The 2020 European women’s figure skating champion Alena Kostornaia will continue her career in the sports pairs category, announced the athlete’s former coach Elena Buianova.
“She has been skating in pairs for a long time. Alena Kostornaia went to coach Sergei Roslyakov and asked to try. She wrote a letter to the Russian Figure Skating Federation”, said Elena Buianova
The 19-year-old Alena Kostornaia is the European champion for 2020 and winner of the final of the Grand Prix series for 2019/2020. She trains in tandem with Georgy Kunitsa.
Alena Kostornaia is the 2020 European champion, the 2019–20 Grand Prix Final champion, a six-time Grand Prix medalist (including gold at the 2019 Internationaux de France and the 2019 NHK Trophy), and the 2019 CS Finlandia Trophy champion. Competing domestically, she is a three-time Russian senior national medalist (silver 2020, bronze 2018 and 2019). She previously held the world record for the highest senior short program score in women’s skating. Alena Kostornaia is currently the eighth-highest ranked women’s singles skater in the world by the International Skating Union following the 2020–21 figure skating season. At the junior level, Kostornaia is the 2018 Junior World silver medalist, the 2018–19 Junior Grand Prix Final champion, the 2017–18 Junior Grand Prix Final silver medalist, and a two-time Russian junior national silver medalist (2018, 2019). She currently holds the world record for the highest junior short program score in women’s skating.
Alena Kostornaia is the tenth woman in history to have landed the triple Axel jump in a senior international competition. She is the third woman after teammate Elizaveta Tuktamysheva and Rika Kihira of Japan to attempt and land the maximum number of triple jumps allowed in one senior international competition: four in the short program and eight in the free skate. She first accomplished this at the 2019 Internationaux de France, and later landed all twelve triples cleanly at the 2019–20 Grand Prix Final.
