Tatiana Tarasova: Medvedeva improved in skating, speed and expressiveness

Tatiana Tarasova about Evgenia Medvedeva’s performance at the Autumn Classic International 2018.

Evgenia Medvedeva took second place at the competitions in Canada. This is the first competitions where she performed under the guidance of the new coach Brian Orser. What impression did you have from her skating?

– She skated better than at the test skates. There is progress. The first half was very good. She skated very strong. She improved in skating. I’m not going to asses Medvedev now, just like anyone else. Evgenia hasn’t been skating for a very long time because of serious injuries of the spine and leg, she and her coach haven’t had enough time together, but it is clear that she became an adult girl. Her performance was much better than in Moscow. It is clear in which direction she is moving.

I think that there is no need to make any hasty conclusions, because now there is a period when Zhenya is re-learning something, saving something. There was a difficult period. She hasn’t jumped for very long. People who understand write about this. It can be seen that Zhenya skates at high speed, and increasing of speed is always leads to mistakes on jumps. I see in what aspects she improved, not only in skating and speed, but also in expressiveness. I am sure that everything will return to normal. Zhenya had mistakes and they were visible, but these are minor mistakes and she will do everything clean. But this way can’t be passed in two months. They already go very big steps.

I can see progress from one skate to another. Of course, we all do not want any of our athletes to lose. If she had done loop she wouldn’t have lost, even though there were mistakes on spin and so on. The entire first half of the program generally looked very convincing, and in the second half, if not this fall, she would have received other scores. But overall I liked it. Though she looked not bad at the tesk skates, she was very careful, but not here, she tried to do her best and was very expressive.

Zhenya is very musical girl. But she took different direction, after all it’s tango. But I understand her tango, her thoughts and I like it. I want to wish all our olympians health, and I wish us the ability to wait and love those who make us happy. And there’re millions of us.

by Elena Grigorievskaya for sport-express.ru

Related topics: Evgenia Medvedeva, interview, ISU Senior B event, Tatiana Tarasova