Samarin leads Russian medal sweep at Rostelecom GP
MOSCOW (AP) — Alexander Samarin secured Grand Prix victory at the Rostelecom Cup on Saturday as Russian figure skaters swept the medals.
Dmitri Aliev won silver and Makar Ignatov picked up the bronze on his first Grand Prix appearance.
Saturday’s results also gave Samarin and Aliev slots at the Grand Prix final in Turin in December.
Samarin opened with a solid quadruple lutz-triple toe loop and turned his next two quad tries into triples. His total points for the short and free skates were 264.65.
Aliev landed a quadruple toe loop-triple toe loop combination and ended the free skate on 259.88.
Ignatov hit two quads, neither in combination, and totaled 252.87 points, 0.6 ahead of Japan’s Shoma Uno.