Evgenia Medvedeva: Would I have liked to be braver and move my combination to the second half at the Olympics? Yes. Did I do it? No. Was that good or bad? I don’t know. How do you get rid of that thought afterward? You don’t. It comes up every day!”

Evgenia Medvedeva reflected on her silver medal at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, sharing her thoughts on strategy, regret, and the lasting impact of her decisions in the short program.

original source: Sport24 dd. 6th February 2026

Evgenia Medvedeva, on the show “Katok,” shared her memories of losing to fellow Russian Alina Zagitova at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics. Here’s a translation of her comments.

“I can speak about my own Olympics. After the short program, I was already in second place. And I didn’t lose the Olympics in the free skate, as many people think – I lost it in the short program. Because my world record lasted literally 10 minutes. At that Olympics, two world records were set – first by me, and then, 10 minutes later, by Alina Zagitova. So, in essence, the short program was where I lost.

Naturally, when I went to bed before the free skate, I thought, ‘I have to go all in! I need to move my combination to the second half of the program.’ Of course, I didn’t do that, because I had a certain plan that my coaches and I had worked out. If I had started with a solo flip, I think my coaches would have gone gray right there at the boards. So I decided to stick to the plan.

Of course, when I didn’t move that combination to the second half – and it would have saved me, it would have given me the gold medal… Naturally, I thought: I should have listened to my heart! But on the other hand, if I had tried and failed to do that combination in the second half, I might have ended up without a combination at all. You never know.

You want to listen to yourself, because your intuition is working… I understood that if I didn’t move that combination to the second half, I wouldn’t see gold. But I stuck to the plan and did everything cleanly. Would I have liked to be braver and move that combination? Yes. Did I do it? No. Was that good or bad? I don’t know. Maybe it would have been even worse.

How do you get rid of that thought afterward? You don’t. It comes up every day! There’s no way to get rid of it. That’s your life,” Medvedeva said.

Related topics: Evgenia Medvedeva, Olympic Games