Ted Barton interviews Eteri Tutberidze

lichi said:

Completely agree.

Out of curiosity though, does Eteri's team have a nutritionist? I'd imagine they do, as a training facility with top athletes, but never heard about it.

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I think she just leaving parents to be in charge of that. I guess she just explains the parents that girls are growing and although it is a natural process their weight preferably should be increasing gradually and without extreme spurts. Otherwise it would be hard for skaters to adjust elements to their "newly found" weight. Her skaters clearly taught to watch their weight and seems like Eteri is not involved in their diet and nutritioning style. So it is the parents' responsibilities. Pretty much this is an American way too. I think Eteri should not leave it for the parents and should get herself a nutritionist in future when she gets a new training facility in 2021. They would have 2 ice rinks under one roof, bigger choreo rooms, bigger locker rooms and more office space for coaching staff and medical. Hopefully a bigger budget too, so they can afford to have a nutritionist. I know they serve lunches for skaters at Khurstalny ice rink, but breakfast and dinners are fair game. And there are a lot of temptations in form of chocolate and candies out-there..

el henry said:

If you as a coach praise teen skaters for subsisting on a powdered diet, you are a BAD coach.

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...and the rest of your post: https://media.giphy.com/media/BlqvdJbHKLsKA/giphy.gif

sx98423 said:

the conversation right now is the former and not the latter (although some people have been trying very hard spread this conversation) simply because her results have been amazing. if another coach was getting similar results the conversation would 100% be about how amazing they are.

all this talk of "jumping beans" and "serious issues" are imo things that critics say either because they are willfully blind to whats really going on or because they haven't done enough research. idk how many times eteri's team needs to explicitly say that they focus on the overall package, clean jumps, etc before some people get that idea into their brains lol. literally everything the team have said in recent years shows that they in fact do not want to develop little jumping beans that disappear after a 2-3 seasons. at the same time they seem to understand that it's competitive in russia, and it can't be certain that all their skaters will make it. i can see how their realistic/blunt comments could turn some people off but at the end of the day there's a lot of truth to those comments.

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Actions hold more weight than words do

La Rhumba said:

Wow, you're missing alot! Most notably the most beautiful skating of Alena Kostornaia, who doesn't do a single quad, but captivates with sheer all round brilliance.

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[email protected] said:

We are talking about Eteri here. Eteri was a young coach training kids with Polina Shelepen as an exception at the time when all the mentioned ladies had their long careers. What are long career examples in our current times when Eteri is a "monster coach"? Satoko - that's what I said. Yes, those that you mentioned retired when Eteri's girls and the new crops of the Japanese girls have become relevant. That's the whole point.

We don't know if Osmond is going to be back or not. If yes, it will prove nothing because she has currently zero or very low competition. Mai-Berenice-Meite? You must be kidding. She goes to GP, she goes to Europeans, even to the Olympics. She might not even get a place to compete at the Russian Nationals like Sima Sakhanovich who I would argue is not worse a skater. What long career would she have in Russia? I am sure there are ladies who keep competing at some low profile Russian local competions at the age past 20. She would be among them. I don't see it as a relevant example in the thread about Eteri and her girls' careers. Get rid of the 3 maximum rule in favor of individual ranking - then it will make more sense to speculate about long careers in the current environment. In the ISU 3 year standings among top-24 there are 8 Japanese, 5 Russians, and 11 for the rest of the world. In this year standings there are 7 Japanese, 7 Russians, and 10 for the rest of the world. The numbers would be even more startling if it were not for 3 only rule Europeans/Worlds and 9 only rule for GP. Some good Russian girls like Tarusina have the access only to B level competitions, same with Gubanova and others.

I looked at SB list. Among top-20 Russia -10, Japan - 5, the rest of the world -5.

And this will only get further with 3A coming of age. Let the best compete - then it will make sense to talk about long careers in Russia and Japan nowadays.

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I really agree about going with rankings like tennis does. This way the best get to compete as it should be.

Alexz said:

...and the rest of your post: https://media.giphy.com/media/BlqvdJbHKLsKA/giphy.gif

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No idea what you are trying to say.

