2021-22 Russian Women's Figure Skating | Page 248 | Golden Skate

2021-22 Russian Women's Figure Skating

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flanker said:
There is not much rational claim in the comment and the actual reasonable arguments could be summarized this way:

1. While it is improbable that Daria can recover before nationals, the other five (do not forget Maiia) are in training. Both injuries of Sasha and Daria are quite common (Alysa Liu already had an injury very similar to Daria's) and as for Sasha so far there is no reason to think she will have to skip nationals (just to remind, last year she was injured before nationals as well).
2. Evgenia attended the olympics and medaled. The fact that she gained "only" silver was because of Alina. So one should "think about learning".
3. Most ranting comes from the attitude "injuries are completely admissible everywhere apart from Eteri's team". People are sad because of injuries of Bradie, Rika etc., but accept it as a natural part of the sport, but somehow go absolutely bananas about TT. ;)
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I don’t agree with #3 at all. Many fans questioned Bradie’s coaching choice since he’s notorious for his skaters getting injured, and there was a lot of chatter about Rika’s previous coach. This isn’t people going bananas about Eteri’s students. It’s just a fact that Eteri’s skaters seem to be injured more often with much shorter careers.

Sometimes I think posters have more of a loyalty to the coach than the actual skaters. These are kids. Olympic gold is a great goal to have, but one skater will be rewarded every 4 years. I hope the coaches are preparing them for loss as well, because more will lose gold than win.

And finally, I never thought Daria was even in the mix for the Olympic team. She still had some junior quality to her skating and I couldn’t see her beating the big guns. That said- I watched her warm up, saw her look of devastation and how sad she was. She’s a kid. That was hard to see. Again, I hope the coaches—the adults— are supportive

I see some fans are already moving on from her and wondering why she wasn’t replaced. And that, to me, sums up Russian figure skating. There is always the next one…..
 
Thrashergurl said:
I don’t agree with #3 at all. Many fans questioned Bradie’s coaching choice since he’s notorious for his skaters getting injured, and there was a lot of chatter about Rika’s previous coach. This isn’t people going bananas about Eteri’s students. It’s just a fact that Eteri’s skaters seem to be injured more often with much shorter careers.

Sometimes I think posters have more of a loyalty to the coach than the actual skaters. These are kids. Olympic gold is a great goal to have, but one skater will be rewarded every 4 years. I hope the coaches are preparing them for loss as well, because more will lose gold than win.

And finally, I never thought Daria was even in the mix for the Olympic team. She still had some junior quality to her skating and I couldn’t see her beating the big guns. That said- I watched her warm up, saw her look of devastation and how sad she was. She’s a kid. That was hard to see. Again, I hope the coaches—the adults— are supportive

I see some fans are already moving on from her and wondering why she wasn’t replaced. And that, to me, sums up Russian figure skating. There is always the next one…..
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1. Let's make a list of the current skaters who are, or at some moment seem to be, on the level of Eteri skaters at lest partially, or are somehow close to them. We can start with Bradie, of course Karen, add Rika Kihira, Kaori Sakamoto, Alysa Liu, Young You, Loena Hendrickx (and before her Viveca Lindfors looked as the best european skater outside of Russia). All of those skaters suffered an injury that for some time affected their career within the last two or three years, or are even injured currently, in Viveca's case it was a career ending injury. I think that from that should be quite clear that a skater who reaches particular level will suffer an injury that has some impact to their skating (forcing them to interrupt, lower the difficulty etc.) with nearly 100% probability, while it doesn't matter who is their coach at all and in which country they skate. So that's my view of this whole "more often" case.

2. Similarly the "shorter career" claim. It was talked about many times, so in short one can easily follow particular cases and those stories turn those generalizations into shadows like when you put Gandalf against Balrog. Some most talked cases: Evgenia Medvedeva - out of competitions currently, the biggest reason is the injury she suffered in summer 2020 when she was not coached by Eteri. Still considering return to competitive skating. Alina - talked about very recently, I do not consider it necessary to reopen it for 156th time. Lilbet - injury inflicted during her times in Canada, during the tratment discovered a congenial disease. Polina Tsurskaya - finished her competitive career because by her own words she lacks the competitive character necessary for the top athlete, yet she's now employed in Eteri's team as a coach. Lipnitskaya - ended her career when she already was about two seasons with Urmanov. And so on. Also, again explained several times already, it is different to have "longevity" when you are there alone on a top level or have really little competition in your own coutry. The high level of competition doesn't affect Eteri's team alone in Russia after all. Yes, there is Liza, but she's realistically alone (with all respect to Leonova, she had a long career but she definitely wasn't on the top when she finished) and there were whole seasons when she was completely out of the russian top. She is possibly driven by the fact that she already missed two olympics and now it's realistically her last chance so she puts everything on that.

