Tatiana Tarasova has coached many champions, including Olympic champions. Each skater presents a different challenge to a coach. Which one do you consider to be her greatest coaching achievement?
Bestemianova-Bukin (Gold 1988 Oly)
Klimova-Ponomarenko (Gold 1992 Oly)
Grishchuk & Platov (Gold 1998 Oly)
Ilia Kulik (Gold 1998 Oly)
Alexei Yagudin (Gold 2002 Oly)
Shizuka Arakawa (Gold 2004 Worlds)
Sasha Cohen (Gold 2003 GPF)
Johnny Weir (Gold 2004 US Nationals)
Other
Tatiana Tarasova has coached many champions, including Olympic champions. Each skater presents a different challenge to a coach. Which one do you consider to be her greatest coaching achievement?
Last edited by Vash01; 07-23-2004 at 11:01 PM.
Well I voted for G/P, but I wouldn't credit Weir to TT. I mean she consulted him and did his programs, but his main coach should get the credit for the medal.
Tatiana is the bomb. Imagine if she coaches Griazev to gold in 2006. Wow, will Mishin be steaming mad!!!
I'd like to see Ilia Klimkin take from Tarasova. I think she could do wonders with him.
Not B&B! They were always so strange! Did anyone ever see that Rasputin/Tsarina Alexandra program? (I think that was them...interesting idea, but extremely bizarre and sort of scary). I would have to say I think Tatiana really did a great job with Alexei Yagudin. He was talented and charismatic enough without her, but I feel that she went above and beyond to make him stand out from all of his other competitors. She did a wonderful job with Alexei. I would also say she did a great job with K&P.
The Rasputin program was a pro routine, I believe. As pros they always went all out to create the most unusual/bizarre routines, but I don't believe Tarasova was coaching them after they turned pro (she did coach K&P for sometime after they turned pro). I was referring to their 1988 Olympic performance, when they won the gold.Originally Posted by BronzeisGolden
I voted for Arakawa. The speed of her the rise of her fame after she went to Tarasova was incredible. I can't think of another skater who experienced the same thing. She was more or less or nobody last year, and now she's the world champion and the new ice queen, without changing much of anything in her skating.
I was just thinking of that program today. I hated it, but I remember the female commentator saying, "I am so honored to have seen this program," and I was thinking that I just wasted four minutes of my life.
Can someone tell me this: Has TT coached someone to a gold medal who was not already very accomplished? I don't know much about her dance background, but with Shizuka, Ilia and Alexei (and to some extent, Griazev) they came to her with jumps in hand, and a decent feel for artistry. Now, if she could take, say, Ludmilla Nelidina, and coach her to gold, THAT would be something.
I didn't vote for anyone.
Laura
[QUOTE=PrincessLeppard] Now, if she could take, say, Ludmilla Nelidina, and coach her to gold, THAT would be something.
[QUOTE]
If ANYONE could do ANYTHING w/ Ludmilla Nelidina beside get her to land the triple axel, that would be something! (I'm sorry, I'm not a fan of hers)
In the end, I voted for Shizuka (though it was a toss-up between her and Yags's Olympic LP, which is still my favourite of his programmes). She [Shizuka] already came in w/ the jumps and that "Turandot" routine, but TT added some extra subtleties and gave Shizuka a big confidence boost, which probably resulted in the 3lutz-3toe-2loop in her LP, which pretty much settled the Ladies title in Dortmund right there, IMHO
Even a great coach needs skaters that have talent and potential or there are no results to show. Yagudin could have won the gold without TT- JMHO- but some of the others might not have. Shizuka was not an accomplished skater, by world championship standards before she went to TT. She has never won even the bronze at worlds. In fact I don't think she had placed even in the top 5 at worlds, before 2004!I was just thinking of that program today. I hated it, but I remember the female commentator saying, "I am so honored to have seen this program," and I was thinking that I just wasted four minutes of my life.
Can someone tell me this: Has TT coached someone to a gold medal who was not already very accomplished? I don't know much about her dance background, but with Shizuka, Ilia and Alexei (and to some extent, Griazev) they came to her with jumps in hand, and a decent feel for artistry. Now, if she could take, say, Ludmilla Nelidina, and coach her to gold, THAT would be something.
