Question About Kawaguchi and Smirnov

Apologies if this is a silly question, or if it has been answered somewhere else, but. . . .

Why is Yuko Kawaguchi now being called Yuko Kavaguti? I assumed this was a typographical error the first time that I saw it; then I kept seeing it over and over again. Why the name change?

I assume that the name is easier to pronounce right for the Russians that way (Kavaguti).

Yup. Though I'm not sure why "ch" was changed to "t" - both sounds exist in Russian. But "w", indeed, does not exist, and is normally substituted with a "v"; sometimes it is substituted with "ua", but it would really sound awkward in this case.

I think that now that she has the russian citizenship, they changed the way they spell her name. My guess is that in their alphabet, they do not have characters that matches the sound for "wa" and "chi", so they change it. Just my guess..

She has an interesting history. She is Japanese of course, and one of version of the story has it that she wrote to Moskvina, insisting (begging) that she take her on as a student and make her into a pair skater. With no partner options in Japan, I think her persistence paid of, and soon enough she was competing. She had a Russian male partner for a while and competed at Worlds in DC, representing Japan. She then had a partner in the US and went to US nationals, where an injury occurred during the program. Word is that partnership was not uh... amicable... and they soon split. Her recent partnership has resulted in her skating for Russia, and quite clearly, has become more politically formalized with her citizenship change which would be essential for her to compete in the upcoming Olympics.

I heard Philipe Pélissier (French commentator on Eurosport and former coach) say that it was a communication problem - her name hasn't changed.

The Russian Skating Federation sent a formal request to the ISU to change the spelling of the name.