Tarasova is a destructive influence on American skaters | Golden Skate

Tarasova is a destructive influence on American skaters

krenseby

Final Flight
Joined
Jan 8, 2006
Today I was watching a recording of Russia's skating show the Ice Age, in which a professional skater is paired up with a non-skater for "ice dance" performances. Tatiana Tarasova, who was on the judging panel, has given comments that really made me realize that she corrupts the skaters she works with.

She would often complain about the "incompeleteness of moves" such as lifts (or extended legs or arms) as having a deleterious effect on the program because lifts that were too short didn't create a rapturous interpretation of the music and therefore betrayed it. This problem bothered her more than falls.

Now let me tell you, Tarasova's insistence on completeness and lengthy execution of choreographical elements is responsible for ruining the careers of Sasha Cohen and Johnny Weir.

Once Sasha Cohen got it into her head that it was important to have lengthy, intricately executed spins and spirals as well as other "beautiful" moves that perfectly matched the music, she decided to pursue this "beauty" to the point of neglecting her jumps.

Had she ditched this crazy "beauty" obsession of Tarasova's and focused on her jumps to the exclusion of choreographical completeness, she would have become World Champion and maybe even Olympic Gold Medalist.

The other victim of the Tarasova curse was Johnny Weir, whose admiration of the Russian style of "complete, extended, elegant moves that express the music" made him feel too contented with himself to aggressively pursue the quad and to focus on his jumping technique.

Last but not least, Mao Asada has recently lost some of her jumping technique due to choreographical finesse acquired from working with Tarasova. If Tarasova can undermine such a talented skater like Asada, she certainly has the power to ruin less technically proficient skaters such as Sasha Cohen and Johnny Weir.

In conclusion, I'd like to point out that I am not against great choreography but I believe that it was only an advantage under the 6.0 system. Under COP, presenting an elegant and choreographically impressive program and sacrificing jump power to do it is a recipe for disaster and a sure way to stay off the podium.

Both Johnny and Sasha could have relied on their choreo and beautiful moves to receive a high 2nd mark in the 6.0 era, but under COP their artistic accomplishments won't matter unless they are jumps are already perfect.

Of course, the problem is that both Sasha and Johnny preferred to focus on the artistic versus the technical and incurred the wrath of their federations who believed these two to be capable of getting higher COP scores if they focused more on the technical aspect of skating.

Johnny has realized this already and cut back on choreography to focus on executing his jumps, except for the quad which he hasn't gotten to due to years of obsession with "beautiful skating."

BTW, I also like Tiara's thoughts on this.
 
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Joined
Jun 21, 2003
Wow, great theory, I love it! :rock:

Of course, Tatiana Anatolevna's obsession with beautiful skating didn't hurt Alexei Yagudin, Ilia Kulik, Shizuka Arakawa, Grishuk and Platov, Klimova and Ponomorenko, Bestemianova and Bukin, or Rodnina and Zaitsev. :cool:
 

Hsuhs

Record Breaker
Joined
Dec 8, 2006
The whole post

Oh I agree, TAT might have ruined a lot for Johnny. Thanks goodness, his jumps/ medals are back, he's so much better off without her. There was yet another evil woman in Johnny's life who's name starts with a P.

I, too, now see how unhealthy his obsession with so called "beautiful skating"
was. Beautiful shmootiful. Swan? Otonal? Rondo? Disposable crap. Love is war? That's what he needs.
 
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Hsuhs

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Joined
Dec 8, 2006
Wow, great theory, I love it! :rock:

Of course, Tatiana Anatolevna's obsession with beautiful skating didn't hurt Alexei Yagudin, Ilia Kulik, Shizuka Arakawa, Grishuk and Platov, Klimova and Ponomorenko, Bestemianova and Bukin, or Rodnina and Zaitsev. :cool:
Those are not Americans.
 

blue dog

Trixie Schuba's biggest fan!
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Joined
Dec 16, 2006
Not necessarily--

Tatiana is a great coach that demands nothing short of perfection from ALL skaters she worked with, whether they reached the world podium or not. All coaches are like that. It is up to the skater to either take that and run with it, or not. And in some cases, some skaters just don't have the ability to match her demands.

Shizuka, Alexei and the others already had sound technique before they reached Tat. Johnny and Sasha, while beautiful, weren't as sound technically as those other skaters. As for Mao, she has had a growth spurt. You can see the difference if you watch a video of her last year and the year before to now--the puberty monster is there.

It is not a matter of Tat destroying American (or Japanese) skaters. It is a matter of those skaters ever having the ability to give her what she demanded from them (need we be reminded of how great Alexei was technically in 1998 when he was with Mishin, but how boring his skating was?).
 

ks777

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Aug 15, 2003
Yeah it didn't hurt Shizuka but she didn't think she could win the gold medal at the Olympics with Tarasova so she switched to Mrozov just in time.
 