Tolstoj said:

Mie Hamada for instance, which is often praised for pushing polished skaters, she teaches one of the worst jumping technique i've ever seen: Miyahara, Shiraiwa, Honda and Kihira all have big rotation issues, full blade assist on the lutz, prerotation on most of the jumps,...

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ummmm what

el henry said:

If you as a coach need to weigh your athletes, particularly young teen girls, you are a BAD coach. In any field.

If you as a coach praise teen skaters for subsisting on a powdered diet, you are a BAD coach. In any field.

ETA: and I surely hope that any talk of coaches doing that, today, in 2019, is misreported and incorrect. I make no assumptions about what has actually happened.

If you excuse that talk and conduct by talking about the effect of extra weight on jumps, or medals won, or any nonsense that has anything to do with other than the long term health of the athlete, then :confused2: BAD. Because long term health of the athlete. That’s GOOD

If you as a coach find nutrionists and psychologists and other professionals to help your skaters achieve their optimal performance

GOOD coach.

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I agree with the majority of this. I disagree that weighing teen girls is problematic, its how they weigh them and what they do with this information. They are elite athletes so weight changes do impact their performance. But this can be managed in appropriate ways with a good nutritionist, sports psychologist, and other medical professionals. In fact, it may be irresponsible to not weigh teen skaters if there is the possibility that they are losing or not maintaining a healthy weight during competition season.

What I do have a problem with are coaches without medical or nutritional background making decisions about teen girls weights and pressuring them in unhealthy ways to lose/maintain weight. The coach and athlete have incentive to keep 13-year-old prepubescent girls from gaining any amount of weight and even potentially losing weight. Weight does affect jumps, a .5 kg weight change may mean the difference between consistently hitting your jumps or missing them with under rotations. But the idea that prepubescent girls need to be risking their long term mental and physical health in order to fully rotate jumps is not okay. Its a different story if its an adult athlete who is capable of making decisions about ones body for training but not okay for a child to pressured into this or make a decision to agree to this given they are not yet able to fully understand the consequences.

If it were up to me, I'd get an electronic scale that doesn't display the weight but rather sends it directly to a computer. I'd have the skaters step on the scale every day before practice so its routine but there is no feedback to them or the coaches. In this way, it becomes routine and not fearful because its only stepping on a black box before practice. The medical professional in charge is the only one who sees the numbers and will inform the coach no more than once a week and only if there is a significant change from the previous week's average. If there is a change or an overall trend of weight gain or loss over several weeks (you can see it if its charted daily) then you can make plans. You can do a medical check-up. You can also discuss making plans with the nutritionist and other medical professionals. But this should be done in a very nonthreatening and healthy way with minimal direct involvement from the coach. The coach is there to focus on the skating, the other professionals deal with health.

tokoyami said:

Actions hold more weight than words do

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yes and you can see in videos of their practice that this is what they teach to their skaters as well. they spend hours off ice in all sorts of different classes, there are videos of the coaches asking for clean performances rather than harder jumps. so there's plenty of action as well as words. it's probably because eteri's skaters are so impressive technically that it gives off the impression that they don't spend any time training other aspects of their skating when in fact they do.

the only reason people think other coaches create skaters that are more well rounded than eteri's skaters is because those other coaches can't coach their skaters to the same technical level as eteri's team. this creates the impression of a more well rounded skater. but it's not really the teams fault for being so good at their jobs is it

Scott512 said:

I really agree about going with rankings like tennis does. This way the best get to compete as it should be.

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Yes. The bests should compete IMO. At least in sports where you win because of yourself, not because of some people who gives you marks. In tennis, if you are enough talented and better than your competitor, you won't get robbed because of your name or the name of your country.
A shame that table tennis doesn't use rankings for olympics. I saw that at Rio 2016 a good number of european players were.....Chineses Commentators explained that there can be only two players per country in individual events. If not, at least half of the field would be Chinese and a good part of the rest would be asian.
The same thing started in figure skating. Many Russians are competing for other countries.

tokoyami said:

Actions hold more weight than words do

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That's why it is decided on the ice rink, after all.

