When Carolina Kostner is on, she's ON! The reigning world silver medalist and European champion from Italy showed the rest of the world why she's a force to be reckoned with at the 2008 Cup of Russia. Skating to Dumsky Trio by Anton Dvorak, Carolina pulled off her triple flip-triple toeloop combination, triple Lutz-double toeloop-double loop combination, triple flip, double axel, triple Salchow, and wowed the audience with beautiful extension on her spins and footwork, to take the ladies title. Carolina did stumble on the triple loop and fell on the triple toeloop but her performance was great enough to win gold.
Japan's Fumie Suguri, who was leading after the short program, had to settle for bronze and I don't know if nerves kicked in at the last moment. Skating to Otonal by Raul di Blasio, Fumie couldn't complete her combination jumps, singled her Salchow, doubled her triple toeloop, then singled her triple flip - it was just not her usual skating, and she slipped to third.
A big surprise for the United States' Rachael Flatt who won the silver! Rachael's lyrical style was on full display skating to excerpts from Claude Debussy and she had the cleanest skate out of all the ladies. The United States' Alissa Czisny (see above) finished fourth skating to excerpts from Dr. Zhivago. Alissa's free skate started out shaky when she fell on her opening triple Lutz and then her triple flip. But she regrouped and hit the rest of her jumps and really, you can't say enough about her artistry on the ice and I hope she is in contention for the Grand Prix Final.
Kimmie Meissner from the United States finished eighth.
Complete results for the ladies are below. (Note: SP=Short Program; FS=Free Skate)
| FPl | Name |
Nat | Points | SP | FS |
| 1 | Carolina Kostner |
ITA | 170.72 | 2 | 1 |
| 2 | Rachael Flatt |
USA | 166.06 | 3 | 2 |
| 3 | Fumie Suguri |
JPN | 162.04 | 1 | 3 |
| 4 | Alissa Czisny |
USA | 151.03 | 5 | 4 |
| 5 | Alena Leonova |
RUS | 145.93 | 7 | 5 |
| 6 | Elena Glebova |
EST | 140.67 | 6 | 6 |
| 7 | Julia Sebestyen |
HUN | 131.54 | 4 | 10 |
| 8 | Kimmie Meissner |
USA | 131.36 | 8 | 7 |
| 9 | Na-Young Kim |
KOR | 125.95 | 10 | 8 |
| 10 | Nina Petushkova |
RUS | 125.61 | 9 | 9 |
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