Bennett

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Joined
Nov 20, 2007
Now let me tell you, Tarasova's insistence on completeness and lengthy execution of choreographical elements is responsible for ruining the careers of Sasha Cohen and Johnny Weir.

Once Sasha Cohen got it into her head that it was important to have lengthy, intricately executed spins and spirals as well as other "beautiful" moves that perfectly matched the music, she decided to pursue this "beauty" to the point of neglecting her jumps.

Had she ditched this crazy "beauty" obsession of Tarasova's and focused on her jumps to the exclusion of choreographical completeness, she would have become World Champion and maybe even Olympic Gold Medalist.

I don't know much about Tarasova. But the length of spins and spirals is important. Skaters are often deducted for not holding the position long enough.
 
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krenseby

Final Flight
Joined
Jan 8, 2006
Wow, great theory, I love it! :rock:

Of course, Tatiana Anatolevna's obsession with beautiful skating didn't hurt Alexei Yagudin, Ilia Kulik, Shizuka Arakawa, Grishuk and Platov, Klimova and Ponomorenko, Bestemianova and Bukin, or Rodnina and Zaitsev. :cool:

Mathman, I did mention that Tarasova had a very pernicious effect on recent American skaters due to the incompabitility of her aesthetic ideals with COP. I did not claim that her approach was harmful for skaters who competed under the 6.0 system. Your list of people not hurt by Tarasova's approach includes 6.0 competitors, but no list of people who she helped succeed under COP except for Shizuka Arakawa. She could be the exception to the rule.
 

krenseby

Final Flight
Joined
Jan 8, 2006
Not necessarily--

Tatiana is a great coach that demands nothing short of perfection from ALL skaters she worked with, whether they reached the world podium or not. All coaches are like that. It is up to the skater to either take that and run with it, or not. And in some cases, some skaters just don't have the ability to match her demands.

Shizuka, Alexei and the others already had sound technique before they reached Tat. Johnny and Sasha, while beautiful, weren't as sound technically as those other skaters. As for Mao, she has had a growth spurt. You can see the difference if you watch a video of her last year and the year before to now--the puberty monster is there.

It is not a matter of Tat destroying American (or Japanese) skaters. It is a matter of those skaters ever having the ability to give her what she demanded from them (need we be reminded of how great Alexei was technically in 1998 when he was with Mishin, but how boring his skating was?).

bluedog, you just proved my point. Tarasova seems to work for skaters who already have their tech skills down by improving their artistic technique and turning them into a whole skater. (Yagudin was already technically great thanks to Mishin before taking up with Tatiana.)

But for Johnny Weir and Sasha Cohen, going after Tarasova's ideals of great choreography was destructive because they needed to keep working on the technical side of their skating. Great stretch, extension, and movement to accentuate the music was not the right ideal for them to aspire to because it caused them both to forget their jumps.

Also what ks777 said: "Yeah it didn't hurt Shizuka but she didn't think she could win the gold medal at the Olympics with Tarasova so she switched to Mrozov just in time."

Basically, it was Morozov that helped Shizuka get her jumps down. The artistic stuff she learned from Tarasova was great but it wouldn't have helped her win Olympic Gold or perhaps even medal at the Olympics.
 

Bennett

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Nov 20, 2007
Yeah it didn't hurt Shizuka but she didn't think she could win the gold medal at the Olympics with Tarasova so she switched to Mrozov just in time.

I think Morosov program worked well for Shizuka, esp. the Torandot LP. To me, it was nice because it had all the great steps and transitions, which might not have been possible without the prior training with ice dancers before going to Morosov. Shizuka's Chopin SP sounded to me like background music. Although it was clean, it was not very interesting, I am afraid.

I also did not enjoy Miki's LP program last year. It was really like a lineup of elements skated to the background music. Although he did a great job to get Miki concentrate on the elements, the PCSs were lower than other top skaters.

Mao - I think that the jump layout does not seem to be inhibited by beautiful choreo. Actually, she has the front loading of all the three jumps in her SP.
 
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krenseby

Final Flight
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Jan 8, 2006
This is one of the most retarded threads I've ever read, and that's saying a lot.

Well, I wish you could have said what you don't like about it or at least why you think it's absurd. Besides, I am not the only person to bring up the point that COP doesn't reward good choreography and beautiful skating where as the 6.0 system did.
 

mzheng

Record Breaker
Joined
Jan 16, 2005
What are you smoking?
She is a great coach. Sasha never has had consistant jump to begine with, with or without TT. Not to mention TT has helped Sasha improveing her edge quality. Johnny is Johnny he has had beautyful triple jumps before going TT, and still has them with TT. The one hurt him was the lacking or can't consistant landing them in competetion and when you can't do it consistant but put into your program there got to be a lot pressure. You might say pressure or mental toughness was what did Johnny in. As for Mao, she has had jump problem even before she went to TT, due to growing spurt and her jump technique to begine with....TT is no jump coach, nor psychist, you can't fault her for this.....for all I see TT dose help bring out Sasha and Mao's 'beauty' of skating.
 

tiara

Match Penalty
Joined
Feb 16, 2004
Yes, of course this is the Korean Federation's conspiracy which persuades Tarasova first and lets her trick Mao into pursuing artistic greatness and let Mao lose her original jumping ability.

