Figure skating map of the World - from Perm to Toronto: why are they fleeing from the provinces to Moscow, and from there to the USA and Canada?
The main figure skating stereotype: top Russian skaters are raised only in Moscow (in rare cases, in Sankt Peterburg). Individuals from the province, having barely mastered triple jumps, are eager for coaches who constantly shine on TV.
A vivid illustration - the protocols of the championship of Russia 2019. All the girls represented Moscow or St. Petersburg (with the exception of Medvyedeva, who however, is still formally attached to Sambo-70, but is training in Toronto). Among the guys the only regional participant Vladislav Katichev hails from Saransk.
The situation in dance is a little more diverse - duets from the Samara and Sverdlovsk regions. The diversity of regions in the protocols is deceptive however, not due to the popularity of the discipline, but to double representation: Zabiyako and Enbert formally (very formally!) Represent Krasnodar, and Tarasova and Morozov represent Tatarstan.
Why are there so few high class skaters from the province?
Migration to the capital is not a symptom of figure skating alone: the difference in quality of life and opportunities is too great. But there are several factors that are relevant only for skaters:
1. Training is impossible without high-quality and constantly available ice: in the province there are often problems with this. Ice palaces are closed due to unprofitability, and in surviving arenas, priority is given to hockey or mass skating sessions where you can earn money.
Athletes have nowhere to run their programs through, train sliding and work out elements - and this is a basic need even for the most talented. Tat'yana Tarasova often talks about this problem in the show “Ice Age. Children ”: children from the regions are actively taking lessons there, but it is difficult for them to compete with metropolitan skaters.
2. Figure skating is an expensive pastime. In large cities, clubs pay for a part of the expenses of a promising athlete, can pay a good choreographer, costumes, rent you an apartment near the rink or even find a sponsor. In the province, all expenses are borne by the parents, and the support of local authorities amounts to peanuts.
3. All top coaches - are in Moscow and Sankt Peterburg. There, are higher salaries, better conditions and more prospects. There are still enough capable specialists in the regions who are laying the foundation for future champions, but their capabilities are limited by the lack of infrastructure.
In order not to forget about those who discovered Zagitova, Lipnitskaya and Trankov, we made a map of our figure skating and marked on it those cities where the sport still breathes:
https://s5o.ru/storage/simple/ru/edt/f2/60/04/32/ruea9caac3da6.png
Sochi
Famous skaters: Denis Vasil'yev (until 2016), Yuliya Lipnitskaya (until 2017).
Sochi Olympic Games 2014 left the city the chic “Iceberg” stadium and the memory our skaters' triumphs. Thanks to the cool infrastructure is seemed the southern city would become a new center of attraction for talents, but in reality everything is different. Iceberg is rented out to ice shows, for several years in a row Open Test Skates of the national team took place here, but even those returned a year ago to Moscow.
Still, a school for figure skaters in Sochi was opened - the Volosozhar and Trankov Training Center for Olympic Figure Skating. Tat'yana and Maksim don't work there, the main coaching star is Alexey Urmanov. At first, things were going well at the rink: Denis Vasil'yev (Latvia), Slavik Hayrapetyan (Armenia) and Yuliya Lipnitskaya moved to the seaside town. Urmanov emphasized in an interview that in his native St. Peterburg there is no work for him - but in Sochi are all conditions are there.
Gradually the group decreased: Vasil'yev went to Stefan Lambiel, Lipnitskaya ended her career. Now there are no stars in the Sochi center, although you can engage in any kind of figure skating - there is even a team of synchronized athletes.
Tol'yatti
Famous skaters: Yevdokimova - Bazin, Maxim Shabalin (until 1998).
The duet of Yevdokimova and Bazin is a rare example of skaters refusing to move to the capital. The partner was repeatedly invited to Moscow, but, according to the athletes, they like to skate together, compete for their hometown and work with their first coach. Relations between the regions and the capital are described succinctly: "We are not entering into disputes - Togl'iatti will still be wrong."
