The Russians turn out wonderful skaters.They start them as babes. Watching them is a joy.
As a collective it’s a fairly recent phenomenon that Russians lead in female figure skating...(USA was actually leading team-wise as they have in female gymnastics! Now it’s more about individual exceptions to the rule.)
While Valieva is great, I find there’s something overly formulaic about the Russian approach these days: send them out while super young, and all the skaters share these gimmicky ‘signature’ elements like doing jumps with raised arms over the head? And to make matters worse, the Russians are notorious for rigging the judging system and to this day, I believe South Korea’s Kim Yu-Na was robbed of her 2nd gold medal in Sochi 2014.
I still prefer the unpredictable element there is about stand-out individuals from other countries.