But not so favourable comments on Alyona in the press conferences:
https://inosmi.ru/social/20200111/246575415.html , which I do agree with, Alyona was really showing disdain for the press at these occasions. But hopefully, the training staff and FFKKR press officer will keep Alyona from developing a 'diva attitude'.
I was wondering if this article would end up on Goldenskate somewhere... :sarcasm:
This is actually a Russian translation of a JAPANESE article in a publication called "NUMBER," which I would say is a pretty mainstream magazine (not a tabloid). The original article is here:
https://number.bunshun.jp/articles/-/841745
I saw this article soon after it was published (right after GPF), and though I was extremely upset by how the Japanese press was criticizing Aliona, I decided not to share this on the forum, because Aliona was already starting to getting a ton of criticism (not just here, but also on Russian sites), and I did NOT want to add any fuel to the fire. :disapp:
But now that it's out there, I have A LOT to say about this.
First, let me give some context for this article.
1) I would say that prior to the GP season (and even through the middle of it), Aliona was NOT well known by the Japanese media/the general skating-watching public. Yes, serious skating fans in Japan knew all about her, but most of the media coverage through the early part of the GP series was only about Anna and Sasha because they had quads, and they were the gold and silver medalists from the 2019 Jr worlds.
2) As a result, I think the Japanese media was kind of taken by surprise when Aliona won IDF, and even the JSF (Japanese skating federation) was surprised by how well the new senior Russian ladies were doing.
Here's the NUMBER article on IDF (written by a different author):
https://number.bunshun.jp/articles/-/841352
"After IDF, the head of the Japanese Skating Federation, Yoshiko Kobayashi, expressed her reaction like this. 'Last year, we predicted that the Russian ladies--or rather, the three junior ladies who would move to seniors--would be a threat. But we thought that maybe they would grow [and not be able to do quads anymore], or that even if they got good PCS scores as juniors, those scores would go down slightly when they moved to seniors. We shouldn't really be saying this since we're not doing [quads], but that was the slight expectation we had.
'But that hasn't been the case at all. They have moved to seniors with all their force/energy [i.e., quad jumps], and well, different people say different things, but it does seem that that force is showing up on the PCS side as well.'"
In other words 1) the JSF had severely underestimated how good the 3 A's would be, and 2) they were not happy that the new senior girls were getting such high PCS.
The rest of this article is actually quite favorable to Aliona. The author of this article, Akiko Tamura, goes on to say that she thinks Kobayashi's criticism of Trusova and Shcherbakova was valid, but that Aliona is different because "compared to the other two, she has already developed a senior-level of expression."
Then the author talks about how the press conference became awkward because they weren't sure how to ask questions to Alina now that it seems that you can't win without big jumps, but unexpectedly Aliona was the one who eased the situation by bringing up the example of Carolina Kostner.
3) Despite Aliona's win at IDF, I think she still wasn't that well known in Japan, and so NHK Trophy was advertised as the showdown between Rika and Alina. But then not only did Aliona--a relatively unknown skater--beat the home-crowd favorite, she also beat her by ~8 points, and to add insult to injury, she also broke Rika's SP record.
Thus, when the first negative Japanese article appeared after NHK Trophy, it seemed to me a bit like the Japanese media were being sore losers, and I, as well as a lot of Japanese fans on Twitter, were not happy with what it said.
https://sportiva.shueisha.co.jp/clm/othersports/figure/2019/11/24/_split_16/
I don't want to translate the full article, but basically it starts by talking about how Aliona came late to the press conference, and then the first thing she did when she sat down was take a photo of Alina. Then it goes on to suggest that Aliona is cold/aloof and calculating, in that she says what she thinks is the correct thing to say even if she doesn't really believe it.
This article was discussed a lot by the Japanese fans on Twitter, and I would say that almost all of the comments I saw were in support of Aliona, :yes: because most of those fans have seen Aliona's goofy side, or the way that she was laughing at the IDF medal mix-up, so they just couldn't believe that Aliona is cold and aloof, and so they didn't really take this article seriously.
4) Since I had seen the negative article after NHK Trophy, I was not surprised to see another negative article after GPF. My reaction was something like, "sighh, not again!!"
But while the article after NHK Trophy had a rather uncontroversial title--"Winning with frightening perfection. The 16-year-old-like behavior shown by aloof Kostornaia"--the article after GPF had a much more critical title--"Doubts about Kostornaya's attitude at the press conference. The skater character of a newly-crowned champion"--and as a result, it got a lot more attention.
I would say that just like with the first article, there were A LOT of Japanese fans who rushed to defend Aliona and criticize the author of the GPF article. Many of them said the same things we have said--"they are just teenagers, of course they don't know any better," "it's impolite to call others impolite," etc. And they posted pictures/videos of other skaters being on their phones during press conferences.
But, unfortunately, I also saw some people who agreed with the article and wrote things like, "they need to learn some manners." And that made me very sad. :noshake: Because I really wanted Aliona to get endorsements for Japanese companies like Alina/Zhenya have had, and if she has a bad reputation then it's probably not going to happen. :sad21:
Thankfully, people seemed to forget about this article after a few days and/or Alina's announcement about taking a pause in her career kind of made everyone forget about it. But then around the end of the year, NUMBER published a list of their most-read articles, and this one was #2!
So this made a lot of people talk about this article again.
And now when I search for "Kostornaia" on Google Japan, this is the FIRST thing that pops up.
From my perspective, yes, there are certainly things that Aliona could do better with her press conference behavior, and, yes, she would probably benefit from some media training. :yes:
However, I DO think that no matter what Aliona does--no matter if she behaves like an angel in a press conference--she is going to get criticized, unfortunately.
This post is already really long so I'm going to continue in my next one.
Thanks in advance!
when I saw it in Enrico's IG story:
