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Post: Tutberidze’s daughter did not return to Russia: what keeps her in the USA?

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Silver medalists of the Russian championship in ice dancing Diana Davis and Gleb Smolkin never returned to their homeland to participate in the Grand Prix series. RIA Novosti Sport – about the status of the most discussed duet in Russian figure skating.

This has never happened before and here it is again. Diana Davis (better known as the daughter of coach Eteri Tutberidze) and Gleb Smolkin will not play for the next local tournament. At first, the skaters refused to participate in the skating tests, citing problems with their partners’ documents for leaving the United States, and then they began to quietly disappear from the starting lists of the Russian Grand Prix stages.

The absence of an official version of the absence of the supposedly best-acting dance duet in the country makes the situation worse. Currently, Diana and Gleb live in the United States, where they train in the team of Alexei Kilyakov and, apparently, do not plan to change their place of residence. Western bloggers reported that Diana and Gleb became spouses in the spring. Given that Davis was born in Las Vegas, this gives Smolkin access to an American passport.

Judging by the fact that Diana wrote in September that she and Gleb could not leave the United States “due to problems with the documents”, this is exactly what the couple is doing now. The first step towards naturalization is to obtain a residence permit (or green card). To do this, you need to constantly live on state territory for a long time. The puzzle seems to come together.

The only problem is that in parallel with the official information, a full flow of unofficial information flows from Davis/Smolkin themselves. For example, that during the summer the couple went through a screening to change their sports citizenship to American. The skaters did not act very quickly, but nevertheless they denied it. True, after a while it became known that they were members of the US Figure Skating Association, and there was no clear explanation of this information.

Rumor has it that the couple still had gestures to switch to the American flag, which did not happen for some political reasons. Now, predictably, the transition is at least paused. I draw this conclusion based on what Diana and Gleb told me about the “active desire” to perform at the Russian Championships, held in Krasnoyarsk at the end of December. If Davis/Smolkin really agrees, the issue of changing sports citizenship will be closed for at least the next few years.

On the other hand, there are pitfalls here. First, we have no information on when Gleb will be able to freely leave America. If the problem is really in terms of getting a green card, then why not set deadlines and mislead the public in the first place? Fans of the couple were waiting for him at one stage or another of the Grand Prix, and instead of clear explanations, they received only dry messages about the withdrawal without explanation.

It is possible that the figure skating federation, whose leadership recently announced that it “hopes” for the performance of the guys on the stage in Perm, was not aware of the whole situation. The more information people have, the less reason they have to speculate.

Another factor that casts doubt on the possibility of Diana and Gleb participating in tournaments in Russia in the near future appeared at the stage of the Grand Prix in Samara. There, the favorites of the dance tournament Elizaveta Khudaiberdiyeva and Yegor Bazin received incredibly high marks. They have a score of 90.74 in rhythm dancing, which is more and very close than the personal records of Olympic champion Victoria Sinitsina/Nikita Katsalapov and two-time Russian champion Alexandra Stepanova/Ivan Bukin – the country’s first duet in a long time, undisputed. world record of legendary French Gabriella Papadakis/Guillaume Cizeron. But in the free program, Yegor fell twice, but without this the scores would have also been very high.

This suggests that the judges have already decided on the leaders of the Russian ice dance and there is currently no Davis / Smolkin. Otherwise, in the event of a face-to-face encounter with Diana and Gleb, it will be necessary to set higher or lower points than world records for Elizabeth and Yegor. Both scenarios will seem like a mockery of the judicial system. However, on the stages of the Russian Grand Prix, we realized that we can overcome any height. Even the ones you don’t want to reach.

Source: Ria

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