Are Russians putting too much pressure on their wonderbabies?

After watching a tv report about Sotnikova and Tuktamisheva (here's the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD9FozgYqys&list=UU1ZRNf5khuJFrtacQsFqV6w&index=1&feature=plcp), I'm wondering if the russians aren't putting to much pressure on their phenomenal young skaters. Sotnikova and Tuktamisheva are still kids and all this expectation may work against them. I would like to read other opinions about this matter.

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NO, it is the Russian way. This pressure and the mental toughness of the Russian young skaters are at the root of their success. It is very likely that Tuktamisheva will win Olympic Gold and retire in the style of Sarah Hughes and Tara Lipinski.

Thanx for vid.

sweetskates1 said:

NO, it is the Russian way. This pressure and the mental toughness of the Russian young skaters are at the root of their success. It is very likely that Tuktamisheva will win Olympic Gold and retire in the style of Sarah Hughes and Tara Lipinski.

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If Tuktamisheva wins the Olympic Gold she will have made the same senior route Yuna did, competing in one olympiad, do you say Yuna was such a flash like Lipinski and Hughes?

I really don't think that they are gold contenders(even silver),and I'm Russian..There is so much hype about them((And they ARE kids..I want them to win BUT there is still Mao,probably Yu-Na,even Carolina..I mean ISU may not want young skaters without enough experience to win and much highly retire - there are many skaters who've been making their way through many senior competitions.sooo...(

seniorita said:

Thanx for vid.


If Tuktamisheva wins the Olympic Gold she will have made the same senior route Yuna did, competing in one olympiad, do you say Yuna was such a flash like Lipinski and Hughes?

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Yuna Kim was at the senior level for 4 years, and even competed well for a year after winning her Olympic medal. Eliza Tukt, if she goes to the Olympics, will have competed for a similar amount of time on the senior level as Yuna.

Lipinski won worlds the year before and then the Olympics, then promptly retired. That's a flash.

Sarah Hughes was utterly forgettable for the number of years she competed as a senior, I don't know how many years she was a senior, but she won an Olympic medal with underrotated triple-triples, so I don't count her as a flash.

Hughes skated in senior international competition for five seasons, from the time she was 13 (the rule at the time was you could skate senior Worlds if you medaled at JW; Sarah won 1999 JW silver), when she finished 7th at 1999 Worlds. She skated in the 1999, 2000, and 2001 GPs and won bronze in the 2000 and 2001 GPFs. She was 5th at 2000 Worlds and 3rd at 2001 Worlds before winning gold at the 2002 Olympics. But she opted out of the 2002 GP with injury and finished 6th at 2002 Worlds before going to Yale and retiring from competitive skating.

Hi Koatcue, I think the Russian ladies are definitely contenders. They are fierce competitors. If they are lucky to avoid the trapping of a growth spurt... well they seem almost unstoppable. If Yu-Na and Mao return then well, that's a different story.

koatcue said:

I really don't think that they are gold contenders(even silver),and I'm Russian..There is so much hype about them((And they ARE kids..I want them to win BUT there is still Mao,probably Yu-Na,even Carolina..I mean ISU may not want young skaters without enough experience to win and much highly retire - there are many skaters who've been making their way through many senior competitions.sooo...(

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I also believe that Yuna and Elizabetha are much more talented.

brightphoton said:

Yuna Kim was at the senior level for 4 years, and even competed well for a year after winning her Olympic medal. Eliza Tukt, if she goes to the Olympics, will have competed for a similar amount of time on the senior level as Yuna.

Lipinski won worlds the year before and then the Olympics, then promptly retired. That's a flash.

Sarah Hughes was utterly forgettable for the number of years she competed as a senior, I don't know how many years she was a senior, but she won an Olympic medal with underrotated triple-triples, so I don't count her as a flash.

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It's hard to say just how talented Adelina and Elizaveta are until they've completely weathered puberty and growth spurts.

seniorita said:

Thanx for vid.