However, I can not agree with your wonderful theory. Mao is too smart to be tricked by Tarasova or the Korean Federation. She is not that stupid. It is a right thing for her to put more emphasis in artistic-side training now. Though it is very tough for the less talented skaters like Johnny or Sasha to pursue both technical and artistic-side trainings at the same time, the Great Mao can handle both trainings at the same time. Even if she can not this season, in the long run, I mean by the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, she will improve both sides aspects of skating.
 

krenseby

Final Flight
Joined
Jan 8, 2006
Though it is very tough for the less talented skaters like Johnny or Sasha to pursue both technical and artistic-side trainings at the same time, the Great Mao can handle both trainings at the same time.

Tiara, I really hope you are right. Maybe, the problem is not with Tarasava per se, but more with Johnny's and Sasha's inability to up their artistic while remaining focused on the technical. (Yagudin managed to do this and Mao may do as well.) Perhaps, skaters should stay away from pursuing Tarasova's ideals of great choreography unless they have already honed their tech. skills to perfection.
 

gsrossano

Final Flight
Joined
Nov 11, 2006
Besides, I am not the only person to bring up the point that COP doesn't reward good choreography and beautiful skating where as the 6.0 system did.

Could you elaborate on that? It's odd, because several of the designers of IJS and some of it's staunchest true believers promote the idea that one benefit of IJS is that it does explicitly reward good choreography and beautiful skating while 6.0 didn't.
 

krenseby

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Jan 8, 2006
Could you elaborate on that? It's odd, because several of the designers of IJS and some of it's staunchest true believers promote the idea that one benefit of IJS is that it does explicitly reward good choreography and beautiful skating while 6.0 didn't.

Well, there's no need to retread all ground. It'll suffice to say that a clean skate from Johnny Weir or say Stéphane Lambiel with superb choreography, musical interpretation, jumps with flow, and graceful and elegant movements would lose to a choreographically empty skate that had some quads (think Plushenko's Olympic LP.)
 

Bennett

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Nov 20, 2007
Could you elaborate on that? It's odd, because several of the designers of IJS and some of it's staunchest true believers promote the idea that one benefit of IJS is that it does explicitly reward good choreography and beautiful skating while 6.0 didn't.

Jeff Buttle doesn't get higher PCSs than Jourbert despite his far more beautiful skating, choreos, transitions, and interpretations. Little Mao got similar PCSs with Sasha Cohen. Miki Ando somehow got higher PCSs than Yukina Ota (how come it's possible though?). Things like that.


But I think that beautiful skating does help the skater to enhance his/her charisma and be remembered. Sasha is extremely popular and so is Johnny for their beauty. Yuna's beautifully choreographed LP with two falls was far more loved and remembered than Miki's Gold winning jump-focused program.

When I watched Arakawa's performance as a junior skater, I was really surprised. She had all the jumps but I didn't see any artistry. But when she skated at 2004 Worlds, I was moved by the emotions and beauty in addition to the strong technical content. I personally would not like to see FS programs that just lineup all the technical elements one by one. I would hope that judges could give more PCSs to the skaters who present beauty, regardless of the jump contents.
 
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gsrossano

Final Flight
Joined
Nov 11, 2006
The intent of IJS was that PE, CH and IN would explicitly reward good presentation based on defined criteria and not the whims of the judges' tastes. In reality, there seem to be two problems (IMO).

First, the PCs are not being used correctly (as intended) by the judges. As a result good presentation often doesn't get rewarded if the elements are weak, and mediocre/poor presentation gets rewarded if the elements are strong (Plushenko OGM). This is the fault of the judges and not the design of IJS.

But there is also a second problem with the design of IJS. Say mediocre program from a skater of decent technical skills is going to get the usual 5-6 points in PCs. To move up by 2 points in each of PE, CH and IN requires a huge investment of time and effort. For all that work, a man's PCS score will go up 12 points. However, if for the same amount of work (or less) you can get a 4T and execute it twice in the FS, you get 18 points. So I think many skater do a quick cost-benefit and say, I can get more points learning more difficult tricks than investing the time in improving presentation. And if I improve in technical skills, it will pull up my PC scores anyway.

On the other side of the equation however, if a skater has reached their full potential in elements, then the only place left to earn more points is to improve the PCs. But most skaters it seems never lose hope that they will eventually get the next big jump, and so they flog the elements at the expense of the PCs.
 
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