The coach of Yevdomikova and Bazina is Oleg Sudakov. It was himwho advised his pupil Maksim Shabalin (bronze in the 2010 Olympics) to switch from single skating to ice dancing. According to Sudakov, many athletes are fleeing to Moscow, inspired by the example of Shabalin. But only a few succeed, and this proverb goes about the capital: “Taken, in order to bury”. Some provincial couples are intentionally broken up by Moscow coaches - they don’t even take them for themselves, but simply to eliminate competitors.
Izhevsk
Famous skaters: Alina Zagitova (until 2015).
Izhevsk is a symbolic place for female figure skating: it was here that the future Olympic Champion started. Her first coach, Nataliya Antipina, believes that moving to Moscow was the only right decision: Alina’s home rink lacked sparring partners and conditions for growth.
Generation Zagitova - the most stellar in the history of Izhevsk skating. In addition to Alina, Alisa Lozko and Natal'ya Ogoreltseva also trained under Antipina — both left for St. Peterburg. Zagitova’s younger sister Sabina is also engaged in figure skating - of course, with Antipina.
Kazan
Famous skaters: synchronized skating team “Tatarstan”, Yevgenia Tarasova (until 2010).
Kazan School of Olympic Reserve is one of the oldest in Russia. Many top skaters started here: from Yevvgeniya Tarasova (who then still performed in single skating) to Kamila Valiyeva, the rising star of the Tutberidze group. Suddenly, synchronised skating ignited: the local Tatarstan team is number Two of the Russian national team.
In Kazan, Tarasova is still considered: in 2018, she became the athlete of the year in the republic. The skater's first coach recalls how in childhood she encouraged her, who was left without a ticket to the Moscow competitions: “Zhenya, don’t worry, you’ll go to the World Championships. Not as a spectator, but as a participant!”
The Secretary General of the Tatarstan Figure Skating Federation says that Moscow has always taken the best athletes. This happened, for example, with 16-year-old Aleksander Fadeyev (4-time European champion), although both he and his coach were against it. Fadeyev began in Kazan with Gennadiy Tarasov, but after winning the junior World Championships he was transferred to the capital, to Stanislav Zhuk.
A new ice sports center worth 700 million rubles is being prepared in Kazan - Nina Moser will probably become a curator. There will also be a boarding school and a short track school.
Kirov
Famous skaters: Oksana Domnina (until 2000), Kseniya Monko - Kirill Halyavin (until 2005).
The main pride of the Vyatka school is the long-legged Oksana Domnina (bronze in the 2010 Olympics), who at the age of 16 moved from Kirov to Odintsovo. In this Moscow suburb, she was paired with Maksim Shabalin from the Samara region - the couple quickly grew into leaders in Russian ice dancing.
In 2005, four Kirov couples together with coach Olga Ryabinina moved to Rostov-on-Don to raise local figure skating in exchange for good funding. In May 2009, Ryabinina and the dancers were invited to Moscow to join Yelena Kustarova’s group. The most interesting thing from that company was the fate of Kirill Khalyavin: he paired up with Sarah Hurtado, received Spanish citizenship and competed for this country at the 2018 Olympics.
Perm
Famous skaters: Vera Bazarova - Yuriy Larionov (until 2011), Maksim Trankov (until 1999), Tat'yana Totmyanina (until 1996).
Perm is probably the main supplier of stars for junior pair skating. Some then grew into top athletes and even Olympic champions. Local duets have problems with difficult jumps, but they are impeccable in the performance of paired elements. The best confirmation - it is in Perm where the promising pair of Olympic champion Kseniya Stolbova and Andrey Novosyolov are skating.
Local trainer Pavel Slyusarenko believes that you can become a good skater at home: “The recent transitions from the Perm school to Moscow showed that for some reason these same guys showed results, and in Moscow those result disappears and the pair just disappears after a year, more and less. I don’t know what this is connected with, but I would not want our guys to be lured away, because in our city at our rink there are all the required conditions for good work”.
Slyusarenko himself was also offered a transfer - to Moskvina’s school in St. Peterburg.