I'm pretty sure the " powdered diet" for the students was before the competition not always because Eteri is not stupid. The athletes can build muscle with good nutrition. And look at the girls they are strong enough to jumps, strong enough to work on hard trainings. Before the competition you eat that special "powder" you have enough power without gaining weight. And we all know behind Yulia there was her mother who motivated Yulia the most! She knew every step of her preparation. And agreed. Yulia gave her his OG medal and said. "This is your medal. You wanted it!" ( or something like this I don't remember literally.)
I know Plushenko was really thin but he always was on strict diet before the competition he ate jogurt and banana. And it worked. As Med said 20-30 dkg are very important if they want to jump. Why do you wonder? Maybe this is Russian method but if you watch the results those justify the correctness.

For me this is weird many of you love these girls because they are amazing skaters they are winners, champions all the time. But criticise that person who gave you those talents. Without Eteri they wouldn't be the same.

Plus we all know there are/were skaters Japaneses, Canadians, US who has similar problems. Why don't we talk about their coaches??? Because they can't give world stars to us in a row. Jealousy.. Of course this is not personal jealousy it's "national jealousy"

plushyfan said:

I know Plushenko was really thin but he always was on strict diet before the competition he ate jogurt and banana. And it worked. As Med said 20-30 dkg are very important if they want to jump. Why do you wonder? Maybe this is Russian method but if you watch the results those justify the correctness.
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An athlete on a diet sounds wild to me. What does the diet even contribute except burning muscle and causing exhaustion? If anything, weight loss should be tackled in the off season not straight before competition.
To maintain a reasonable weight, it is enough to create the correct eating habits. And sure, that's not easy for everyone at first, but surely constantly being on diets is even harder.

When it comes to longevity, I find long careers very appealing in all sports (e.g. Carolina Kostner, Usain Bolt, Noriaki Kasai, Oksana Chusovitina etc. - it's compelling to follow somebody's career over a span of a decade or even longer). However, it's not like only Russian ladies have short careers in contemporary figure skating. Let's have a look at the 10 oldest female singles skaters who participated in this season's GP series:

b. 1990: Alena Leonova
b. 1994: Mae Berenice Meite
b. 1995: Gracie Gold, Courtney Hicks
b. 1996: Alaine Chartrand, Mariah Bell, Laurine Lecavalier, Angela Wang, Rika Hongo, Elizaveta Tuktamysheva

There are two Russians here and the oldest one is actually Russian. A Russian was also the oldest participant of the GPF.

Lester said:

An athlete on a diet sounds wild to me. What does the diet even contribute except burning muscle and causing exhaustion? If anything, weight loss should be tackled in the off season not straight before competition.
To maintain a reasonable weight, it is enough to create the correct eating habits. And sure, that's not easy for everyone at first, but surely constantly being on diets is even harder.

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Yes, there is logic in your post. But I read what I wrote probably it's working.

Lester said:

An athlete on a diet sounds wild to me. What does the diet even contribute except burning muscle and causing exhaustion? If anything, weight loss should be tackled in the off season not straight before competition.
To maintain a reasonable weight, it is enough to create the correct eating habits. And sure, that's not easy for everyone at first, but surely constantly being on diets is even harder.

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Having (being on) a healthy and purposeful diet is very important for athletes. It’s completely normal for elite athletes of all ages to eat a diet that creates the most optimal condition for their body to operate. It may need tweaked from time to time based on season or upcoming competitions but the key is to use nutrition for utilitarian purposes as opposed to taste. I’ve had dinner with future olympians and believe me...they are mindful of what they consume. Even former Olympians who are no longer competing tend to remain on fairly strict diets. People are creatures of habit after all.

Most athletes want to work with coaches who take interest in this aspect of training. I think my first weigh in was 5th or 6th grade and I was given several pamphlets explaining the types of foods I should eat and avoid. Some even had specific days to avoid specific foods or certain events.

Preseason- Season -Post Season- etc.

Sports nutrition has really gone to a whole new level and coaches will push their kids to embrace it.

I know people don’t care as much about teenage boys doing this stuff but I remember kids bringing a scale to games and in the locker room weighing kids who had bad games and telling them to hit the treadmill by next week. I’m sure the coach heard about it too but I wouldn’t blame him. The competition of sports exists beyond the scope of “the game”.


