page_title: Alina Zagitova
section_title: 2018–2019 season: World Champion
hierarchical_section_title: Alina Zagitova / Career / 2018–2019 season: World Champion
caption_attribution_description: English: World Championships 2019 (Podium)
context_page_description: Alina Ilnazovna Zagitova is a Russian figure skater. She is the 2018 Olympic champion, the 2019 World champion, the 2018 European champion, 2017–18 Grand Prix Final champion, and the 2018 Russian national champion. Zagitova also won a silver medal in the team event at the 2018 Winter Olympics, representing the Olympic Athletes from Russia team.
  Earlier in her career, she won gold at the 2017 World Junior Championships and at the 2016–17 Junior Grand Prix Final.
  At the 2016–17 Junior Grand Prix Final, she became the first junior lady to achieve a total score above the 200 mark. Zagitova has broken the world record once under the old system and four times under the new system.
  Zagitova is the only Russian female figure skater who has managed to win gold at the Olympic Games, World Figure Skating Championships, European Figure Skating Championships and Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final. She is the youngest and second ladies' singles skater, after Yuna Kim, to win gold in all major ISU championship titles including the Junior Grand Prix Series and Final, World Junior Championships, Grand Prix Series and Final, European Championships, World Championships, and Winter Olympic Games.
context_section_description: At the start of the season, the ISU records were reset, with the world records occurring before 1 July 2018 becoming historic records. Zagitova began the 2018–2019 season at the 2018 CS Nebelhorn Trophy in Oberstdorf, Germany. She came in first place after both the short program and free skate events, winning the gold with a total of 238.43 points. Due to the reset of previous records, her free skate and combined scores from this event became the current world records and had remained as such throughout the entire season. Rika Kihira of Japan was the holder of the short program record.
  In early November Zagitova competed at her first Grand Prix event of the season, the 2018 Grand Prix of Helsinki. She was ranked first in both the short program and the free skate and won the gold medal by a margin of about 18 points over the silver medalist, her teammate Stanislava Konstantinova.  In mid November she competed at her second Grand Prix event of the season, the 2018 Rostelecom Cup. Again she was ranked first in both programs and she won the gold medal by a margin of about 25 points over the silver medalist, her teammate Sofia Samodurova.
  With two gold medals, she qualified to the 2018–19 Grand Prix Final.  The Final was predicted by prognosticators to be a tight competition between Zagitova and Rika Kihira, who had earlier won the Ondrej Nepela Trophy after Zagitova had been compelled to withdraw due to visa issues.  Zagitova won the silver medal, behind Kihira, with both skaters making errors in the free skate. In Zagitova's case, she popped an attempted triple toeloop in her opening combination. Speaking afterward, she said, "you always want to be first, but this is not going to happen every time."
  At the 2019 Russian Championships, Zagitova comfortably placed first in the short program, saying she was "satisfied with [her] short program today, but there is still room to grow."  She did not have a successful free skate, falling twice and struggling during her choreographic sequence. She placed twelfth in the free skate, and fifth overall. However, the top three were junior competitors and thus ineligible for the European Championship team. Since Zagitova was second out of senior competitors, she was still granted an automatic place on the European Championship team despite finishing fifth. She did not speak to the media after the competition. In addition to her loss to junior competitors, Zagitova also lost against a senior eligible skater for the first time in domestic competition, when she placed below Stanislava Konstantinova.
  At the 2019 European Championships, Zagitova placed first in the short program despite an underrotation on her triple loop.  She fared poorly in the free skate, falling once and underrotating or downgrading the majority of her jumping passes, which led to her placing fourth in the free skate, and second overall, behind Samodurova and less than four points ahead of Finnish skater Viveca Lindfors.  Speaking afterward, she said "It’s good I'm in the top three and the silver medal is also good – it could have been worse, so I’m happy with silver, but I wanted to do better for me personally."
  Following the European Championships, Zagitova was chosen to represent Russia at the 2019 World Championships in Saitama, Japan, alongside Sofia Samodurova and a former training mate Evgenia Medvedeva. During the short program competition, Zagitova delivered a clean skate, obtaining high GOEs on the jumping elements including her signature combination triple Lutz-triple loop. She received a season's best score of 82.08, taking a lead of over five points ahead of Kaori Sakamoto who placed second, over eleven points ahead of Rika Kihira, who had been anticipated to be Zagitova's biggest rival in the fight for the gold medal. In the press conference afterward, she remarked, "Regarding today's program, I'm satisfied." Two days after, Zagitova performed a clean free program for the first time in competition since Nebelhorn Trophy in September 2018, proceeding to receive a score of 155.42, the highest number of the day.
caption: Zagitova (center) with Elizabet Tursynbayeva (left) and Evgenia Medvedeva (right) at the 2019 World Championships podium
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