3. As for Dasha, I hope she will use time to fully recover and use the time to return in full strength. If her injury won't affect her from the long perspective, I value her chances high, she IMO is able to gain the 3A (which was very close for her already).
 
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I bet Tutberidze doesn't care for PR. First of all, Russians are blunt. American coaches are PR because they belong to a different culture. And second, let's be realistic. The skating world is a tough world and she is the absolute queen of it. She takes little children and teaches them how to jump quads. She is the ultimate iron lady and her pupils, no matter their age, are tough too. Do you think she worries about sounding nice and humble to skating fans who comment on social media? Can you imagine going to the queen of England and suggesting her to be more PR because people complain on twitter? I'm not saying Tutberidze or her people should go around saying nasty things about these girls, I'm just being realistic about elite coaches, think of Tarasova, who are extremely good at their job and are also quite arrogant. they work like dogs to make their pupils successful, they scold them on a daily basis and then go back to work. This is what these girls signed for. they want to win. they are fierce, desperately committed to their training. fans shouldn't blow any comment from Tut team out of proportion.
 
I don't understand why would anyone want to stick their noses into someone else's parenting.
As long as there is no crime involved, parents have the right to put their children into any activity they want: mining diamonds in Africa, vodoo sects in Louisiana, royal ceremonies in Westminster or Tutberidze group in Moscow.

It's human right of parenting freedom.
 
Resa said:
So apparently, Dasha ruptured a ligament that was attached to her hip, with a part of the hip bone snatchung off together with the ligament. So it's technically a fracture AND a ruptured ligament. I have no idea how long the healing process takes for that (source is twitter)
Source: https://mobile.twitter.com/twizzlefloop/status/1459279326449438723
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Well if true thats bad but let's hope until we get an official statement from her Fed, coaches or herself that its not that bad.
 
It just sounds so horrible, I don't even know what to expect when it comes to healing such an injury. Is it like an ACL tear, worse than that, less worse... Is there a chance we might see her skating at the end of the season or not. Who knows, maybe she will pull a Mustafina and skate at the Olympics?
 
Resa said:
It just sounds so horrible, I don't even know what to expect when it comes to healing such an injury. Is it like an ACL tear, worse than that, less worse... Is there a chance we might see her skating at the end of the season or not.
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Well the 3 diagnoses we have seen all sound really serious, based on Dr. Google...so take it with a grain of salt
  1. Hip fracture - I googled "trochanteric fracture recovery time" and it says to fully recover could take 6 months to a year
  2. Hip ligament tear - its says about 4 months but could be between 6-9 months
  3. A combination of the 2 - probably means the 6 months to a year
So best case scenario for recovery time is a ligament tear, and these recovery times for regular human functioning this isn't even talking about somebody doing elite level figure skating. Calendar check - it's November, if her recovery time from the injury alone is 6-12 months, we aren't even talking about her losing out on the rest of this season but also potentially next season as well.

Sadly with how deep Russian ladies are, her international career if she stays in Russia might have ended at NHK if she misses next season as well. 😢

But again at this point they haven't said what her injury is officially so hope and pray that its not as serious as what's been speculated.

Resa said:
Who knows, maybe she will pull a Mustafina and skate at the Olympics?
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Umm, not at the Beijing Olympics, Usacheva was a long shot to get on the team prior to the injury at NHK due to her lack of triple axel or quad. Russian Nationals are in 6 weeks, if by some chance the 3 reports of what her injury actually is are incorrect and its not something serious where she might possibly have the ability to skate at Nationals it's unlikely she would be back to where she was at Skate America to have a shot at the team if for some reason the skaters with quads/triple axels have problems.
 
Amei said:
Well if true thats bad but let's hope until we get an official statement from her Fed, coaches or herself that its not that bad.
Click to expand...
Seriously though. People just take some random person’s opinion on Twitter and go on with it as if this is some new information. Saying “apparently” this is what happened to her. How about no? This person has no access to her MRI or X-ray, based on what are they claiming she has X and not Y?