I’m still unsure what any of this dieting speculation has to do with this interview?

Lester said:

An athlete on a diet sounds wild to me. What does the diet even contribute except burning muscle and causing exhaustion? If anything, weight loss should be tackled in the off season not straight before competition.
To maintain a reasonable weight, it is enough to create the correct eating habits. And sure, that's not easy for everyone at first, but surely constantly being on diets is even harder.

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Meanings of diet:
1. the kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats.
2. a special course of food to which one restricts oneself, either to lose weight or for medical reasons.

So "diet" literally means "eating habits". Just saying.

DenissVFan said:

When it comes to longevity, I find long careers very appealing in all sports (e.g. Carolina Kostner, Usain Bolt, Noriaki Kasai, Oksana Chusovitina etc. - it's compelling to follow somebody's career over a span of a decade or even longer). However, it's not like only Russian ladies have short careers in contemporary figure skating. Let's have a look at the 10 oldest female singles skaters who participated in this season's GP series:

b. 1990: Alena Leonova
b. 1994: Mae Berenice Meite
b. 1995: Gracie Gold, Courtney Hicks
b. 1996: Alaine Chartrand, Mariah Bell, Laurine Lecavalier, Angela Wang, Rika Hongo, Elizaveta Tuktamysheva

There are two Russians here and the oldest one is actually Russian. A Russian was also the oldest participant of the GPF.

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And if we take the oldest medalists, we have =)

b. 1996: Elizaveta Tuktamysheva
b. 1998: Satoko Miyahara, Bradie Tennell
b. 1999: Evgenia Medvedeva
b. 2000: Kaori Sakamoto, Stanislava Konstantinova

Lots of russian ladies, honestly.

For me, the main thing I have troubles with, is that it's children we're talking about here. Children who spend the majority of their time away from home and whose parents might not interfere with anything a coach says because they trust them, want success etc. That's why statements like the ones Eteri frequently made, are very problematic to me. It's obvious that it's not only her, I was appalled when I read about Buyanova who said she ordered her student to lose a lot of weight in a short time. I was appalled when I read TAT's comments about weight. It's NOT only Eteri, it's a general problem in this sport. But despite of this, I don't understand the argument "but others do it as well". Yes, they do. Does that make it right? No. Absolutely not.
To my mind, coaches' should not be responsible to weigh their students. They should hire professionals, nutritionists who monitor the children's weight and make sure they are healthy enough to do the daily exercises and training. This should happen in a private way and other students should NOT be present.

https://youtu.be/RY_X-IarHJs?t=858

Scenes like that should not happen.

Evgenia (in a mocking tone): Zagitova, what's up (with your weight)?
Alina: Actually, I lost 500 grams!
What is this? A competition on who weighs the lowest? This is dangerous and not the right way to handle this situation. Athletes should be weighed, I know that it can be dangerous if there's sudden gain or loss. But it should happen in an environment where they feel comfortable, where they can talk about this in a private manner. And the diet should be adjusted by professionals to maintain a healthy weight while also getting all the necessary vitamins and other things needed. Especially for world class athletes like Eteri teaches! This should have happened ages ago. I don't doubt that Eteri and her coaching staff are very informed. They have worked in this field longer than any of us after all. But they're still not professionals and should leave this to people who have studied this and know their stuff. Of course, they need to be informed about the results so that the training can be adjusted accordingly. But that's it. Nothing more than that. Everything else won’t be discussed with her or the other coaches and there certainly should NOT be any scolding about weight.
Alena, Anna and Sasha were on national TV and were asked the question, whether Eteri monitors what they're eating during the holidays. They said no, but they'll be weighed afterwards. For me, that's a very troubling sign. Obviously, Eteri leaves the diet to the children and their parents and only makes sure they don't gain weight. That's not exactly smart. I doubt their parents know exactly what an athlete who's going through puberty as well, should eat. And neither do the skaters either. Like I said, this should be left to professionals, who can help adjust when they go through puberty and co.

