Beijing Winter Olympics 2022 spotlight: Kamila Valieva evokes Torvill and Dean and takes Bolero to a new level
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Updated 03/02/2022 at 11:56 GMT
The 15-year-old is the Russian national champion and recently won the European Championships, skating to gold by a stunning 22-point margin with a routine set to Bolero, the music Torvill and Dean used when they won the ice dancing title at the 1984 Games in Sarajevo. Watch every moment of the Games on discovery+.
Kamila Valieva during training for the Winter Olympics in Beijing
Image credit: Getty Images
Russian teenager Kamila Valieva may or may not have any idea about Britain’s association with figure skating and Bolero - but it may help make her a star to UK audiences at the Winter Olympics in Beijing.
At the age of just 15, she is the favourite to win gold having stunned recently at the figure skating European Championships, when she took the free skate title by an astonishing 22 points.
Valieva did that to Maurice Ravel’s Bolero, which was famously what Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean skated to on their way to ice dancing gold at the Sarajevo Games in 1984 - but this teenager is taking that music to a whole different level.
The dominant winning score in Tallinn recently is all the more remarkable given she did it after falling while attempting a triple axel. Three impeccable quadruple jumps meant she finished ahead of teammates Anna Shcherbakova and Alexandra Trusova.
There was a world record to break too - her own in fact. A score of 90.45 in the short programme was more than three points higher than the best she had set in November.
Valieva only made her senior international debut last year but she is already a junior world champion from 2020.
The biggest competition she faces is probably from her own team-mates. Shcherbakova is the world champion in singles, while Trusova picked up a bronze at that event.
"I'm glad I don't have to compete against them," said America’s triple world champion Nathan Chen this week, “they’re doing spectacular things”.
There will be a new podium in Beijing, with reigning champion Alina Zagitova - also from Russia - taking a break from skating competitively and instead moving into professional performance, while compatriot Evgenia Medvedeva and Canada’s Kaetlyn Osmond have both retired.
While a lot of the figure skating will centre on Yazuru Hanyu in the men’s competition, Valieva could be the one setting world records in Beijing.
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