The most disgusting part to me in all of this are all the nasty “journalists” trying to profit off Daria as much as possible. They just can’t help themselves, pumping out several articles each day in order to earn those clicks. “Let’s provide everyone with fake diagnosis”,
“Let’s interview random doctors who have no idea what’s going on with her on how long it’s going to take to recover”, “Let’s write 10 000 opinion pieces”.

The first article about her supposed diagnosis was out suspiciously quick. Daria was probably still getting her first x rays, while journalists were already tapping away what “definitely” has happened. Seriously, how likely it is for them to know what happened to her in 1-2 hours after it happened? Or perhaps Daria’s Japanese doctors or she herself just called the journalists directly to give them that info?
Doubt it. 100% they had 0 info from the doctors or coaches or Daria. Likely they just needed to get as many articles with clickable titles as soon as possible while the topic was still hot, so that there would be many many clicks. How can they call themselves “journalists” is beyond me!
 
Jontor said:
But it's not just Sambo70. Like you said, elite athletes aren't healthy. That's the unfortunate reality in every sport. And in popular sports the fierce competition begins already when the kids are like 9-10 year old (like figure skating in Russia, or alpine skiing in Austria).
You talked about Medvedeva's injury the last Olympic season like it was Eteri's fault. Evgenia was 18 at the time and could easily have skipped Europeans and Olympics if she was worried about her own health. But she didn't. Of course not! This was the goal she had been working for probably since she was a little kid.
The problem is the elite environment all these popular sports are creating. It is almost impossible for a coach to prevent injuries when their pupils are doing everything they can to be "on the team". My nephew played football at a fairly high level when he was a teenager. He once played when he had the flu. His mother (my sister) didn't know, neither did the coaches. He didn't tell them of course. Because he knew they would have forbidden him to play. So he lied, because he also knew he couldn't skip that match because he would be out of the team.

Singeling out Sambo 70 like it is hell on earth is simply unfair. It is an elite school for figure skating, probably the best in the world, so of course it is going to be tough there. Elite schools always are.

Saying that this is unhealthy for young kids/teenagers. Sure it is. But here is where the sports argument comes in. This is how all elite sports function and it is up to us as viewers/fans to either accept it or stop watching.
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Or to change the COP system to encourage a healthier sport. Quad throws are discouraged in pairs by low COP values; maybe it's time to do the same in singles. At the same time, raise the value of non jump elements (a Lucinda Ruh quality spin be worth as much as quad), and evaluate PCS independently, with different judging panels, from TES.
 
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Amei said:
  1. Hip fracture - I googled "trochanteric fracture recovery time" and it says to fully recover could take 6 months to a year
  2. Hip ligament tear - its says about 4 months but could be between 6-9 months
  3. A combination of the 2 - probably means the 6 months to a year
Click to expand...
There are different types of hip fracture, 'hip' could be either femur (trochanteric head) or pelvis. I know a girl who broke her pelvis at my rink, who was back after 2 months (though she wasn't doing triples).

Nathan Chen's hip injury was an avulsion fracture which is basically when the tendon pulls off a bit of bone (common in adolescents). He took about 5-6 months off ice, but he had a very successful senior debut the next season with no problem jumping 4-5 quad programmes.

I don't want to speculate too much but I feel like the conflicting reports (ligament vs fracture) might point to Daria's injury being a similar avulsion-type event. Especially since she got it suddenly when toe-ing in for a jump like Nathan did.
 
nussnacker said:
People just take some random person’s opinion on Twitter and go on with it as if this is some new information. Saying “apparently” this is what happened to her. How about no? This person has no access to her MRI or X-ray, based on what are they claiming she has X and not Y?
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IKR? Dr twizzlefloop is as credible as Dr Mittens Lamar.

