Igor Shpilband fired

Blades of Passion said:

Russia offers $$$

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SkateFiguring said:

The biggest beneficiary of this fallout is the Russian federation. Any conspiracy theory and convoluted scheme should start with them,..

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Here's mine. Twenty-two years ago the Russian Federation, anticipating the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union, planted a deep mole in U.S. figure skating circles, concocting a cover story about defecting.

The mole quickly set to work insinuating himself into the ranks of the movers and shakers of North American ice dancing, biding his time, biding his time.... :yes:

SkateFiguring said:

That's because this is a not normal case of skaters and coaches parting ways. This is a business decision and action by a club and rink management. This part is clear even though the skaters' and coaches' intentions and preferred way of settling the matter are not.

However brutal it was, the Canton management acted to protect their own interests, aiming to prevent their students, especially the prized top skaters, from leaving because of Shpilband one way or another, and to delay as much as possible his establishing his new school, but I don't think they acted with an objective to destroy his reputation or future. (They couldn't, unless there was a serious offense by Shpilband, in which case they actually protected him by not revealing it.) In fact, Shpilband gets a lot of sympathy from this incident and there is backlash against others involved. Of course, we know the Russian federation will step in to assist Shpilband quickly and he will be motivated to accept their help.

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I don't see why it would have been so bad for Canton if Igor had started his own school there. I don't think catoring towards your top skaters is smart. Your top skaters are going to leave, what you need is coaches who will bring in the top skaters....Igor's going to land on his feet, no doubt about it and will have no problem building a school and getting other TOP students. Do you think he'll ever consider Artice ICe again after how they cermoniously treated them. Notice to that Marina is having trouble getting a Tech coach to come help her too. Once again many might ask themselves if they will treat a coach of Igor's caliber that way, how will they treat me.

I don't get at all that the folks at Canton handled this thing professionally. They might have "short term" stopped Igor, but long term... :lol:

“I don’t want it to end like this,” he told the Free Press. “Two years after the Olympics (2014 in Sochi, Russia) we could have gone our separate ways.

“Every partnership has arguments . . . but Marina didn’t see it that way. She wanted me to go away. I worked for many years before Marina, I built and took skaters to the top podium in the world. But I felt like I needed Marina to (go) from worlds to the Olympics, which (was) incredible — we did it together.”

He can definitely build again. Don't be surprised if his school, once it is built, surpasses hers. The rivalry between Marina and Igor may be the fiercest rivalry EVER in ice dance.

Perhaps Marina can offer Platov the coaching position? He was an amazing dancer! And, maybe Igor can lure Grishuk away from Costa Mesa, California.

blue dog said:

“I don’t want it to end like this,” he told the Free Press. “Two years after the Olympics (2014 in Sochi, Russia) we could have gone our separate ways.

“Every partnership has arguments . . . but Marina didn’t see it that way. She wanted me to go away. I worked for many years before Marina, I built and took skaters to the top podium in the world. But I felt like I needed Marina to (go) from worlds to the Olympics, which (was) incredible — we did it together.”

He can definitely build again. Don't be surprised if his school, once it is built, surpasses hers. The rivalry between Marina and Igor may be the fiercest rivalry EVER in ice dance.

Perhaps Marina can offer Platov the coaching position? He was an amazing dancer! And, maybe Igor can lure Grishuk away from Costa Mesa, California.

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What article are you quoting??

I think people just need to be happy or relieved that it's figure skating, and not, say, American football, or any other sport where the parting between coach and athlete is 1. very public 2. very messy 3. very dramatic. I almost commend the parties involved here for NOT making it messy. The two coaching break-ups this season have been very tame, compared to those in the past.

Imagine what this board would've been like if it had existed in 1990, when the late Bowman parted with Frank Carroll... or when Dubova kicked Grishuk/Platov out of her school.

not all firings in football are over dramatic... when Mike Singletary was fired from the 49ers it was a huge sigh of relief in the sport... most commented that it took too long to get rid of him Then when Harbaugh was named as head coach THAT's when debates started... thankfully he lived up to the hype and brought the team back to glory. Here's hoping his sophmore year as coach is even better! (Love me some NINERS!)

Now that I have finally untangled my eyebrows from my hairline, I feel I can comment without looking like a lowbrow.

We have just witnessed a 'bloodless' coup. As usual in these events, the army backed the winner. Nobody was injured, although the loser had the ice cut out from under his feet. Now everything has changed forever, even if the original intention was to put a different person at the helm without changing course. Sometimes the new leader finds that the army wants to run things, on threat of withdrawing it's backing.

