I'm so happy for both Alina and Zhenya. But Eteri was the real winner today, and I am no Eteri fan (although she's growing on me). Her students are 1-2. The student she trained from early childhood is number 3. And Tursynbaeva's success over Zhenya is a pretty clear victory for Eteri (which she also seemed to appreciate judging by her reaction to Elizabet's scores in the K+C).
But what I see as the biggest victory is that these results really challenge the idea that Eteri can't train mature skaters. There was all this speculation that her skaters would not be able to maintain quads into adulthood, but Elizabet has just shown that she can train an adult to achieve a quad (yes Elizabet is fortunate to have a very petite body type that works well for quads but she's still an adult). And Eteri has demonstrated that Alina was not just a fluke, that she was able to keep her young skater at the top of the field for two senior seasons, and Alina would still have been successful even if the age restriction had been set at 16.
The next few years are going to be very interesting in Eteristan.
Russia won silver & bronze for pairs.
Now I hope Gubanova and Tarusina run off and apply for Kazakhstan citizenship. They could then go to worlds next year!!
