The red-coat girl

Cry

It's the day of the free skate, and the nerves are eating Yulia up like there is no tomorrow. Depending on how this skate goes today, there actually might not be any tomorrow for Yulia. There is still a few hours until she skates, currently she is on the practice ice, the competition officially starts at 3:30PM but she isn't skating until about 8PM, so she has a lot of time to get herself for ready for the free skate. The practice ice ends and her knee is hurting, it's not as bad as it was the other day but it's still bad, all she can do is hope it doesn't get in the way of her skating during the event. Yulia leaves the ice and heads up to her room to chill out for about an hour or two before she has to be back to train off ice until it's her turn to skate her free skate.

Yulia's couple of hours to chill went a lot faster than she wanted because now she is back at the rink getting ready to skate, she is so fucking nervous, it feels like the nerves might just eat at her until she is nothing but a pile of clothes on the floor, until there is nothing left for anyone to see, anyone to judge. Yulia begins to warm up off ice, as the competition rages on, she can hear as the crowd cheers for the other skaters. The other skaters seem to be doing well, which does not help her nerves at all, it just makes them worse. Yulia begins her off ice training with her jump rope, she does that for a couple of minutes before going stretching all of her muscles, she does some leg and arm stretches, before moving onto some ankle and knee stretches and then some back and neck stretches, after all of her muscles are stretched she does another couple minutes of jump rope. Once finishes with the jump rope she moves onto practicing her jumps off ice as well as her spins with the spinning board. After Yulia warms up enough for her liking she starts to map out her program on the floor, before going and changing into her free skate dress, as the last group of skaters is on in a couple of minutes, and that's the group she is in.

Yulia enters the ice with the rest of her group, they all line up and now as the announcer introduces them all to the crowd. Yulia is panicking deep inside, she's the first one to skate, and that is sending the nerves out of the roof. The six minute warm up starts, and Yulia immediately start to practice her jumps, where she surprisingly lands them all, she also practices a few of her spins, and before she knows it the 6 minute warm up is over. Yulia skates of to Eteri to get a few words of encouragement from her before skating to the centre of the ice to begin her program.

The music starts and so does Yulia. Yulia is skating her free skate program to Schindler's List by John Williams. As the music starts and Yulia skates she shows beauty, the true beauty of figure skating, of Russian figure skating. Her first jump is coming up it's her Triple Lutz + Triple Toe, she gets ready for the jump and lands it. Yulia is so happy she landed the jump, all she has left now 6 other jumps to land, easy enough, right...? She continues skating her program, her every move showing perfection, and going exactly how she wants. She sets up for her next jump, her Double Axel + Triple Toe + Double Toe, she goes for it, and lands it! So far it's all going as she wants! Yulia enter her first spins of the program the flying camel into donut spin into a biellmann spin. Her spins were done perfectly so she moves onto her next elements. Yulia slates perfectly, it's going so well, her twizzles are perfect, her artistry is unmatched, and her jump are amazing! Her step sequence was just amazing, and the crowd is loving her program. She sets up for her next jump her Triple Flip, she is nervous, she's been having so many problems with this jump lately, she enters the jump and lands it! Her next jump is her Double Axel, she sets up for jump but falls out on the landing, and just like that Yulia's plans felt like they have just gone down the drain, but she might just a have a chance still because it's not a fall, it was still a landing, so a deduction hasn't happened, the GOE is just going to be a bit bad. She continues skating and enters her next jump her Triple Loop, she enters the jump and falls. All Yulia can think about is how her plan, her last chance has now gone down the drain when it was going so good, it was going great until it wasn't. She only has two jumps left, she can do this. Yulia enters her second last jump of the program the Triple Salchow, she isn't confident, not at all. She enters the jump and falls out on the lands, causing her GOE to be shit yet again. Everything that could go bad is going bad now, and Yulia is gutted because of it, she thought she had a chance, that maybe, just maybe she'd get a place on the podium, but now that dream is down the drain and there is nothing she can do. Yulia goes for her last jump of the program, the Triple Lutz + Double Toe, and she yet again falls out on the landing. She goes into one of her last spin of the program, her dream crushed, and the world feeling like it's going to collapse around her. The spin goes great, it always does, her spins are always perfect. She moves onto her last few artistic elements of the program her Ina Bauer and her Spiral, both perfect. Before finishing the program with one last spin.

Yulia bows to the judges and then to crowd before exiting the ice and going over to get her scores, she sits down in the kiss and cry while she waits for her scores to come up, the announcer comes over the rink with her scores. "The free skate scores for Yulia a Lipnitskaya are 135.34, with a total score of 200.57 putting her in first place." Yulia can't even look up at the scores, she is so fucking sad, her eyes filled with unshed tears, how could one performance ruin everything? How could one performance make the world feel like it's crumbling at her feet. One performance that made her question everything she has trained for, all the tears spilt, bones broken, and hours trained, all for this one performance and she messed it all up. Was this even worth it? Is all she can ask herself.