If Tuktamisheva wins the Olympic Gold she will have made the same senior route Yuna did, competing in one olympiad, do you say Yuna was such a flash like Lipinski and Hughes?

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Tuktamisheva will have competed in only ONE senior world championship by the time she takes the ice in Sochi. That's much shorter compared to Yuna's senior career. If she wins gold in Sochi then immediately retires, she would definitely be more like Tara Lipinski.

seniorita said:

Thanx for vid.


If Tuktamisheva wins the Olympic Gold she will have made the same senior route Yuna did, competing in one olympiad, do you say Yuna was such a flash like Lipinski and Hughes?

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There are so many ways to see each of the people you mention. Yuna I could never see as a flash in the pan, because she was at the top of her game (and of everyone's game!) for just about the entire Olympic cycle before Vancouver. Her form and technique were better than just about anyone else's throughout the cycle, and I'd call her a mature talent with fully ripened interpretive powers.

By contrast, Tara was in and out of seniors in just about two years, though she was the world or Olympic champion for each of those two years. Since she was just fifteen, her interpretive powers were pretty raw, and we have no idea what she would become. I'd call her a flash in the pan, though that doesn't diminish her very real talents and accomplishments. The same with Sarah, who has even less of a record: no national championship, no world championship, just that anomalous Olympic championship. And then there's Oksana, also just two championships to her name--though one is a world championship and one an Olympic championship. I guess some skating careers just look like that.

Interestingly, before skaters were allowed to earn money, a three- or four-year career was just about typical. Most female Olympic champions of the fifties and sixties showed up at the beginning of the Olympic cycle, matured through those years, won their medal at the age of about nineteen, and retired gracefully to turn pro or become a celebrity. The exception through that time was Witt, who of course was subsidized by her country and had no need to earn money or pay her parents back for years of sacrifice. After skaters were able to get paid through their competitive careers, some started staying in. That's when we got people with a bit of longevity, like Kwan, Cohen, Kostner, Miki Ando, and the like. I'm simplifying, of course, but that's the general picture.

As for the Russians, it will all depend on the individual talents of each skater, and also on physical factors. The best predictions we can make might fit one skater but not another. As with most things in the future, their destinies remain a mystery to us. It should be an interesting few years!

Tara competed as a Senior for 3 seasons. She finished 15th at 1996 Worlds, when she was 13 (the age rules weren't in place until the following year). She won 1997 Worlds (she was grandfathered in because she had competed at Worlds the previous year), the 1996-1997 and 1997 GPFs (known as the Champions Series back then), and 1998 Olympics, after which she promptly retired.

Labelling depends upon one's perspective. If I recall correctly, Tara Lipinski raised the bar with her successful triple-triple in senior international competition, so I don't see her as "a flash in the pan". Moreover, in some cases, "longevity" is due to a skater never having reached all of their goals, and therefore staying eligibly active in order to keep trying. An example of this would be Michelle Kwan, who never did win the Olympic gold medal, but she kept trying, and along the way won the gold at Worlds many times, as well as winning non-gold Olympic medals.

Polina Korobeynikova IMO has more potential to win the Olympics if she can continue to put out consistent performances. She has the jumps, spins, beautiful lines and looks like she's almost done growing. Viktoria Volchkova has done a great job considering she was a talented skater but a complete head case in competition.

Kind off topic, but Tuktamisheva will probably miss the Junior Worlds, she said she is tired, and Mishin said she had had too many competition this year and many of them outside europe so they start training for the next season.

Dodhiyel said:

Labelling depends upon one's perspective. If I recall correctly, Tara Lipinski raised the bar with her successful triple-triple in senior international competition, so I don't see her as "a flash in the pan". Moreover, in some cases, "longevity" is due to a skater never having reached all of their goals, and therefore staying eligibly active in order to keep trying. An example of this would be Michelle Kwan, who never did win the Olympic gold medal, but she kept trying, and along the way won the gold at Worlds many times, as well as winning non-gold Olympic medals.

