Stefania YAKOVLEVA (CYP) | Women Free Skating

And Stefania, as I said, as she stepped onto the ice, aspires to make history. This is just her first season in seniors. So much new to contend with. Let's hope she can live up with the pressure that she's had to deal with overnight of being in the top five spots after the short program. And she will skate. Here we go. And roll sound. Roll camera. And action. Wow. Stefania Yakovleva was too young to buy for an Olympic spot at the World Championships last season. She couldn't contend for one of these places. And she has come out and delivered. And I said in the warmup, it looked worrisome. I was anxious. We were suggesting that perhaps the pressure of the performance from Victoria Safanova was on her mind. But she has just absolutely done her best. She doesn't have absolutely the best, finest technical jump technique, but she made everything work tonight. She fought through it. And she did a great job with the jumps as best as she could with where she's at. But what a charming program. And what a charming performer. Absolutely. And you know, the music, the artists, and the singing, you could argue it's the youthful-est. Conventional is easy, but there was a concept. So when the judges have composition components, we'll talk about this in a sec. Triple flip. Here's the triple flip. And that is good. Yeah, the double axel is on the quarter. Second one is not, that's fine. But good start to the program. You can see working to get that free leg back was a little slower, but she made it work. She was so determined. The triple lutz. You can see the legs are not tight, but let's take a look at that. That is under-rotated in the judging system. So she'll lose a little bit there. And you know, when we're talking technically, no triple, triple, Victoria. This was great, though. The concept of composition, judges are looking for a coherent entity with all parts combined, contributing to a sense of completeness. You could feel that this had a complete, there wasn't huge gaping holes. I did sense that for Stefania, there were occasions before each jump, as we see this triple salchow, there was a big deep inhale of making sure she got the job done. She got the job done, but the legs were bent in the air at slower rotation, but she made it work. She was so determined and she gets the value, but the GOE scores on this are all relatively low. There's only, no, there's not one of them above zero. Above what? Pardon me. I suppose we're now having to compare directly Stefania with Victoria. That said, if we just think about Stefania in this instance, her ISU personal best comes from World Juniors last year of 102. Yeah. So, you know, she finds herself in fifth place. She wants that Olympic sport. She wants to maintain it, because she has represented herself here very well. No matter what, this is a great score for her and a great performance in a pressure moment. Let's take a look. Stefania. 118.16, that's a great score. That's second in the free program. With a 177.53, and that puts her into second place. And now she's worried because she's got... All sorts of a mix of emotions there. Yes, because she's happy with the score, but was it enough?