But doesn't mean that they can't be held in another place or country
To be fair Davydov seems to reject skaters easily. Sofia Muravieva and Valeria Shulskaya (now both at AoP) seem to have been dumped by him last season. Not sure why - they surely don't have weight issues.
There aren't too many ice-rinks in Croatia in general, and those where a big international competition can be held are much fewer. And to move an ISU championship to another country takes much time even if there is a country ready to host the event. Let me remind you that in 2011 it took about a month to relocate the Worlds from Japan suffered from an earthquake to Russia.
That’s a bit misleading to say that. Volodin has not taken a tall girl; he couldn’t foresee that Ustimkina would grow so tall. In their first two seasons she was of a reasonable height for pairs.
I think it would be a bit optimistic to say it takes a month to relocate worlds. In 2011 it was a completely different situation- there was no pandemic, and Russia took it on. I don’t think any other country could have done the job as fast as that, but skating is very popular in Russia and they made it work really fast. Any other country organising it would have needed more time than that, and that was in ideal circumstances, not in pandemic. In pandemic it is impossible because one can’t foresee what the situation will be in a month or two or three, so no one will be willing to take it on. Spending money to organise it and then have the government to cancel it last minute because of a new lockdown would be really expensive.
A skater’s release is not dependent only on the pairs situation in Russia. Iliuschetchkina was held for 3.5-4 years, even though Russia had enough decent senior pairs that they didn’t need her. The gossip also was that Akopova wanted to skate for Australia and wasn’t released, because Russia felt that they had already been generous enough giving Alexandrovskaya to Australia. Germany has nothing to offer to Russia in exchange for Efimova, and they already have another pair which means they are not desperate enough to pay for her ‘whatever price Russia asks for’, so it will boil down to whether Efimova pi**ed off enough people within the Russian federation that they will want to make it hard for her, or whether she has some strong personality (like Tarasova or Moser) on her side who would push the release through for her. As I said, the fact that she didn’t tell her federation about the potential partnership and need to be released and they found out from the internet is not very helpful, and some people within the Russian federation have huge egos and may try to make it difficult for her just because they are feeling ‘offended’.It says on her wikipedia that she will skate with Ruben Blommaert. I think they can be a good pair, and they will probably release her. With B/K, M/G, P/K, and P/R as well as amazing junior teams like A/N, K/I, A/K (??), M/M, B/C, I think the future is bright enough that Russia won't worry about letting her go. I am also excited for the 5th stage to see if Vasilieva/Volodin do show up. I hope they do
Well I did not know that was so complicated. Perhaps she can get someone on her side, or she can convince Savchenko to come back and get a Russian partner
Although I don't quite understand why they feel the need to not let her go - just to spite her?To be released by the RusFed you have to be from a proper skating club. Two years ago the FFKR didn't release Nika Osipova from Moskvina's club for the Czech Republic, but a year later released Elizaveta Zhuk from Mozer Team for the same country.
So Efimova might have problems with a wrong club.
But isn't Moskvina club a very reputable club? Or are they not "political savvy" enough?To be released by the RusFed you have to be from a proper skating club. Two years ago the FFKR didn't release Nika Osipova from Moskvina's club for the Czech Republic, but a year later released Elizaveta Zhuk from Mozer Team for the same country.
Well I did not know that was so complicated. Perhaps she can get someone on her side, or she can convince Savchenko to come back and get a Russian partner
That's seriously messed up and also strikes me as being this close to illegal. I mean there is a Declaration of Human Rights and I know this isn't a refugee situation, but it seems really wrong that a federation can prevent freedom of movement of actual people like that. I mean what the -?!
Well, while I don’t agree with what the skating federations are doing, I can see their point - that they may have financially invested into the skaters. And it is not as if this is happening only in Russia - it took Zahorski over three years to get her release from the French federation. Bruno Massot was released only because the German federation paid a lot of money to French federation (and Savchenko/Massot had to repay some part of it). Saying that, it sucks that someone may be messing up skaters’ careers by not letting them change the country, even though they may not be any suitable partner in their current country. I wish ISU made rule that the release happen automatically after a certain period of time. That would take the power away from the skating federations.
They don't prevent freedom of movement. They can move as anybody else. It's just the regulation whom you can represent and that is in some way restricted everywhere and even internationally, like there is also a regulation by IOC about it, e.g. how long you need to a citize of a particular country before you can represent it. And IMO it is right thing, preventing that countries with no or weak own training system would just buy athletes from elsewhere. It still happens, but it is restricted at least somehow, though IMO it should be even stricter.
The problem with this is that if everyone had to only represent country where they were born or where they emigrated to, there would be very few pairs and dance couples. Especially pairs are so specific to the body size requirements, that for skaters from the small federations, finding a suitable partner would be impossible. It would be possible in Russia, USA, Canada and possibly China (although even there the number of junior pairs seems to be severely reduced the past few years), but in other countries, there is not much to choose from. I have never counted it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if roughly a half of the pairs at worlds were partnerships with one skater imported. So unless we want to watch pairs at worlds with only skaters from four or five countries, we should support skaters changing their countries. Look at Zahorski, she is quite tall so after her partnership with Miart ended, she just couldn’t find any partner in France, and she has been waiting roughly three years. And France is a country where there is ice dance quite strong. So would you prefer the skaters just retired without having a chance to pursue their skating careers?
