10th place after a mistake on the trixel, but he can greatly improve his position after the free program.

 

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St. Petersburg Junior Championship. 22.02.2023

After FP:
Ivan Ramzenkov (13 y.o.) -
love you, good son



3A+3T, 3Lo, 3A+1Eu+3S, 2A, 3Lz+2A+SЕQ, 3Lz, 3F.

These kids aren't jumping quads yet, but they're using what they have wisely, racking up high technical scores.


Dmitriy Shelkovnikov (14 y.o.) - 8th place

3A+1Eu+3S, 3Lo, 3Lz+3T, 3F, 3A (8.80 x), 3Lz+2A+SЕQ, 2A



He qualifies for the Junior Championship, as does Ivan Ramzenkov. Two of the six qualifiers from St. Petersburg are students of Davydenko, a great result of the team of coaches!


Arseniy Dimitriev (17 y.o.)- won the FP technique (87.12 with bonuses for quads), on the total sum of FP points - second place! (165.38)

4T 4S 3Lo 3A 3Lz+3T 3F+1Eu+3S 3Lz+2T



He moves from tenth place to fifth.
Ivan, Dmitriy and Arseniy were selected for the St. Petersburg Youth Team for next season.

 

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Repost by AlexBreeze (thank you so much!).
Ivan Ramsenkov on the podium with a bronze medal and a money check (bonus for the winners).

 

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Today is Konstantin Menshov's birthday, so I thought I'd show you a little nostalgic video from the 2014 Olympic season (it's 9 years old). This is a recording of the sports talk show "Kiss&Cry" (that's the name, don't you think), which was on cable TV in St. Petersburg for a long time. It was overseen by the St. Petersburg Figure Skating Federation and hosted by Kirill Lyovkin (K.L.), the federation's permanent press secretary. That day he had coach Kirill Davydenko (K.D.) and sports news portal editor Rodion Vodeiko (R.V.) in his studio.



Of course, there no speakers are properly educated and skilled to make a speech on television. Their spontaneous, unprepared speech in Russian, allowing for the inclusion of many superfluous words, with peculiar Russian syntax, can drive anyone who doesn`t speak Russian at the most advanced level to despair. That's why I made a somewhat simplified and streamlined translation, but not of the whole video, but of that fragment which relates to Konstantin's performance at the European Championships (from 13:13 to 18:39). I allowed myself to skip previous discussion about the organization of the championship and its results for the Russian team, as well as jumping technique and predictions for the 2014 Olympics in Sochi. Kirill Davydenko predicted one gold medal and three more medals of unknown merit, from bronze to gold, depending on the case. I will also note that Kirill Davydenko speaks here as a big fan of Carolina Kostner and the mature female beauty of female athletes on ice as a general idea. Perhaps this will add his points in somebody's personal ranking, I don't know.

I move directly to the discussion of Konstantin Menshov's success. Here Kirill Davydenko is commenting on the situation very actively, you can see that he is emotionally involved. We are talking about an athlete with whom he works every day on the ice, whom he appreciates very much. By the way, Davydenko is only 7 years older than Konstantin, which probably helped them build a relationship of trust.

translation

K.L.: In men's single skating we have an unexpected result.
K.D.: And this result is very pleasant for me. Very nice! I am very happy for Kostya (name, affectionate form of "Konstantin", mostly used only by close friends and relatives - M.). He took third place.
And it is another positive point of the new system for evaluating skaters. After, if the skaters had been evaluated using the old system, an athlete who was 11th in the short program wouldn't have been able to get on the podium. It was completely impossible. There were options to win medals, taking 6th place in the short program, but for this there had to be the happiest of circumstances, the stars had to get in the most favorable position (Davydenko believes in astrological predictions ? – M.). This man (Konstantin Menshov) went up from 11th place to third because he was brilliant in his free skating.

K.L.: And this medal was won by him absolutely honestly. It is impossible to say that a coincidence played a role here.

K.D.: No, no (Davydenko doesn’t believe in astrological predictions, he is against cheating – M.)

K.L.: It's a really won bronze medal. (Here and below K.D. vividly expresses his personal empathy for the athlete with words and body language, against the backdrop of emotional excitement he even almost stops embarrassing himself in front of the cameras).
I know how difficult it was for him to prepare for competitions this season. He hasn't been on the ice for over four months or practiced very little due to a shoulder injury. He made some small movements of the arm, for example, doing choreography on ice, and his humerus bone popped out of the joint (the injury, which requires the placement of the bone in the joint by a qualified medical - M.) Indeed, how much strength he needed to overcome this fear of jumping, not be afraid, God forbid, to fall (not to provoke a new dislocation of the shoulder – M.) So he actually overcame himself.
The preparation <for the competition> was crumpled. Very often he had to go to the doctor and get treatment. By the way, a huge thank to the doctors! When Kostya won, I immediately called the doctors and told them many thanks.
Of course, we had to completely redo the program. Among other things, we had to change the choreography, it was impossible to add any sudden arm movement, so as not to provoke a new shoulder injury. This victory was not easy for him. This medal is all the more valuable to us, because the circumstances were such. I am very happy for Kostya.
K.L.: I can't help but ask you this question. What happened in the short program?

K.D.: It's very simple. It was decided, quite reasonable and correct decision to perform a quadsalchow. He (Konstantin Menshov) masters this jump (said with an uncompromising intonation, designed to cut off all possible doubts). Even a quadsalchow, for example, performed poorly and received a GOE -2, would yield more points than a triple lutz performed at a GOE +3. And he performs that element with confidence.