My conspiracy theory, concerns a new virus that attacks only the "gold medal hopes" of North American figure skating, causing them to believe they don't need a technical coach.

bekalc said:

I don't see why it would have been so bad for Canton if Igor had started his own school there. I don't think catoring towards your top skaters is smart. Your top skaters are going to leave, what you need is coaches who will bring in the top skaters....Igor's going to land on his feet, no doubt about it and will have no problem building a school and getting other TOP students. Do you think he'll ever consider Artice ICe again after how they cermoniously treated them. Notice to that Marina is having trouble getting a Tech coach to come help her too. Once again many might ask themselves if they will treat a coach of Igor's caliber that way, how will they treat me.

I don't get at all that the folks at Canton handled this thing professionally. They might have "short term" stopped Igor, but long term... :lol:

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ITA! I don't think management thought this through or even were aware that there are far more good dance choreographers than good ice dance technical coaches. Going so far away as to talk to Lithuanians re Vanagas to see if he would come to Canton, shows some desperation especially as Vanagas has never been a coach and seemingly has no desire to become one in the near future.

mmcdermott said:

A conflict of interest happens when a person is offering a competing service. Shpiland wanted to start a side business offering the same services to the same client base as the business he had with Zoueva. His business would be competing for clients (and results). When Zoueva offers choreography to non-ice dance skaters, that isn't competing with their ice dance coaching business. It's a different service offered to a different client base.

This comes up in industries like graphic design, where a designer may work for a large agency but also have a side business freelancing for other clients. It's a conflict of interest if they are targeting the same client base (potentially becoming competition for their employer). It wouldn't be a conflict of interest, if, for example, the designer was offering photography services not graphic design. Or if the designer was working for a large corporation with a different type of work than what they are offering on the side.

I can see why Zoueva and the potentially the skaters as well could be bothered by this. But it also makes my wonder why he would want to do that - there must have been something else going on for him to want to start coaching on his own.

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Nice try at sounding like a lawyer. But I think it is more complicated than that. Zoueva's choreography is highly relational to coaching and there is a conflict of interest because if she is in the best interests of her current clients/athletes how can it be in their best interests that she choreograph competitiors programs or even national team members unless she creates some monstrocity. Regardless this all smells bad. I think it is so sad. We all have different opinons and no one can agree on anything. I would like to give OGM to VM and DW plus Parick and Dai; V and T and the Germans in pairs and in the ladies well I actually think no one right now deserves a OGM. But there is only one gold (usually lol) and everyone wants it.

blue dog said:

Another article, with a short response from Igor about the split.


http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/Sports/othersports/2012/06/07/19851641.html

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Okay if that was Charlie truly speaking and not some media produced statement then not only is he an amazing athlete but quite the intellect. I wish we could have some transparency and not skaters saying the poltiically proper things. In some way skaters like Bonaly, Chan, Joubert, Moir even Harding are more real and make skating interesting. Everyone else seems to be training for the Miss American/Congeniality award. There's more plastic in them than those Real Housewives...

Some say that Zoueva doing choreography for other skaters and excluding Shpilband from it is not a big deal since she is not really spending a great deal of time coaching them. However, a recent example is Yankowskas/Reagan. I read that they are coached now by Johnny Johns, David Kirby, and Marina Zoueva. I don't see Shpilband's name attached to this list. Isn't this the same type of service as she is giving her ice dance teams? And isn't it excluding Shpilband?

DianaSelene said:

Some say that Zoueva doing choreography for other skaters and excluding Shpilband from it is not a big deal since she is not really spending a great deal of time coaching them. However, a recent example is Yankowskas/Reagan. I read that they are coached now by Johnny Johns, David Kirby, and Marina Zoueva. I don't see Shpilband's name attached to this list. Isn't this the same type of service as she is giving her ice dance teams? And isn't it excluding Shpilband?

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Well I think there is definitely more to this story and you are right all the pieces that have been put out to the media do not fit. This will be a developing story until Sochi....

Maybe it'll get some air time on NBC when skating starts up again... big fluff pieces...

would love to have B/A orr some of their other forrmer pupils weigh in. They don't have to play nice as they've moved on/retired.

Tonichelle said:

What article are you quoting??

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http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/Sports/othersports/2012/06/07/19851641.html

I posted it earlier.

Skater Boy said:

Nice try at sounding like a lawyer. But I think it is more complicated than that.