Yekaterinburg
Famous skaters: Yuliya Lipnitskaya (until 2009), Maksim Kovtun (until 2011).
In Yekaterinburg, there are several large schools where skaters are trained. In the Urals, there is a synchronized skating team, several dance couples (the future Olympic champion Marina Klimova began here in the 70s), but the main wealth is singles. In the local youth sports school “Lokomotiv”, Lipnitskaya and Kovtun first put on their boots.
Lipnitskaya's coach Yelena Levkovyets told how difficult it is to raise champions in the province. The salary of a specialist of her level is 25 thousand rubles. Skaters are also practically not supported: the coach says that over the year the federation bought five pairs of skates for the entire region. There isn’t enough ice: parents spend money every month to rent extra hours at the rink, and the provided 3 workouts for 45 minutes per week are a mockery of professional sports.
Moscow region
Mytishchi
Famous skaters: Konstantin Milyukov.
The main star of the local coaching staff is the ice dancer Vazgen Azroyan, but the emphasis in Mytishchi is on single skating. More recently, Ruslan Zhiganshin worked in the club, but now he is collaborating with the team of Angelika Krylova. After concluding his career, Azroyan himself managed to work as the head coach of the Kazan sports school. His current student, Konstantin Milyukov (star of the short program of the Czech Republic 2019 in men's singles), has been competing for Belarus since the new season.
Balashikha
Famous skaters: Diana Davis - Gleb Smolkin (until 2019).
Eteri Tutberidze, Diana Davis' mother, emphasised in an interview she would carefully choose a coach to transfer her daughter from solo skating to ice dancing. First, Diana was in the group of Yelena Kustarova, then she moved to the group of Denis Samokhin in Balashikha. Diana and her partner Gleb Smolkin begin their new season in the United States - in the team of Igor Shpilband.
In Balashikha they know a lot about junior dancers. The duets of Kazakov - Reviya (Georgia) and Khudaiberdieva - Filatov (the partner in a pair with Nikita Nazarov won the UChM-2019 silver) also skate here.
Odintsovo
Famous skaters: Domnina - Shabalin (until 2008), Denkova - Stavisky (until 2005), Ushakova - Nekrasov.
Like the school in Balashikha, Odintsovo specializes in training young ice dancers. Aleksey Gorshkov has been training here for many years: duets Domnina - Shabalin, Grebenkina - Azroyan, Denkova - Staviskiy passed through his hands. Even the Japanese Katie and Chris Reed managed to practice at the rink near Moscow.
Sankt Peterburg
In St. Petersburg - there are a dozen ice palaces. Main schools: Star Ice, Tamara Moskvina's club, and the Olympic Reserve Sports School.
• "Star Ice" - a symbolic place for St. Peterburg's figure skating. The list of current students includes Yelizaveta Tuktamysheva and Sof'ya Samodurova, among the coaches are the spouses Mishina, Arthur Gachinsky and Oleg Tataurov. The school’s own building appeared only in 2014 - before that, Mishin trained his pupils on the ice of the Yubileiniy Sports Palace, which he shared with hockey players and concert organisers.
• The Tamara Moskvina figure skating club appeared in St. Peterburg in 2017 through the efforts of her former student Anton Sikharulidze. The school specializes in pair skating: Yelena Berezhnaya and Oleg Vasil'yev invited former students to train under Moskvin. Tamara Nikolayevna says that in her club salaries are higher than in state schools, but the training staff does not have time for basic skating classes - a standard extra income for coaches. The main stars of the club now are the duet of Boykova - Kozlovskiy, who took bronze at the last Europeans.
• Sports School of the Olympic Reserve - the largest in St. Peterburg. In training there, you can meet Dmitriy Aliyev (Evgeny Rukavitsyn’s group), Mikhail Kolyada and Stanislava Konstantinova (Valentina Chebotareva’s headquarters), as well as three synchronised teams, including three-time Paradise world champions.
For many years now, the Velikov family has been working in the SSchOR, who collaborated with Stolbova and Klimov, Petrova and Tikhonov, who now are bringing up the promising duet Mishina - Gallyamov. Going down in the SSchOR is only ice dancing - however, much like in the whole of St. Peterburg.
