There are also Shpilevaya/Smirnov who hopefully will have improved too. And five spots are practically taken already. McNmara/Carpenter, Parsons and Loboda/Drozd are almost completely sure to win both of their respective events (if disasters don't happen and if Parsons and Loboda/Drozd are not at the same event which is doubtful), Abachkina/Thauron have already won one, so silver or even bronze at their other event will be enough for them, and Carreira/Ponomarenko have one silver and will most likely get at least silver at their second event (they will be competing with Loboda/Drozd and Shevchenko/Eremenko who already lost to them with a gap of 15 points) which should also be enough for them. So that leaves only one spot for another Russian team. Polishchuk/Vakhnov and Skoptcova/Aleshin should not compete at the same event also because if USA's Lewis/Bye are at the other event the road to silver will be pretty much open to them. And they already can get silver at this week's JGP in Ostrava where their competition are McNamara/Carpenter and Kuzmich/Sinicyn. Two silvers for Lewis/Bye would most likely mean them getting into the Final over all the other Russian teams except Loboda/Drozd. I have nothing against them, they are nice and quite good, but I think they should not get into the Final over teams like Shpilevaya/Smirnova and, yes, Polishchuck/Vakhnov with their improvement.They are better and more attractive to me then s/a so I'd like to see them get a spot over them. IDK... I hope they can.
Typical or not, but we have not seen Skoptcova/Aleshin this season yet to say for sure that they have not improved too.I think they improved this season while Skoptcova/Aleshin are typical Kustarova junior students.
Good - the Russian Federation did the sensible thing (hopefully giving them an event where they are likely to get silver).Sofia & Sasha has been replaced by Ivanenko/Karpov at JGP Japan.
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