Well, it is always hard to talk in retrospective. If we could go back and change things now, life would be easier. Surprisingly enough, we can‘t lol. That being said, I do not blame Eteri for not raising Zhenya‘s content in the Olympic season. I think it was a smart call, she was injured and harder content might have made her fall and injured her further.
What I do not understand, though, is why her content wasn‘t raised in the seasons leading up to the Olympics, especially knowing what Alina was capable of. Maybe they felt they didn‘t need it, that consistency + PCS would suffice. Considering how fast Zhenya‘s own PCS rose when she put out consistent performances, they should at least have figured, however... Also; when talking about BV improvements, I am not talking about +loop combos or another lutz here but more backloading. The 3F+3T in the bonus as well as dropping the +2T+2T from th 2A and putting it onto a flip instead would have done the trick. Alright, they tried it in the Olympic season, fair enough. But what about the entire 2016-17 season where she was way above anyone else and practically considered unbeatable? In my opinion, this is where they made a mistake.
As for the “pushing too hard“ I tried not to go into this because it will raise discussions that we had a lot here already. But oh well.. what I was referring to was the training regime that I feel like would not have worked anymore for an adult, already injured body, like Evgenia had it. Tursynbaeva doing biellmann spins with a known back injury while still in treatment was an example on that. I think this would have injured Zhenya even further had she stayed with Eteri. However, I put that as my own interpretations because I have no real proof for that.
I can‘t remember quoting Tarasova here but if I have (I know I talked about it in Zhenya‘s ff), it was because of another reason. I didn‘t think letting Zhenya do a 3S+3Lo during the Olympics would have been smart or even worked. She barely muscled through those 3T combos, a 3Lo combo wouldn‘t have been possible with the body, injuries and jumping technique she had. I found Tarasova‘s opinion interesting not because I necessarily agree with it but because it sort of shows that there indeed were conflicts between Zhenya and Eteri leading to that split. It was probably a factor of things that lead her to leaving and as it was such a hard thing to do, it probably took quite a few changes of opinion in between. In the end, there were reasons, though, even if we may not know them all.
This is only my opinion as a hardcore Zhenya fan, though. I can‘t speak for all of us and I‘m pretty certain we don‘t think the same.
For 2016-17, i see it like this:
- Alina was nowhere close of being a contender, and she was inconsistent. So the team made a bet on clean and consistent performances. Zhenya was, like, MILES ahead of everyone else.
- It was Zhenya's second senior year, and of course there was some (actually, HUGE) pressure to prove she was not a one time wonder (you may remember all the "she is going to get puberty and will start messing up" screams back then. Tons of people eagerly expected her to finally bomb). There is no doubt the team was aware of that, so there was a long term (Olympics) and a short term (keep skating well right here right now to prove she is not second Lipnitskaya or Sotnikova).
- Puberty. While her body didn't change much, it was likely still a bit of an issue and demanded extra work. Not sure how feasible it was to improve tech on top of that.
- To be honest, it kind of looks like her olympic programs were kind of close to the max tech she could do (she didnt manage to get above that, and she did not manage the tech upgrade in the olympic season), and chances are her team was sort of aware of it. Yes improvements could be made, but it would be at cost of consistency and even health maybe, and those improvements would be still small.
Last but not least, you people kind of forget Team Tutberidze is sort of a work in progress, and Zhenya is one of the first students. And yeah, you can see them improving with each "batch": Lipnitskaya - Medvedeva - Zagitova - 3A.
), Alina received such calls when she was No. 1 etc. And whatever softer spot the judges had for her before, I don't think she lost it, because e.g. in PCS Zhenya definitely still receives pretty well even when fail technically (I can't see how anyone else would receive 34 PCS in friday with such skate). But this is more subjective, from your side as well as from mine, so I wouldn't take this into consideration at all.