15P9Ve5.jpg
 
Season's Best List update - after 17 out of 28 competitions

1. Kamila Valieva - Rus - 265.08 GP Skate Canada (new World record!!)
2. Anna Shcherbakova - Rus - 236.78 GP d'Italia
3. Elizaveta Tuktamysheva - Rus - 233.30 CS Finlandia Trophy
4. Sofia Akateva (J) - Rus - 233.08 JGP Krasnoyarsk (junior World record)
5. Alexandra Trusova - Rus - 232.37 GP Skate America
6. Maiia Khromykh - Rus - 226.35 GP d'Italia
7, Kaori Sakamoto - Jpn - 223.34 GP NHK Trophy
8. Alysa Liu - USA - 219.24 CS Lombardia Trophy
9. Loena Hendrickx - Bel - 219.05 GP d'Italia
10. Alëna Kostornaia - Rus - 218.83 CS Finlandia Trophy
11. Daria Usacheva - Rus - 217.31 GP Skate America
12. Young You - Kor - 216.97 GP Skate America
13. Veronika Zhilina (J) - Rus - 216.92 JGP Kosice
14. Mai Mihara - Jpn - 214.95 GP d'Italia
15. Sofia Muravieva - Rus - 211.81 JGP Linz
16. Adelia Petrosian - Rus - 210.57 JGP Ljubljana
17. Satoko Miyahara - Jpn - 209.57 GP d'Italia
18. Isabeau Levito - USA - 208.31 JGP Linz
19. Anastasia Zinina - Rus - 206.20 JGP Krasnoyarsk
20. Kseniia Sinitsyna - Rus - 205.76 GP Skate America
21. Sofia Samodelkina - Rus - 205.67 JGP Ljubljana
22. Mana Kawabe - Jpn - 205.44 - GP NHK Trophy
23. Wakaba Higuchi - Jpn - 205.27 GP Skate Canada
24. Anastasiia Gubanova - Geo - 203.91 CS Finlandia Trophy
----------------------------------------------------------
29. Elizaveta Kulikova (J) - Rus - 196.83 JGP Krasnoyarsk
30. Elizaveta Berestovskaya (J) - Rus - 196.07 JGP Krasnoyarsk
35. Maria Zakharova (J) - Rus - 190.33 JGP Kosice
46. Sofia Samodurova - Rus - 180.59 GP d'Italia

Out of the Top 24 since last time: Karen Chen, Eva Lotta Kiibus, Amber Glenn

Top 24 are guaranteed a spot at next year's senior GPs, except for (J).
There are 12 eligible Russians now in the Top 24. There are only room for 9 at the GPs.
 
Fluture said:
I was debating with myself whether to respond to this post but then I saw a video of Daria crying in pain as she struggled to get up from the ice and couldn‘t help myself. Because this is nonsense.

The issue isn‘t that other skaters don‘t get injured. They do. Obviously. It‘s a dangerous sport. It‘s not even about Eteri skaters getting injured - again, it happens. What it is about is the continous overtraining and mismanagement of already existing injuries. To debuke some of the arguments on your list:

Evgenia - "the biggest reason is the injury she suffered in summer 2020 when she was not coached by Eteri". And funnily enough you neglected to mention that this injury was an aggravation of an existing and chronic back injury that she suffered back in 2018 and had to closely manage since then. An injury that she suffered with Eteri in the lead-up to the Olympic Games.

Alina: One of the only ones who didn‘t suffer a serious injury but she also stopped competing after a relatively short time (not even three full senior seasons)

Elizabet: "an injury suffered in Canada". Quite logical - she was injured a lot at TCC, missed many competitions. But why, then, if the injury was already known and chronic, did they train 4S and 3A like there was no tomorrow? The injury'd plagued her for several years before her return to Eteri. But she managed to compete with it. She lasted one year under TeamTutberidze‘s training methods. Now she‘s retired.

Polina: Was constantly injured. Eteri claimed the problems were caused by a genetic disease. Polina’s mother said they weren't. According to her, Polina first had a torn ligament and Koenig's disease but the biggest issue was a herniated disc (= back injury)

rsport.ria.ru

Полина Цурская продолжит карьеру, несмотря на поясничную грыжу – мать фигуристки

Чемпионка юношеских Олимпийских игр 2016 года российская фигуристка Полина Цурская твердо настроена продолжать карьеру, несмотря на имеющуюся у нее грыжу поясничного отдела позвоночника, других заболеваний у нее нет, сообщила агентству "Р-Спорт" мать спортсменки Наталия Цурская.
rsport.ria.ru rsport.ria.ru

Yulia: Do we really have to dig up the whole "powder diet" debacle again? Or how she said, after retiring, that she'd suffered from disordered eating "for a very long time"? (The exact wording was: "not just for one year, or two, or three". I think you’ll realise yourself what this means in terms of which coach it first started with!)


This season, you can already add Trusova (who competed and landed a quad on an injured leg in a relatively meaningless GP event) and Usacheva (who had previous known hip problems - the tape on her hip at NHK was in the same location as the one she wore at test skates in September)

There‘s also lesser known names such as Panenkova or Pitkeev or Kanysheva whose stories I could warm up for you, but I‘ll spare myself the time. It‘s not like all of this couldn‘t be found on the internet with a ~ 2 minute search.

