Kamila Valieva walked almost tentatively through Capital Indoor Stadium, juggling her pink-cased cellphone, her ice skates with the fuzzy pink blade guards and the stuffed mascot of the Beijing Games, Bing Dwen Dwen.
Then they all fell in a pile on the floor.
She managed to keep it together better on the ice, where the 15-year-old Russian sensation became the first woman to land a quad in the Olympics — two, in fact.
Photo: AFP
They helped the Russians cap a dominant run to the gold medal in the team event to open the figure skating program.
“I do feel this burden a bit, this pressure, because this is my first season among adult skaters,” Valieva said. “I believe that I’m coping with this pressure, and sometimes it even pushes me forward. It helps me.”
How much farther can she go?
Valieva opened with a huge quad salchow and followed with the difficult triple axel before landing another quad, this time a toe loop in combination with a triple toe loop.
The only blemish on her program came when she fell on her quad toe loop late in the program, but by that point, her first gold medal in Beijing was assured.
Another one could come shortly in the individual event, where the Russians are favored to sweep the podium.
“I’m very happy that the most part of my planned program worked out well,” she said.
The Russians finished with 74 points in the team event to win their second gold medal in three editions of it.
The US earned the silver after back-to-back bronze medals at the past two Olympics, thanks largely to a winning dance program from Madison Chock and Evan Bates, while Japan climbed onto the team podium for the first time.
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