Alas, we trivially ran out of time to prepare for the competition. (K.D. starts curling his fingers, listing all the times when Konstantin Menshov safely performed the quadsalch). He performed both programs in training without mistakes. We did control skating, the skater came out in the suit, went through a six-minute warm-up, rolled back programs. He had no mistakes. He just lacked competitive experience. I am sure that if Kostya will continue his sports career ... I would like him to stay, because Kostya himself said at the press conference that he does not feel thirty years old, and I believe that he is now in the prime of his powers and God willing that he stayed, God willing that he and Sergei Rukavitsyn decided to stay in the sport, then he will learn to skate this short program well and I am sure that Kostya will do well.

Here K. D. "remembers" that in general he is not the main coach of the athlete he is discussing, and makes the necessary appeal to the main coach.

Here and thereafter, K.D. finally switches from the business tone of discussing the athlete and his successes to describing deep personal feelings towards him. Rodion Vodeiko becomes infected with the mood and supports him, and since he is a journalist and not constrained by coaching ethics, he freely begins to report the insults that, in his opinion, Konstantin Menshov receives undeservedly.

R. V.: I deeply sympathize with Kostya as an athlete and as a person. I even think that he is probably the most underrated of our athletes and singles in recent years and, to put it crudely, even a little bit "overshadowed" (a term used when someone is deliberately put behind the others in order not to show his successes - M.) I'll give you a simple example: the news about the men's skating results at the European Championships on one of the sports portals (not my *smiles*). I read: "Sergey Voronov came in second, Kovtun was fifth". I only found out about Kostya's bronze medal when I read the text. There wasn't even a single word in the headline about him. And apparently people don't realize how much this medal means to him and how difficult it is for a man who is only a year younger than Evgeny Plushenko, about whom there is so much talk, that he is a veteran in the sport.
At the same time, Kostya showed up quite late at the top level. But as many times as I saw him on the ice, I was always very impressed by his style, and I think he has great potential.

K.D.: Huge potential.

R.V.: He lacked a little bit skating stability in some aspects, but what I saw... (Places his hands on his heart) And I somehow managed to see his stable and good skating every time. It seems to me that he has...

K.D. (thoughtfully): Stability of his skating was not enough... Sorry, that I interrupted you.

R.W.: That's okay.

K.D. decides to take the opportunity to conclude the case and express, albeit politely, his grievances about how Konstantin is judged by the Federation.

K.D.: He lacked skating stability for certain reasons. In some aspects, as you said, he was in the shadow of other skaters. Sometimes he was not allowed to compete when a person went to an important international tournament...

K.L. (developing a thought): Maybe he didn't have enough experience yet...


K.D. (interrupts his interlocutor with fervor): Of course!

K.L. (finishes a phrase): ...big international starts.

K.D.: ... And when a person comes to an important competition and understands that he must skate without the right to make a mistake to gain a reputation, it is very difficult for him.

R. V.: And if there is no reputation, then the athlete is given points lower than he could get.

K.D.: ... and when a person comes to an important competition and realizes that he has to skate without the right to make a mistake to gain a reputation, it's very hard for him.

R. V.: And if there is no reputation, then the athlete is given lower points than he could have gotten.

K.D.: Absolutely right. (Returns to the discussion of the prospects of the career of Menshov, and expresses support for him in many ways). I repeat, that Kostya is really young, and what I see, for example, how he performs the jumps, those quads, he cracks them as nuts. These jumps he masters easily. Again, with all my respect for Evgeny Plushenko, he's not very healthy anymore. You know everything yourself, he has already had many different complex surgeries for this season. Kostya, thank God, is fine, yes, he hurt his shoulder, it was an accident. But in general I think that he is absolutely young in both mind and body, and that he should continue his career as an athlete.

R.V.: I honestly admit that judging from his skating that I saw, I think he is a potential champion.

K.D.: Yes, I totally agree.

R.V.: This man just need to accumulate more competitive experience and credibility with the judges, and then he will be fine.

K.D.: Yes.

From this interview, I hope you learned a lot of information about Konstantin Menshov as athlete who overcomes many difficulties, and you will learn even more about Kirill Davydenko as a coach, who supports his athlete to the maximum. By the way, officially Konstantin Menshov was a student of Evgeny Rukavitsyn, Kirill Davydenko was only his assistant on the ice. He couldn't even put the line about preparing Konstantin Menshov to win the European Championship on his resume at the time.

 

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Arseniy Dimitriev is practicing on the ice today.


Plus one new quad

 

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Let's diversify a bit the masculine vibe with the pure femininity of a strong athlete.
Hi, Ksyusha! I hope the training for the Grand Prix finals is in full swing.

 

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We study aesthetics. Dmitriy and Timofei Shelkovnikov discover new properties of ice at the Kronstadt Ice Sculpture Festival.



So beautiful that it made me want to come to Kronstadt myself.

 

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Since I remembered the Shelkovnikov brothers, there is an occasion to share a video of Timofei Shelkovnikov's short program ("I lost my soul") from the St. Petersburg Junior Championships. The skater did not show anything special in terms of element difficulty and scored a relatively low technical score, but I really like the aesthetics of his programs, completely different from the aesthetics of the other guys from the team.



In addition, please concentrate on the execution of the spins - Timofei performs them very carefully, it looks aesthetically appealing, almost like a girl's spins.