Bottom line is: TeamTutberidze has a history of injury mismanagement - either ignoring them, or telling the girls to train through them ("everyone who isn't hurting raise a hand!") - which is why people are so focused on them. And no, the fact that they reacted correctly once or twice by withdrawing/ceasing training doesn't erase all the times when they didn't. They also happen to have a history of blaming the athletes on any trouble occuring - be it mental or physical problems or general underperforming.

Daria is injured: It was her fault for overtraining! Should have told the coaches she was hurting.

Aliona doesn‘t make herself jump ultra-c if she isn‘t in the right mindset due to fear of injury: she‘s lazy and should work harder!

Don‘t you see the irony in these conflicting statements? They, or their training methods, are never to blame, not once. It‘s always the girls' fault.

And yes, injury mismanagement isn‘t a practice restricted to Eteri‘s team, sadly. There was a lot of questioning over Tennell‘s coaching change because he has a pattern of chronically injured skaters with problematic technique as well. People were very mad at Lambiel when he let Rika skate heavily injured at WTT last season (aka the least important competition ever). But with Eteri‘s skaters, this is something that‘s been going on for years.

And yes, I know what the responses to this are going to be like. A) It‘s sport, things like these happen! or B) That‘s just a coincidence, it could happen to everyone.

I do believe in coincidences, occasionally. But I think: Lipnitskaya, Medvedeva, Tsurskaya, Tursynbaeva, Kanysheva, Trusova, Usacheva are a few too many names to count as that anymore.

Anyway, I agree with you on one thing: I wish Daria all the best and hope to see her make a full recovery. Seeing her cry like that was heartbreaking and she deserves so much better than being thrown under the bus to save the reputation of her adult coaches. Fingers crossed.
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This. Although it might be fair to mention that Sasha was injured with Plushy last year too. In fact something similar where she was injured already going into Rostelecom. However, arguably there it was even worse as she didn't water her program down at all and got injured even worse.

It also would be remiss not to mention Liza T, Aliona, Anna, and Sofia S all of whom skated at some point or another last year not completely recovered.

Really the entire culture needs to change.
 
Sjs5572 said:
Or to change the COP system to encourage a healthier sport. Quad throws are discouraged in pairs by low COP values; maybe it's time to do the same in singles. At the same time, raise the value of non jump elements (a Lucinda Ruh quality spin be worth as much as quad), and evaluate PCS independently, with different judging panels, from TES.
Click to expand...
The rules already devalued jumps and placed huge emphasis on GoE and PCS, the injuries come from those non jumping elements as well. Doing so will injure good jumpers who do not have flexibility for spinning and break their careers. It will also make eating disorders even worse, because they wouldn’t need to worry so much about preserving muscular mass and explosive power, so extra slim, small build would be the only way to go.

It is impossible to judge PCS objectively, so it will be back to 6.0 system that isn’t going to prevent physical injuries, but increase psychological trauma and make skaters even more inhibited in terms of defending their performances or having an artistic vision that dates after 1980s or having any personality outside a doll/Princess. Increasing the influence of PCSs even further will turn figure skating into a combo of WFF, beauty pageant and Social Media circus on ice.

PCS is not some safe haven and panacea. A competition has to be fair and allow variety of skaters succeed, keeping the sport from being stale and producing clones.

Normalizing athletes advocating for themselves is the only way we are not going to see catastrophic situations like we had this year with Aymoz and Usacheva.
 
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Sjs5572 said:
Well, in her own words, Eteri said "with each gram of weight, a gram of laziness is added." It makes one wonder if malnutrition in addition to overtraining is leading to unnecessary injuries.

fs-gossips.com

Eteri Tutberidze: “It seems that with each gram of weight a gram of laziness is added”

Glamour magazine reposted an old interview with Eteri Tutberidze (from March 2018, rubric
fs-gossips.com
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This is the main sticking point. All skaters get injured and train thru injuries and pain, that's part of the sport. Many coaches could probably be accused of mismanaging their skaters' injuries, and every athlete wants to succeed badly enough that they will risk further injury to acheive their dreams.
But TT is so public about their focus on weight, we know for a fact that they prioritize being thin over being healthy. If Tom Z or Stephane announced that Bradie and Rika were on liquid diets when they got injured, they would be getting railed in the same way. If you're going to be so open and shameless about how malnourished your skaters are, you're going to be blamed when they get injured.
 
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