I have also frequently seen Evgenia and Yulia being mentioned in here. I'll start with the former:
It's obvious that she's a naturally skinny person. That's just her body type. However, if we look at her now and her in the past, it is very visible that she's gained muscles and as a result of that – obviously, weight as well.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BpX7wdRB4Nc/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=cgyzq2rpek33
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/13/18/11/13181146c573e01d186b07fc555c6102.jpg

Look at her thigs primarily. They now look different. She’s still very thin and she’ll always be but her legs now look like they have some muscles on them, like they can withstand the pressure of the jumps and not snap immediately. So, yes, even a person with a fast metabolism can gain muscles and even figure skaters can do that. Evgenia is now working with a nutritionist. I guess it will take her some more time to adjust to the changes they’ve made but I trust that they know what they’re doing and will help her find a diet that is best suited to her individual body type.
I’m also very aware of the fact that the Olympic year was very difficult to Evgenia and Olympics are never a healthy time for any athlete’s body anyway. She probably already trained at 120% and then, adding to that, had to even further intensify her training after the injury because of a lack of time. But if we look at her from season’s prior, she didn’t look any different then.
Yulia? She’s a difficult case. Obviously, the comments Eteri made are pretty concerning but the thing is, we should never blame only the coach when a skater suffers from an ED. There can be many reasons and we’ll never know for sure. I do think that the focus Eteri’s always put on weight was a contributing factor. But I would never go as far as to say that it was solely her fault. Especially since Yulia herself never made such accusations.
The thing is, though, and that’s why people are worrying, that we’ve heard many troubling comments from Eteri students and Eteri herself in the past and still do. I think it would be better if someone interfered and did something about it. If we had her team and other figure skating teams work with nutritionists more instead of relying on coaches and parents who are not educated enough to help their children with their diet, body changes and co. sufficiently, I think we’d have less troubles and discussions about this too. In general, though, I don’t see it as hate to worry and talk about this because it’s obvious that this is a frequent problem in figure skating. And if we have a coach who primarily teaches children, precisely young girls, it is to my mind understandable and only natural that she’ll be brought up more often.

Fluture said:

To my mind, coaches' should not be responsible to weigh their students. They should hire professionals, nutritionists who monitor the children's weight and make sure they are healthy enough to do the daily exercises and training. This should happen in a private way and other students should NOT be present.

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What makes you assume they don’t work with professionals and conduct these matters privately? I mean...girls gossip and and such but that doesn’t mean Eteri is calling them out in front of each other. TBH...I’d imagine at a school like Sambo it’s probably easier and more accessible to find and utilize medical staff than to someone like Gracie Gold who was probably in a position where she and her family probably had to pay for and schedule their own appointments with their own doctors via private insurance.

I also found it important to note that Zhenya said any large weight gain OR loss is bad. Kind of says to me they are trying to maintain more than anything. That suggests that the plan is not to crash diet. Although...what Zhenya was doing overall would upset me if I were the coach. I wonder if it was ever addressed after the show aired?

plushyfan said:

Plus we all know there are/were skaters Japaneses, Canadians, US who has similar problems. Why we don't talk about their coaches??? Because they can't give world stars to us in a row. Jealousy.. Of course this is not personal jealousy it's "national jealousy"

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Your mistake is to explain others through the prism of your own experience.

Unlike Russia, no one cares. There're no TV programs about "we're special and everybody hates us because they're jealous", there're no Presidents gifting Mercedes Benz automobiles to athletes for "defending the honor of the country in Olympics", and there's no centralized taxpayer funding of Olympic sports.

There isn't even a "Ministry of Sport".

In the absence of state-sponsored propaganda, people look at those who spout nonsense about "national jealousy" as if they sprung two heads. People care about individual skaters; and also about fairness in judging, for all, so that the entire sport is elevated. They feel free to root for skaters from any country. They will not bash others based on their nationality - when those others are objectively better, and not just propped up by unfair "bonus" from biased judges.

Think about it. During Olympics, people were enthusiastically routing for skaters from North Korea - but can you imagine people of North Korea (publicly) routing for anybody else but their own national skaters? No, that would have been a "betrayal", by North Korean standards.

It's a very different mindset. Those who keep accusing posters of "jealousy" and "national jealousy" should look into their own hearts.