Tatiana Totmianina article (by Phil Hersh)

http://chicagosports.chicagotribune...6,1,7720595.story?coll=cs-international-print

Article which emphasises the danger of Pairs as well as an update on her condition

I wish I could read it but after receiving so many spams, etc. I choose not to sign up.

Grgranny, the article emphasizes the irony that (like Nancy Kerrigan) Tatiana Totmianina is now more famous for her accident than for being world champion. She had appearances with all the major TV networks, plus more appearances in Chicago and news features abroad, even though people had never heard of her before.

She has become a serious role model to me because of all the courage she has. She is very brave and says she is not afraid of trying the same lift again.

Here's a cut and paste of the aritcle:

Skater's renown painfully earned
Tape of scary fall gets wide showing


By Philip Hersh
Tribune Olympic sports reporter

October 26, 2004


Monday morning, Tatiana Totmianina did three national TV interviews and five more with Chicago stations. Sunday, footage of Totmianina appeared on TV channels in Spain, which never pays attention to figure skating. The same footage was leading TV newscasts Sunday in her native Russia.

In the last three seasons, the Russian pairs skater and her partner, Maxim Marinin, had won a world championship, three European championships and two national championships. None gained them an iota of the notice the footage from a horrifying accident did.

Totmianina was in the position of instant celebrity because TV had tape of the accident and because the public inevitably is drawn to such images.

It was quite a change from the position she had been in Saturday night, lying motionless on the ice during the long program of the Skate America Grand Prix competition in Pittsburgh. She had fallen to the ice after her partner lost his balance doing a move called an axel lasso lift, in which the 6-foot-3-inch Marinin was holding Totmianina above his head.

"I thought she was dead," said Claire Ferguson of Newport, R.I., a veteran figure skating official who judged the pairs event.

That reaction is one of the reasons why Totmianina, 22, did all the interviews Monday, when she might have been resting from the trauma.

"I just wanted to show people I was alive, I'm OK, I will skate again," Totmianina said. "I don't have anything to do besides figure skating."

As she sat in coach Oleg Vasiliev's downtown Chicago apartment, Totmianina had a right eye blackened and swollen nearly shut, small bruises on her right elbow and upper arm, a forehead too tender to touch, a concussion, a headache and a feeling she should be back on the ice already.

She began laughing as a visitor told the coach that he was going too fast while listing the TV outlets that had interviewed her. Totmianina clearly appreciated the irony of the situation, explaining it with a Russian saying that comes from a kids' cartoon show.

"With good things," the saying goes, "you couldn't become famous."

Or, as 1984 Olympic pairs champion Vasiliev put it, "People will finally learn her last name."

"This is strange," Totmianina said of her sudden celebrity, "but Nancy Kerrigan also was famous this way."

Better yet, Totmianina said, she recalls nothing of the event that created it. The two hours after she fell, during which she was taken to Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh for tests and overnight observation, Totmianina accounts for simply as "two hours gone from my life."

"I think it's a good thing I don't remember how I was and how I felt," she said. "It helps me to get up again."

This was not the first time Totmianina had fallen out of a lift with Marinin. The other occurred in practice five years ago and also left her with a concussion.

"Pairs skating is scary," said Joe Inman of Alexandria, Va., pairs event referee at Skate America.

"I've seen much worse falls," Vasiliev said.

Katie Wood of Winnetka fell eight feet from a lift during a 1990 exhibition in Ukraine. The impact broke her inner ear bone housing, fractured her skull and cost her the hearing in her right ear. Wood returned to skating with a new partner, finished fourth at the 1993 U.S. championships and retired four months later, after watching another pairs skater break her nose and lose teeth in a practice fall.

Paul Binnebose, third in the 1999 U.S. championships, was unconscious for a month after losing control of partner Laura Handy during a lift in practice. When she fell on him, Binnebose had a broken skull, brain swelling and collapsed lungs. He recovered and has become a coach.

No one has video of those incidents or the one in which Russian Elena Bereznaia nearly died after her partner's skate cut her skull during a side-by-side spin in practice. Bereznaia went on to win a 2002 Olympic gold medal with a different partner.

"[Totmianina's] was not so bad as I have seen," said Tamara Moskvina, who coached Bereznaia, Vasiliev and two other Olympic champion pairs. "It looked bad because no one expected it at a competition of such high-level skaters."

This was the first time Totmianina and Marinin had done the axel lasso lift in competition, but they had practiced it hundreds of times.

"It is the most difficult lift in pairs skating," Vasiliev said, "but this did not happen because the lift is difficult. It happened because he made a mistake even before he lifted her.

"Three years ago, when Max had trouble with lifts, I could think this might happen, but not now."

Totmianina and Marinin, who paired up in 1996, moved in February 2001 from St. Petersburg, Russia, to train with Vasiliev at The Edge Ice Arena in Bensenville. They were fourth at the 2002 Olympics and last year won the world title in an upset.

"Some people think it is just fun, you skate on your feet and hold your partner's arm, like going to the club," Totmianina said.

"We dress up, we smile, we make hard elements look easy. Everyone thinks, `OK, I can do this.' Pairs is dangerous."

A frame-by-frame review of the fall shows Totmianina landed on her right elbow, then her right shoulder, before the right side of her forehead bumped the ice with considerably less impact. In real time, the images were much less clear and much more alarming.

"I knew medical help was in place if something happened, but I was very frightened," Inman said.

Vasiliev, standing next to the boards when the accident occurred, does not remember how he got from there to the skater's side. He was sure she was alive but feared she might be paralyzed.

"I was really scared," he said.

The coach's fears began to dissipate when he heard Totmianina ask where her skates were and then say, "Are we going to Cup of Russia?" That Nov. 25-28 event in Moscow was to be the pair's third Grand Prix competition of the season.

Totmianina will go for further examinations at the end of the week. If everything is fine, she will return to the ice next week. The pair will withdraw from the Cup of China Nov. 11-14 in Beijing but may try to skate in the postcompetition gala at Cup of Russia.

First, Marinin must get over the feeling of guilt he has expressed since the accident. Totmianina said she is not afraid of trying the same lift again.

"I lived in Russia," she said. "I don't care."

Copyright © 2004, The Chicago Tribune


Hope I'm not violating any rules - I did include the copyright......

Um, yeah, actually, you are, Heyang. It is better to copy excerpts only and give a summary of the rest.

MM.

"but this did not happen because the lift is difficult. It happened because he made a mistake even before he lifted her.

Click to expand...

Does anyone know what was the mistake? Did it have to do with the handhold of the lift or footwork??

Dee

I'm not an expert so anyone can feel free to jump in and correct me. I thought that the problem might have been more from being out of balance than an outright mistake in the handhold or footwork. If the balance is out, it can pull you right off your feet which is exactly what happened to Maxim.

According to this local Chicago article at:
http://www.dailyherald.com/dupage/main_story.asp?intID=3829675

<<Coach Oleg Vasiliev, a gold medal-winning skater for Russia, said briefly the mistake the skaters made was "being one-half inch apart instead of the quarter-inch apart that they needed to be.">>

I think he probably meant "foot", not "inch" -- the metric system is not exactly intuitive from non-Americans.

Ptichka said:

I think he probably meant "foot", not "inch" -- the metric system is not exactly intuitive from non-Americans.

Click to expand...

Now, that explains why Maxim said it was a technical error. I feel sorry for him. I hope that he doesn't get goosy when he lifts her again.

Dee