SOCHI, February 21. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s teen prodigy Yulia Lipnitskaya said she was very upset and “cried all evening” after her figure skating performance in ladies’ individual event at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Russia’s Sochi.
At the age of 15, Lipnitskaya, the youngest ever athlete to represent the Russian team at the Winter Games, already won her first Olympic gold in team figure skating competition two weeks ago. However, Lipnitskaya finished in the fifth place after she skated her individual competition program at the Iceberg Skating Palace on Thursday.
“I was deeply upset after my performance in individual competition,” she said. “I was prepared technically and physically, but skating was bad. I cried all evening.”
The talented figure skater said she managed to calm down after she remembered about the gold medal she had already won.
“Everybody kept telling me that I did not let down the team,” Lipnitskaya said and added that, in her opinion, she put up a good performance considering that Sochi was her Olympic debut.
“The fifth place in individual competition is not bad for a debutant,” she said. “And now I have fully recovered from yesterday’s negative emotions.”
Lipnitskaya, who comes from the Russian Urals city of Yekaterinburg, hit the international media headlines last month, when she skated to gold in the Figure Skating European Championships. With less than a month after her European victory, the teen figure skater grabbed the Olympic gold at the 2014 Winter Games in Russia’s Sochi.