Anastasiia GUBANOVA (GEO) | Women Free Skating | 2025 – Beijing

Our next skater represents Georgia, 22 year old Anastasia Kovanova. And another skater that will have had some real challenges in the past few months, would never have wanted to find herself having to fight for an Olympic spot. But that World Championship Short Program forces her to find herself here. But she's in great form. She skates to ghost. Sam, is that you? I can hear you. Oh, I can see you. I say it with my eyes. I say it with my heart. I love you. I'll be silent. I see you. This building is full of emotion on so many levels and so many performances. And this technically tied with Luna Hendrix. But emotionally, well, we'll have to say, wait and see. We see the PCs coming in. But a number of elements, five of them under review. It was so interesting to compare these two women. Anastasia Kovanova, the Georgian skater here. She and Luna Hendrix have flip-flopped share of the European Championship title in 2023 and 2024, sharing the top two spots. Both of them bizarrely finding themselves here now again. Yeah. Yeah. And this and it just kind of makes you wonder. Has being forced to compete here for these two women, has it potentially put them into incredibly good stead for the Olympics? It does. This is the plot thickens for the Olympic season. There's no question. We'll see what happens in the Grand Prix and the championships. But the plot thickens definitely with these two performances. They are on the rise and they will be in the mix. There's no question. Oh, I just get the I see now the back of the costume is to. Oh, yeah, there you go. I don't understand that. That's OK. All right. Neither did I. And I was actually thinking. Anastasia doesn't have the same grade of execution on her jumping passes as Luna, but Luna did have one pops jump. And for me, as we look at the opening triple flip, triple toe from a PCS, from a program components perspective, transitionally, Luna has much more. But the emotion of the ghost music has to impact the presentation. So she has three jumps on the quarter. OK, that's going to be a little costly. The rest of them are clean. And the emotional connection to this music and the storytelling was maybe a little bit stronger. I don't know. Yeah, I see. And Anastasia also has over a point in hand above Luna following the shot. But notice how we have now changed the whole story of this event. This is no longer become about getting your place to the Olympics. No, it was expected for Luna and Anastasia. But now they have laid down performances that will make the Japanese women who lead the highest scores list of the season thus far stand up and take notice. And now also not for the top five, perhaps, but for the championship, the pressure is on the leader. And we'll see her in just a few moments. We see big smile team Georgia. Yeah. And that that is what Anastasia is doing, getting a spot for Georgia at the Olympic Games. Well, this is going to be ever, ever so close as we are looking at these numbers. There's changing up and down. But here they are. This is the final set. 138.15, that is first in the pre-program. There you go. Total competition score of 206.23. She's in the lead. One skater to go. Well, that's what we want. We want everyone to skate cleanly. Yeah. Your wishes come true. Yes. One more skater, though, the leader.