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Excuse me ?!? I was simply attempting to explain why this could be considered a conflict of interest, based on a basic explanation of how conflict of interest works in other industries (which I only know a tiny bit about). However, I was also under the impression that she mainly/only did choreography for non-ice dancing students so maybe I was wrong about that. I'm not sure how something like that would apply in comparison to other real-world situations.

I agree that this is surely a complex situation that we know little about.

Responses like this are the reason why I almost never post on this forum.

Skater Boy said:

Okay if that was Charlie truly speaking and not some media produced statement then not only is he an amazing athlete but quite the intellect. I wish we could have some transparency and not skaters saying the poltiically proper things. In some way skaters like Bonaly, Chan, Joubert, Moir even Harding are more real and make skating interesting. Everyone else seems to be training for the Miss American/Congeniality award. There's more plastic in them than those Real Housewives...

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I think you're forgetting that there is a very big component to skating called "judges." Yes, we'd love for our athletes to be more candid, for lack of a better word, but skating is still a judged sport. As much as we'd love to believe that the judging begins and ends on the ice, it does not. Anything considered bad behaviour by the judges can make a difference. You can bet that even Igor himself had told Charlie AND Scott to less candid when speaking about skating.

Much as we'd like to believe that there is freedom of speech, there is almost little to no freedom of speech if you want to make it as a skater.

Mmcdermott, I totally understand where you are coming from. I appreciate your opinions and enjoy reading your posts.

mmcdermott said:

Excuse me ?!? I was simply attempting to explain why this could be considered a conflict of interest, based on a basic explanation of how conflict of interest works in other industries (which I only know a tiny bit about). However, I was also under the impression that she mainly/only did choreography for non-ice dancing students so maybe I was wrong about that. I'm not sure how something like that would apply in comparison to other real-world situations.

I agree that this is surely a complex situation that we know little about.

Responses like this are the reason why I almost never post on this forum.

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Well. People are interested. This is good for ice dance. My last opinion until the truth is revealed or new developments in Canton or the fate of Igor is announced, ie. where he opens up, if he opens up. I assume he will quickly.

And it is easier for me to say "kids" lol than spell adults who are self-motivated. The shibs are younger. The top two are older and adults and seasonED pros with Olympic medals.

They will still get great programs and execute like the pros they are. I don't see them affected as a tech coach will be found and a good one. Don't worry about them. They are the best and will win mostly everything til Sochi. However, I won't feel bad if other good top teams manage to slide in the door as a result of any fallout. If we take this at face value, sympathy should be with Igor. On second thought, they would not be protecting his reputation. Insiders are going to ask just like us, what did IGOR do to deserve this dawn attack with the army lined up?

So Igor is the one scrambling here. And I understand how people could feel the Canton 5 (3 teamsMarina and Craig) don't look so wonderbar. Let us face it. Skating is not one happy family. At the top it gets cuthroat. Why I know a top skater who was going to be killed, then they settled for injury. Whack to the knee. Is there a more crazy sport than FS? Olympic gold isn't worth much- ask Evan Lysacek. There are those here, there and everywhere. SF for one who make it sound like an impersonal business decision.

It's quite personal to Igor and his family and his lower level students. Maybe the top two or three don't need him anymore and they are PC correct.

But if we take Craig at his word, they are a mutinous, and self serving bunch. Zueva's behavior is not surprising to me. I think there might be a little fallout for Canton ice and their mean "business non personal" behavior is what makes this world awful. Did he deserve such a sacking. Like I said, the stated crime does not fit the punishment. I wish him well. Moral of the story-don't argue with Marina. Or she will get

Sorry skating fans, I am trying to lighten the mood; sometimes it gets lost in these posts. Yep, we know the politics and game of skating and life you can't upset the powers that be (judges). I was just pointing out, trying to give more facts that conflict of interest in skating and the facts being looked at should possibly be on a broader perspective. Conflict of interest can be seen as jsut doing something else in the skating business or showing a different allegiance. It is really in the eye of the beholder. We just don't know the whole story and everyone is putting their own spin on it. In the end, I think all the skaters will survive. Skating - coaching, choreograph, skaters are all rather egocentric (moreso than most of us in life). I think most will agre it was horrible how Igor was let go and found out. Whether he deserved to go or whether there was someone pushing him without just reason probably is in the eye of the beholder. Hopefully we will see everyone skating happily ever after.

Sounds to me like the top three teams had this me me me attitude and how dare Igor take on or coach other teams. His job wasn't to just coach them was it? The world doesn't revolve those three teams but they seem to think it does. I have no doubt that Igor would have gave it all he got to coach them as best he could heading into Sochi and not neglect them.