Carolina Kostner changing coaches?

[viv]

That's incredible. I thought she has already worked with a psychologist or something periodically. I wonder if she is aware of her mental problem.

I agree. She had kind of a meltdown at last Olympics, and didn't get professional help on her mental problems after that? Well, Huth might or might not be a good coach on the technical side, but it would be his job to advice his athletes to look for psychological help if they blow their competitions at least. With Verner, Kostner, Dytrt he has three headcases in his charge, why doesn't he do something about it?

[Meli_Huber]

I agree. She had kind of a meltdown at last Olympics, and didn't get professional help on her mental problems after that? Well, Huth might or might not be a good coach on the technical side, but it would be his job to advice his athletes to look for psychological help if they blow their competitions at least. With Verner, Kostner, Dytrt he has three headcases in his charge, why doesn't he do something about it?

He also trains now:
- Philipp Tischendorf
- Franz Streubel (a German junior skater - skated jgps last season)
- Jennifer Urban (a German junior skater - did 3T, 3S and 3Loop in competition last season)
- Kavita Lorenz (German National Novice Champion 2009 - Under 14 years old)

And don´t forget Anton Kovalevski.

[viv]

He also trains now:
- Philipp Tischendorf
- Franz Streubel (a German junior skater - skated jgps last season)
- Jennifer Urban (a German junior skater - did 3T, 3S and 3Loop in competition last season)
- Kavita Lorenz (German National Novice Champion 2009 - Under 14 years old)

And don´t forget Anton Kovalevski.

Well, yes, but that's not a contradiction to what I said. Dytrt for example is such a great jumper - as long as she has not to proof it in a competition. It just doesn't make sense to me that he seems to ignore the psychological side of it.

[eleonora.d]

That's incredible. I thought she has already worked with a psychologist or something periodically. I wonder if she is aware of her mental problem.

I have red a lot of interviews/articles about that and this is not at all clear. She didnt' clarify if she was working with someone and who was that.

It seems like she did consult a professional according to Dytrt's interview.
Here is a quote from Annette Dytrt's interview she had with Figure Skating - Online.

Q: Last season you said that you would like to consult a sports psychologist. Are you doing that now?

A: Yes, I got a sports psychologist and we’ve been working for two months. It’s Carolina Kostner’s sports psychologist. I talked to the Federation and to the Bavarian Federation, and we decided together that this is something we want. The Federation wanted it and I wanted it myself, and now it worked out.[/

I think that whoever is he/she, the main problem is that they need some day by day professional help.

For example, Samuel Contesti works with a militar psychologist (the italian's paratrooper's one) and you can see this man standing by the coaches (Zulini and Peter Grutter) right before and after he skates.

So, someone that can follow Huth's pupils during competitions standing at the boards may be a solution.

[Meli_Huber]

Well, yes, but that's not a contradiction to what I said. Dytrt for example is such a great jumper - as long as she has not to proof it in a competition. It just doesn't make sense to me that he seems to ignore the psychological side of it.

It is the same with Jenny Urban, who trains with Huth since young years. She is not able to land her jumps in competition constant and clean.
Tischendorf, Streubel,.... trains with Huth only since a few weeks or month. And I really hope, that they don´t become the same probleme!

All Huth pupils have the same probleme .... in competition they cannot show what she really can

[mrd2301]

I have red a lot of interviews/articles about that and this is not at all clear. She didnt' clarify if she was working with someone and who was that.
It seems like she did consult a professional according to Dytrt's interview.

Thanks for the additional info.
Hope they pick out a better professional staff to work with during both practice and competitions as soon as possible.

[Diva]

I'm not sure if it would help Caro to change coaches now. It's to close to the Olympics to try something totally new and change her environment completely (I doubt that there is another world-class coach in Oberstdorf and yes, I consider Huth still as one because I think that both Caro and Tomas plus Annette all become a lot better since they started training with him and don't know something about Kovalevsky because I never followed his career closely).

Dytrt's psychologist is always on her side. She was with Annette both at Worlds and Euros, you can see her sitting next to Dytrt and Huth when they were waiting for the marks so I guess she was even with Dytrt before the skate. So I'm not sure if she still has the same psycholgist like Kostner has because I didn't see her next to Caro.
And (maybe not at Worlds but at Euros) it helped Dytrt a lot. At Euros the placed the first time under the Top 10 and she always said in interviews that both her psychologist (Huth suggested her to work with) and her new trainer helped her a lot to become mentally stronger.

As for Verner he himself said after these years Euros that his training was wrong and so he, after talking to his coaches, decided to change it. Now he trains his whole programs every day while before he just trained parts of it.

At last I don't know if there was really a heavy psychological reason for Caro's LP at Worlds or if it was just not her day that day but in all cases I don't want her to switch to Mishin! Nearly every coach else but not Mishin.
Surely there will be a lot of you who will disagree but the only feeling I have about him is that he is wasting the talent of 99% of his students. Of course he brought Plushenko to an Olympic and Yagudin to a World title and they were both great jumpers and maybe they learnt a lot about technical things from Mishin but on the artistical side he always wasted their talent (also Gachinsky who everyone thought will be the next great star - where is he now...).
I remember seeing him in a documentary dropping some choreography of Plushenko's programs because "only the technical difficulties" are important.
I prefer nice and good looking programs to ones with ten quads in it...

[npavel]

Kostner will not change her coach, she told about stages with Mishin not to be her coach and she learned a lot from him. She will see to get some mental help and it is what she needed. Huth is a god coach. She has a very solid technique and her jumps are seldom underrotated and always on the right edge. Her problem is mental and a change of coach don't get you mental strong. I hope she gain more confidence so that she'll go out and put clean programs on the ice.

[kyla2]

Carolina was propped up for so long with "gift judging." Now the chickens have come home to roost. That kind of thing is ultimately the undoing of the skater because they slack off and think they are still going to stay on top. I couldn't disagree more about her technique. She has always had technique issues i.e. sloppy landings and consistency issues. The only thing she has is speed.