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Tara certainly did hold the standard for jumps very high, though if I recall, Kristi and other ladies in her cycle (1992) already had triple-triples. So Tara wasn't the first. I'll have to check that out, though, so don't hold me to it.

In any case, calling someone a flash in the pan in this instance only refers to the brevity of her career, not the quality of it. Possibly comet is a better word? It's understandable that someone who has won an Olympic gold medal might want to quit while he/she was ahead. There's no fault in it. I doubt Tara could have continued at that level of achievement anyway, because of that chronic hip condition that was already hampering her movement. So it turns out that those two years of high accomplishment were her only chance. I'm glad she was able to seize the moment.

Sarah might be seen as more of a fluke, because she didn't come in as a sitting world champion as Tara did—and in fact only won an international gold that once, at Salt Lake City. She actually did try to continue competing after the Olympics, but she obviously wasn't rising to that level anymore. That's when she got out, and good for her that she went on to a productive time at college. She still has the OGM, though, so she did fine, I'd say!

Another one like Sarah is the real fluke of Kimmie Meissner, who won the 2006 Worlds when none of the Olympic medalists showed up at worlds and then almost immediately lost the high level of her jumps and so forth due to a growth spurt and injuries. I'm glad she has the world championship to her name, and I'm even happier that she's been skating on pro programs again, but she really was world class for just that one season, it seems.

Olympia said:

Sarah might be seen as more of a fluke, because she didn't come in as a sitting world champion as Tara did—and in fact only won an international gold that once, at Salt Lake City.

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Not quite true. Sarah also won Vienna Cup gold and Skate Canada gold before winning the OGM. She also won gold at the US Championships at the Junior level. But although she won medals in the JGP and medaled at the JGPF, she never won JGP or JGPF gold. She won only one gold medal in the GP (SC) and never won GPF gold. She well may be the only OGM winner who never won her own country's Senior Championship and/or the World Championship.

chuckm said:

Not quite true. Sarah also won Vienna Cup gold and Skate Canada gold before winning the OGM. She also won gold at the US Championships at the Junior level. But although she won medals in the JGP and medaled at the JGPF, she never won JGP or JGPF gold. She won only one gold medal in the GP (SC) and never won GPF gold. She well may be the only OGM winner who never won her own country's Senior Championship and/or the World Championship.

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Although Yagudin won worlds, he never won Russian Nats
But that's different. He wasn't a flash in the pan.

koheikun90 said:

Polina Korobeynikova IMO has more potential to win the Olympics if she can continue to put out consistent performances. She has the jumps, spins, beautiful lines and looks like she's almost done growing. Viktoria Volchkova has done a great job considering she was a talented skater but a complete head case in competition.

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I agree Polina K is turning out to be a phenomenal skater. She always had beautiful, balletic lines, but just a year ago she didn't have flip or lutz, and her loop was very unreliable, and she telegraphed like crazy and psyched herself out of any chance of landing the loop most of the time. With such limited jumping capability at 14, it looked like she will never be able to compete with the young phenoms who were already doing 3-3's and winning national championships before being old enough to compete in ISU junior competitions. But she blossomed wonderfully in just one year, I'm really impressed with her and her coach! I was worried she wouldn't even get a chance to compete on the JGP with such a crowded Russian field, but now look she just outshone the veterans at Euros and on her way to Worlds before the younger phenoms are even old enough to compete as seniors. How fast fortune turns in just one season!
On the junior level, Julia Lipnitskaya has really attracted all the attention and hype.
it's interesting that Elizaveta and Adelina, talented and accomplished as they are, are having considerable competition both at the junior and senior levels.
I think it's good for Russia that public attention has so many "targets" to focus on. It lets all the young ladies share in the limelight without being too overwhelmed. Besides, competing to be on the Russian team for Sochi 2014 will surely be a total pressure-packed bloodbath. It's good that the young ladies are learning to deal with pressure early on.

To answer the original question posed in the title of this thread, "no", no more than the amount of pressure Americans put on their own (e.g. Gracie Gold).