Moscow
Moscow is the central point on the map of Russian figure skating. Adelina Sotnikova and Yevgeniya Medvyedeva were born here, Tat'yana Volosozhar and Maksim Trankov joined in a couple, and Trusova, Shcherbakova and Zagitova step on the ice of Khrustalniy every day.
You can become a skater in almost every district of Moscow: in the eastern Novokosino works Svetlana Panova, in the north - YElena Buyanova and Angelika Krylova, in the south-west - Eteri Tutberidze. These are government institutions, but there is the private school of Yevgeniy Plyushchenko, who demands 60 thousand RBL for a lesson.
• “Sambo-70”, Khrustalniy branch - the place where almost all the gold of single ladies skating flocks together. Soon, a second skating rink will appear at the school: Tutberidze is constantly gaining new students, and in addition to her group there is also a team of dancers and health classes.
• “Tchaikovskiy Rink” - another branch of “Sambo-70”, but located on the other end of Moscow - in Strogino. The main trainer there is Yelena Tchaikovskaya, whose track record will take more than one page. Although a couple of seasons ago, Tchaikovskaya worked closely with Sinitsina and Katsalapov, the emphasis in the school is on single skating.
• CSKA (Sports School of the Olympic Reserve named after S. Zhuk) - one of the largest in Moscow. Local ice remembers Adelina Sotnikova, Irina Rodnina, Yekaterina Gordeyeva and Sergey Grinkov. The head coach, Yelena Buyanova, also studied here. In addition to Buyanova, CSKA's trainers list Svetlana Sokolovskaya, Sergey Davydov and a couple of dozen distinguished specialists. Inna Goncharenko’s group closed one and a half years ago after a conflict with the school's administration.
• The Megasport Sports Complex is not only the venue for the main figure skating competitions, but also the training base of Angelika Krylova. Like Tutberidze, Angelika returned from the United States (although she lived there much longer) to work at home.
Now she coaches Betina Popova and Sergey Mozgov, with Ruslan Zhiganshin is listed as assistant: “I like that Angelika has had experience in the States. Thanks to this, we can combine several approaches to training at once. And that's great. It’s not a problem for her to invite a specialist of a narrow profile, for example, an acting teacher or a yoga coach”, Ruslan told.
Megasport also has solo skating: you can do it, for example, with Zhanna Gromova (who raised Irina Slutskaya) and Mariya Butyrskaya.
• “Snow Leopards” - overseen by Svetlana Panova. At one time, Mariya Sotskova left tjisschool, complaining of poor working conditions: ice time was often taken away in favour of hockey players. Nevertheless, there are always many talented juniors in Snow Leopards: of the current generation, these are Nastya Tarakanova (she returned to Panova, having trained with Tutberidze and Plyushchenko) and Kseniya Sinitsyna.
• Gomelskiy's ORM No. 4 is located in Bibirevo, where Ice Palace “Dream” was given to the skaters. The school prepares good singles, pairs and synchronists, but the emphasis is on dancing: the main stars of the school are Aleksandra Stepanova and Ivan Bukin. In addition to them, Irina Zhuk and Aleksander Svinin train several junior couples and the Hungarian duet Yanovskaya - Lukash.
• School No. 2 is another large school in the north of Moscow. It is interesting that there are almost no successful singles here: the emphasis is on pair skating (a group of Sergey Dobroskokov) and dancing (a team of yelena Kustarova and Svetlana Alekseyeva). Every day, Tiffany Zagorski and Jonathan Gureiro, Dar'ya Pavlyuchenko and Denis Khodykin, as well as promising juniors, come to the north of Moscow to train.
• SSHOR “Moskvich” - the place of work of Alexander Zhulin. After Yekaterina Bobrova went on maternity leave, Viktoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov became the main couple. However, since January 2019, the skaters and the coach have been assigned to the school only formally: after the rink under the Olimpiyskiy Stadion closed for rebuilding, Zhulin moved to his own academy in the west of Moscow. But Viktoriya Butsayeva remained: in the past, a successful skater herself, who now trains singles.
