Lev LAZAREV | Junior Grand Prix in Xi'an – Free Skate

The final athlete, Lev Lazarev, comfortable leader after the short program, and the volume of quadruple jumps intended in his planned program content could see him win by an exponentially huge margin, skating to the Little Prince costumed appropriately. Planned five quad jumps in this program. We'll see whether they materialize right now. You taught me to stop before you left. I couldn't help it. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye. And while we do not need to wait to see the judges' scores, you know that Lev Lazarev has easily won this competition. Quad flip, quad lutz, quad toe loop, and then a second quadruple lutz, catapulting his technical element score to untouchable levels. And I just love that the whole concept of this, the free skate music that I don't believe is from a Little Prince soundtrack, but created by choreographer Artem Fyodorchenko to use to play this role of the Little Prince. And it's just so befitting of a skater in their international debut to be telling a story of searching for yourself and finding your place in the world. And he now finds his place in the world of international figure skating as a front runner this season. Yeah, not maybe at the level of quality of Ilya Malinin. However, the cast has been tied here, so you can see the quads and how easy they are for him, or they appear to be easy. They're not easy, but he makes them look easy, so efficient in the air. And when this program gets a little tighter with more float on the landing and gets a little bit more connected with the music, well, in juniors, he's probably going to be unbeatable, but he'll transfer in time to seniors so nicely. Yes. And just for context, the technical element score that he delivered, just, as you say, you were obviously making comparison with Ilya Malinin because there are a few skaters in the world that have this volume of quad content of different types of quad. I'm certainly not comparing them, but I'm saying he's in that same mold. He's learned how to be very efficient with the most difficult elements. What's up next? Connection with the music. A little bit more flow on the landings, those types of things, but he's already starting at such a high base level because of those elements. Yes, and I actually found that his flow was best on the landing of that quad flip. Skating skills later in the program, perhaps not as abundant. Well, he's 144.14 is what he needs to take the title, and he's certainly got way more than that. He's a 163.45, of course. You're looking at the champion here, Lev Lazarev. By almost 20 points.