I didn't vote for anyone.
Laura
A coach is not a magician. He/she cannot CREATE something that a skater does not have. He/she can only help a skater develop what he/she has. Again, JMHO.
Absolutely. Bestemianova & Bukin (whom I voted for) were her creation, period. She recalls the famous Frau Muller (Witt's coach) calling her crazy for taking on such an "ugly duckling" as Natalia, but TT knew she could do magic with them. To me, they pushed ice dance incredibly through their expression and choreography. I would even add to the "greatest accomplishments" list her first dance couple, Moiseeva & Minenkov (though they never won Olympic gold) -- this was her first attempt to create something brand new on the ice; BTW, they were also a pair she created.
I didn't vote for Yagudin, because I think that TT's importance there was more as a councilor. Besides, as others said, he was already an accomplished skater when he came to her. BTW, I wold disagree with Princess on Yagudin's feel for artistry -- I always felt he's had none until he left Mishin.
As for Klimova & Ponomarenko... she did indeed add a very special flair to them, but what really made them unique is the exquisite technique that Dubova gave them; much as I prefer TT's style, I must admit that none of her teams ever had such clean edges and soft knees. If anything, I think her work with Gretchuk & Platov was far more fruitful, though of course they already had an Olympic gold when they came to her. Still, I think their '98 gold had TT written all over it.
IMO, Tarasova really did not add much to Rodnina & Zaitsev's skating. Rodnina was 100% the creation of Zhuk (the coach that Katya describes in My Sergei as such a monster). If anything, when Zhuk dumped them, they chose TT because she was young, inexperienced, and they could do whatever they wanted. When I look at their programs, I cannot see anything of TT's MO there.
Though I have to admit that I find very odd the idea of Arakawa being TT's greatest achievement. Come on, she worked with the girl for a few weeks, fixed a few things here and there, and helped her give an excellent (though not uniquely so) performance.
Shizuka was always labelled as a jumping bean, so I don't see where the "decent feel for artistry" comes from. This has been discussed to death, but anyway... I believe there are different types of coaches. Some are good teaching the basics, for example, others are good for polishing and cleaning the programs, others don't exactly excell at both but connect well with the students and give them confidence... Tarasova is a coach who polishes the skater and since she's also a choreographer, her input on the programs is also what makes the difference. How many times we complain that this skater or that one has so much potential and is getting there, but there's always something missing? That is her job, to give them that last touch that will help them to fulfill all their potential. And this is not easy. When you have a skater that is already good, make him/ her/ them even better, find those last 5% to make them superb can sometimes be harder than starting from zero.
Not sure how to vote. She and Yagudin formed an extraordinary partnership, but I also believe that he would still succeed the same (perhaps not with the same success) with another coach, maybe not with Mishin but with someone else. So I won't vote for him. I will have to think about this one, but probably B/B.
Please don't be so cruel with Klimkin. He's way too talented and creative to become another boring product of the recent Tarasova coaching and her snooze inducing programs.
Madame Tarasova sure has magic
Although one cannot vote for more than one, we can still discuss more than one achievements.
I voted for K&P's 92 Olympic gold. K&P, after the initial results of the drug test, lost 2 weeks of practice in 91. Marina was cleared after a second drug test. However, their coach Natalia Dubova did not believe her after her initial failure of the drug test. There were personality problems with Dubova, and K&P decided to switch to Tarasova. It was the best decision they made.
Although K&P had already been 2x world champions, they had been dethroned in the key pre-Olympic year '91 by the rising French dance team the Dushenays. Suddenly D&D were the faves for the Olympic gold in Lillehamer.
Tarasova brought out the emotion in K&P's skating with their 'Air' FD. They had always been great technicians but in the pre-Tarasova year they could not compete against the emotional style of the Dushenays. In the 1992 Olympics they outperformed their rivals, with a memorable and difficult FD, and won the gold.
Vash
griazev winning olys not on this lifetimelol! tarasova can't pull that miracle
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