• SSOR “Sokolniki” - former skaters who have recently completed their careers work here as trainers: Yekaterina Rublyova, Ivan Shefer, Sergey Novitskiy. The emphasis in the school is on junior dances, and the creativity of their performances is often noted by Tat'yana Tarasova.
• SC “Inspiration”, SSHOR “Vorobyovy Gory” - a rare school that exclusively educates pairs skaters. The list of graduates and students is impressive: Volosozhar - Trankov, Stolbova - Klimov, Tarasova - Morozov, Zabiyako - Enbert. The main person at the rink is Nina Moser, who, however, is constantly changing her plans for the coaching future: she either wants to retire and attend to the children's educational center in Sochi. Sometimes she stands behind the boards when Tarasova and Morozov perform, whom she herself called an “uninteresting old project”.
• Academy of FS "Plyushchenko's Angels" - one of the new schools in Moscow. Initially, many perceived it as entertainment for children of wealthy parents, but then Sotnikova, as well as several acting figure skaters: Tarakanova, Sakhanovich, Samoilov, turned to Plushenko.
Now, however, all three have left the group: one of the reasons is the unusually small ice surface. For the same reason, Plyushchenko and Maksim Kovtun did not gain a foothold: everyone is more familiar with working out programs on standard rinks. Very young students of the championship academy have a chance to practice with the son of Yevgeniy himself, or, for example, with the daughter of Philip Kirkorov.
USA and Canada
On our map there are three points outside of Russia - Toronto, Detroit and Istero.
Abroad, skaters often migrate and train in international teams - though, usually at their own expense. In our country, moving to a foreign specialist is perceived as an event (sometimes as a betrayal) and raises the question of the appropriateness of such expenses.
• Toronto - a place of attraction for skaters from around the world. Here, Brian Orser works with a team in a private sports club, and the list of his former and current wards is impressive: two-time world champion Javier Fernandez, Olympic champion Yu-Na Kim, and, of course, two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu. Since last year, Yevgeniya Medvedeva has been training in the group, she moved to Canada after a scandalous exit from the Tutberidze group.
• Detroit - the home of Igor Shpilband, a former Soviet coach who emigrated to the United States in the early 90s. In 2016, he trained the Ilyins - Zhiganshin, and now Igor is helping Diana Davis and Gleb Smolkin. Juniors rarely go abroad to train, but in the case of this duet, the ambitions are clear: Diana is the daughter of Eteri Tutberidze, and her partner is the son of the famous actor Boris Smolkin.
Zhiganshin himself isn't very enthusiastic over lessons with Igor - he did not like the distance between the coach and the skaters. “In Russia, the coach is much closer to the athlete. They follows you, check your weight, your life as a whole - they do everything so you can achieve your goal and show the results. In America, only an hour of paid private lessons connected us with a trainer. ” The result of that internship was hardly successful: the athletes brought a controversial, overweight partner from the USA, and at the end of the season the couple broke up.
• Istero (Florida) - the new base of Tarasova and Morozov. At the end of spring, an absurd situation developed: there was no one to train the best couple in Russia. As a result, we agreed on cooperation with Marina Zuyeva - after the inimitable Gordeyeva and Grinkov shone in her programs.
Now Zuyeva works in sunny Florida, although she trained in Canton, Michigan a year ago. In this small town near Detroit, Sinitsina-Katsalapov drove to her, only just after pairing up. The duo liked training in the USA, but had to return to Russia due to high living expenses.
***
Of course, stars are born all over Russia. Plyushchenko is from Volgograd, Trusova from Ryazan, Tuktamysheva from Glazov - the geographic spread of figure skating is quite wide. Sadly, but inevitably - all of them, in order to succeed, had to leave their cities as teenagers. But at least they can say for sure that this sacrifice was worth it.
-----
From:
https://www.sports.ru/tribuna/blogs/beznedokrutov/2552811.html
Yuzu isn't a Russian lady
