Menshov, Konstantin Alexandrovich

Konstantin is extremely unstable in his sports career. Despite mastering the complex quadruple jumps, until 2011 he was never a medalist even in the Russian championship . He came closest to the podium at the championships of Russia in 2008 and 2010 , when he became fourth.

The best results on the international arena were the 2007 NRW Trophy tournament in Dortmund, Germany ^[2] , as well as the silver medal of the Coupe de Nice tournament in 2006 . The skater entered the national team for the European and World Championships only as a reserve.

At the Russian Championship in 2009, he took 6th place and was included in the reserve for the winter Universiade ^[3] . However, due to the preparations of Sergey Voronov and Andrei Lutai for the World Cup , in February 2009, he went to China to the Universiade , where he performed extremely unevenly. In the short program, he took only 25th place. According to the rules adopted at the Universiade, all participants enter the free program, and not the 24 best ones as at other figure skating tournaments. Thanks to this, Konstantin got the opportunity to execute a free program , where he performed brilliantly (two minor mistakes were made on the exits from the jumps). I purely performed two quadruple jumps (the sheepskin coat separately and in cascade, scored 123.69 points, which is better than his personal record for more than 40 points arbitrary and won this kind of program, but because of the short failure, in the end it turned out to be only on the 7th place ^[4] . However, this performance was better than at the previous Universiade and the year before last .

At the first-ever team world championship , held under the auspices of the ISU , Konstantin was declared as a reserve. Since Andrei Lutai could not perform, Menshov replaced him at this tournament ^[5] . Evaluation of the speech of Konstantin was very contradictory. On the one hand, he became the only skater who performed three quadruple jumps in both programs, and on the other - the last place due to low scores for the components.

In 2011, Konstantin first climbed the podium of the Russian championship , immediately to the first step. A little earlier, in the same season, Menshov made his debut at the Grand Prix home stage , where he took 10th place, also took part in several minor international tournaments and won 2 silver medals ( Nebelhorn Trophy 2010 and Coupe de Nice 2010 ). Thanks to the first place of the national championship, Konstantin was sent to the European Championship 2011 , where he became 7th. Another Russian loner Arthur Gachinsky (silver medal of the Russian Championship 2011) became the 5th in the same place, so Gachinsky was sent to the 2011 World Championship , where Russia had only one place in men's single skating. At the 2014 Russian Championship, Konstantin took 4th place, but due to the refusal of Evgeni Plushenko to participate in the European Championship, he was included in the national team. After the execution of the short program, he occupied only 11th place, however, having accurately performed the free program, he sensationally took the final 3rd place, which is the best achievement in his sports career.

Many thought that Konstantin would end his career on this; Moreover, he didn’t even get to the home Winter Olympics as a substitute. He was not considered for the World Cup either. However, in the summer of 2014, Menshov announced that, despite his age, he would continue to perform. At the end of September, he was the bronze medalist of the German Nebelhorn ^[6] . A month later, he spoke at the Canadian Grand Prix stage , where on the first day he entered the top three having improved his achievements in the short program, but he unsuccessfully skated the free program and took fifth place ^[7] . At the end of November, at the French Grand Prix in Bordeaux, he perfectly skated the short program with a significant superiority of his previous results, but as before he failed in the arbitrary program ^[8] . In early December, he performed at the Croatian tournament Golden Skate Zagreb 2014 was in 3rd place ^[9] . After the short program, he took 2nd place in the Russian championship , but finished in 4th place ^[10] .

In September 2015, he took third place in a traditional tournament in Germany , in the short program showed not the best skating, but then managed to advance to the level of honor ^[11] . Two weeks later, to the surprise of many experts, he won Finlandia Trophy in Finland ^[12] . In October 2015, he was fifth at the stage of the Skate America Grand Prix series ^[13] . In the middle of the table, he was at the final stage of the Grand Prix in Nagano ^[14] . At the national championship, he did not perform very well, finished in seventh place.

In the off-season (in the summer of 2016), he decided to leave the sport and switch to coaching ^[15] .

Konstantin has a twin brother , but he has nothing to do with sports and works in the aircraft industry ^[16] .

In 2011, Konstantin Menshov graduated from GDOIFK them. P. F. Lesgaft ^[16] .

Post 2011 Results

Results until 2011

• * - place in the individual competition / team place

WD = withdrew from the competition.

At the end of his sports career, he began working as a coach with children. Prior to that, in the summer of 2014, he participated as a choreographer in the productions of the program of the Russian figure skater and his girlfriend Maria Artemyeva ^[17] . In the summer of 2018, he was invited to the coaching staff of the leading Russian sports pair Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov ^[18] .

• Profile (English) on the official website of the International Union of Skaters .