What? One of 3a will retire before Zhenya SS and Stasya? 1% chance that happens by my guesstimation. I can only think that you think it's risky for 3a to skate the way they do or train as hard as they do. Correct?
That's so mean and unfair!!! :shock2:
I look at history from that group, their skaters, what coaches say during interviews, interviews from former students (which even if it's not 100% accurate, there's always some truth), to make my own guesses on the Eteri's miracle, and i want to clarify that these are guesses on what's happening there, and what might happen going forward, not a personal opinion on what's good and what's bad (that's a whole separate debate):
- One thing we can all agree, is that
they train hard, probably harder than any other group in Russia, maybe in the world. That's something you realize just by looking at the details in their programs, like spins, how fast and centered they always are, that alone we all know requires practicing: spinning is mostly an acquired skill, how good you are at spinning mostly depends on how much you train them.
We know from interviews they train each element hundreds of times, even without mentioning the most recent controversial one with Polina Shuboderova, i recall even Daniil Gleichengauz admitting that earlier last season: very early in the season Alina made the same mistake in the 2a in the SP two-three times, journalists asked them why not changing the entrance and Daniil said those were very unusual mistakes, cause out of hundreds of attempts at their rink Alina rarely made those mistakes. They probably track the failure rate of each element for every skater to see what's worth trying and what not. That's why Evgenia landed all kinds of combos in practice but in competition it was always 3F-3T, 3S-3T and 3Lo-3T (when she was missing the flip in the short)
I believe there is even a 1-2 months period (which the last interview mentions) where it's just
crunch time to get things done (the rest is practicing for the muscle memory) and that's why Kanysheva for instance already has a 4T, when few months ago she was fine but a bit inconsistent with Panova dealing with only triples, sometimes underrotating them.
- Looking at their skaters throughout the years, to me Eteri/Sergei's coaching style seems very much
trial and error,
the catch is that they don't fix the mistakes with you but with the next one: they try several things with one skater, some of them works others don't, they keep those that worked and try to fix the mistakes with the next generation. That's one of the reasons why their next generation of skaters is most of the time better than the previous one (the other reason is that they have a wider pool to choose from now, so it is really cherry picking for them while previously Eteri and Sergei had to work with not the best talents)
- this point is very much a consequence of the previous one:
they don't fix the elements as the body grows. Alina Zagitova is growing and she kept the same elements the way they were and things are starting to regress a little bit, if you look her 2a is now shorter and she often gets off axis in the air. Two seasons ago in juniors it was a strong element for her.
- Reading and hearing Eteri's interviews, she doesn't seem to care to keep a skater successful for many years to come,
she wants to give the same chance to all her skaters, meaning most of her skaters have 1-2 years to win as much as possible. After that she will probably already have a new young group to push and you're no longer the leader, that's why skaters feel a bit disposable.
There are so many questions that haven't been answered yet, even regarding the future of 3A and some of them even Eteri and her staff can't really answer:
1) How RusFed will react to Eteri's getting all the spots all the time going forward? It's very likely 3A will sweep the podium at Nationals this year and that would mean all 3 spots for senior Worlds are going to Eteri's group, that will certainly create even more envy among the other coaches.
2) Will 3A stay with Eteri for the next 3 years? One easy solution for other coaches to prevent Eteri sweeping podiums left and right is to convince one of their skaters to switch. That went bad most of the time.
3) How much will 3A grow and will they keep this technique by 2022? By the time Olympics arrive, they will be 18-19 years old. Look at how many skaters from that group lasted that long. Not many.
4) How sustainable is that training approach with the quads and triple axel? Have you ever wondered why Eteri isn't as successful with the boys as she is with the girls? The official answer from Eteri is that "boys are too emotional", while i've always speculated for years that her training consists in a huge number of attempts for each element, they want to make sure everything is extremely consistent, now apply that to quads: we keep hearing from top male skaters because of the nature of the quad (higher, riskier) they can't be treated as triples, there are days of no jumping to avoid injuries.
I think that's a problem Eteri/Sergei have already identified and their solution is by reducing the height and increase the prerotation: look at Trusova, Shcherbakova, Samsonov quads, yes these elements are big considering the heights of these skaters but do you think Eteri/Sergei will increase the height of the quads as they grow? that's something i'm curious to see but i suspect the answer is no (but i guess that also depends on how the judges will score these smaller quads), Adian Pitkeev's 4T was bigger (and because of that much more inconsistent)
If Evgenia had won I wouldn't have been surprised to see her retire either. Alina has been one of the few to continue going after so good for her! 
I spend a lot of time in the men’s threads, and I am not going to talk about the men in the Russian Ladies thread, but saying that posters don’t talk about men retiring doesn’t make it so.
