So this Eteri's interview from Vogue. I skipped the introduction for common public.
Everyone on the rink, the stars and beginners are working equally. Girls in the black leggings and tops and the pair of boys again and again speed up and jump, and if they fall children stand up and go for another jump. Sometimes they blow their noses near the coaching table with toy with napkins and laptop and go on training. In the morning workout they work on elements and show their programs on the training in the evening. Minute is enough for Zhenya to charm and abash and dance everyone on the rink. Pink-cheeked Alina is glowing with the winner smile. "I am training with help of irony and even if I say something offensive I do it through joke." Eteri said. "For vulnerable or intimidated or pampered children would be very hard to train with me but those who came first time but doesn't close off and jokes back these is my children."
Tutberidze is proud of ability of Medvedeva to speak up to the highest audience like in Lausanne almost more than she proud of gold medals. She insists that the development of the athlete personality is such important as polishing up their technical skills. Music, books, movies, Balanchine and Ekman one-act ballets, Stanislavsky Theatre, simple talks with parents and coaches, everything imprint on children. "Media call them "robots". But they are not. They are just girls who weight less than 45 kilos." Critics expose her for draining everything from children bodies. She retorted, "Yes, nowadays many want to raise age of adult competions to18 years but here regression will started. When girls grew up, their bodies begin to prepare for giving birth, start to slow and be more cautious." Zhenya Medvedeva was twelve when Eteri showed her at the adult Russian championship. "I was told that she was too small but I insisted. I wanted show such delicate her to the world. Tatiana Tarasova was standing and applauded to her."
“This killing or phenomenal combination of the american technical efficiency and russian ruthlessness. Eteri has moved beyond limits of female figure skating" said Russian sport journalist Eugene Zuenko. She is only one who managed to produce skaters by such conveyer way. Tutberidse has ideal working system which has separate specialists for jumps, skating, choreography. She controls them like top manager and achieves the top result. She has harsh sorting of girls. But those who were rejected by Tutberidse and went to another coach are not even close now to results they showed with Eteri.
She is born in Moscow and was fifth child in the family of mother engineer and father foundry worker. Eteri started sport in 1978 when she was four. At the Young Pioneers stadium she was brought along with her older brother who occupied there with football. Passing by the open gate of the ice rink, she stopped and told her mother it seems that beautiful snowflakes circled on the ice. "I told my mother to bring me there." "They will not take you." "They will." When I was given someone else's skates and waiting for the coach viewing, I began to run outside the rink. I thought if I learn here on the ground, then will be no problems at the rink. I went out on the ice and immediately fell down. The coach went to the opposite side and called us to her. I could not get up and very quickly ran up to her on all fours and stood up with the help of her leg. I felt like a winner.
Eteri started in ladies then moved to dancing on ice. She took prizes at the USSR cups. When she finished her career she left for the US as many of her colleagues to perform in ice shows. There she began to coach. "Do you know that there is no group training in USA only private and not free? Parents make so that it is a child who pays you by check or cash. That is how the child understands that time is money and there no talk, lacing skates and blowing the nose every five minutes. Training session with coach takes half of hour and then they train alone. This is also good, it is responsibility and self-consciousness. Coach is a god there!"
Group training in Russian style also has strong advantage. Small sportsmen are looking on older ones and they see that everything is possible and grow up with the leaders.
"School founded by Tutberidze is the best answer to demands of the time. Modern figure skating requires less artistry and far more acrobatics. The jump on third minute is more expensive than on the first minute. The beautiful spin is cheaper then difficult jump. Therefore Tutberidze students are jumping a lot. It seems there is very precise calculations of scores, the perfect calculator in her head which determins how much her athlete should get every second. Tutberidze like Steve Jobs who didn’t invent the computer or smartphone but who managed to make the best gadget between competitors", said Zuenko.
Steve Jobs presented his iPhone in jeans and sneakers and Eteri doesn’t like pretentious slogans either. "Set a little goal and reach it then go to the another and so on".
"How to set athlete for winning?"
"The best way is to remind skater your remarks before the start of skating." To the question what to expect on the Olympics she answered shortly, "The fight". In the first place there would be struggling of Medvedeva with her own leg and if health doesn’t let down then for Medvedeva and Zagitova there are no equal rivals. The main competitors are considered to be Satoko Miyahara and Wakaba Higuchi but they lost to them in every competition like Kaetlyn Osmond from Canada.
Eteri said, "I don’t know what the mind of the winner is and how to make it. This is all theory. The athletes just have to have the right mind. They just should set the goal and work to achieve it. Regardless if hurts something or they are tired or afraid. Let it be the small goal like to make a jump or to skate the whole program or to work the training hour so that nobody sees that your leg is in a little pain. This is not possible to bear without motivation. And this motivation is the only one here – not to see self anywhere except the ice. For example I can’t imagine myself working in the office or shop and athletes should be like this.
Zagitova had been dropout from the team once like Scherbakova. "Alina had childish attitude to work - today I do it, and tomorrow I'm not. I expelled her. She was with another coach for a few months, nobody forced her there. Then parents saw the regress and were planning to go back home to Izhevsk and this is when Alina had realized that she couldn’t live without ice. And when Yulia Lipnitskaya came to me five years before Sochi her mother said, "You know we get to the next Olympics by age." I was very amused and thought to myself that wow, still had to learn the jumps but Olympics were in plans already. May be for Yulia it was right. But I tell you the secret when Yulia got her medal the first question she asked, "Mom is this that medal you wanted? Is it Olympic medal?" Mother said yes and I saw that something turned off in Yulia's eyes.”
Tutberidze allows the parents to be on the trainings ("so child doesn’t feel alone") but generally she is strict towards them. "If child is not allowed to eat sweets or pastry these things must not be in the house. If child should not have the dinner so parents have to wait to eat after she goes to bed."
Fifteen years old Eteri daughter Diane is on the rink since she was two months old. She learned how to walk here and played with snowballs in the corner of the rink so there was no other life choice for her. But Diane changed ladies skating to the ice dancing last year. "She didn’t want to do it because her training is in the other place and we don’t see each other at all. But I saw that she lacks coordination in her falls. It can cause the serious trauma and I will not forgive myself as her teacher and mother".
We are sitting in small coaching room. There is a table with photos of Medvedeva and Diana, couch, rack and paintings by her friend. There are no windows. The conditioner is loud. "I got my room last year” - Eteri glanced at the modest surroundings. “Before this I was sitting in the entrance hall. Stars - it's not about us. Girls champions share the locker room with everyone else. “
She doesn’t have time to think about comfort. "Sometimes I take not the whole day but the half of the day off, and then I have a lazy morning with coffee, book or movie and go to the work." From movies and books Tutberidze appreciates dramas the most. Sentimental like a Cruel Romance or inspiring the act of bravery like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Julian Schnabel ("I watched it four times"). It is about the paralyzed after stroke writer who managed to write bestseller by controlling only his left eye. The girl who ran to her coach on all fours appreciates the triumph of will beyond everything else.
but I think part of the problem is the way things are handled when these girls grow into women. Although you're right that the field is so deep that it makes it way harder than for other ladies, for sure!
