I think people are missing the “over” in overtraining. The whole point is that at some level training becomes counterproductive. Training harder actually makes you worse due to fatigue, injury, and burn out (mental and physical). She may have actually been able to increase her BV with LESS training. But that’s not Eteri’s style. Any athlete knows that you begin to decrease training in season and closer to competitions for this exact reason.
Here’s the thing - if Alina had been from another country or even another Russian coach, would Eteri have increased Zhenya’s BV? Or would she have just been like, “we know we lose if our competitor skates clean but we can risk it.” Eteri would have given Zhenya a more competitive program to beat the competition. But since the main competition was one of her own skaters she focused on Zhenya being consistent with the less competitive program.
Honestly, no offense but I just don‘t get why people feel the need to still comment about whether it was Eteri‘s fault Zhenya didn‘t win the Olympics or that she got injured. Zhenya is currently my favourite skater and I was heartbroken when she didn‘t win but really - sometimes things just happen and nobody is at fault. Eteri‘s skaters have frequent injuries, right, but so do others. Figure skating is a pretty dangerous sport, you simply cannot prevent injuries. And even if it was somehow Eteri‘s fault or she had some kind of evil plan to make Alina win at all costs - does it matter now? Zhenya didn‘t win, yes, but she‘s happy right now in Canada and under the circumstances as they were we should probably be glad she could participate in the Olympics at all and especially deliver three programs like that! She has earned two silver medals, skating on an injured foot. How do you expect her to up her BV with a broken foot? You don‘t just go out there on the ice, like: „Hm, I guess, I‘ll do a 3F-3Lo combo instead of my usual with the 3T“. It doesn’t work like that. It takes a lot of time to land a combo comfortably and consistently. To do that with a broken foot simply wasn‘t possible.
This doesn‘t mean I understood why Zhenya didn‘t upgrade her technical content BEFORE the injury happened. She could have all those years before. But again, that‘s a lot of coulda shoulda woulda and in the end things have happened the way they did and we can‘t change them anyway. So, all this „Who did evil Eteri want to win the Olympics??“ is pretty unnecessary.
A) she wanted Alina to win that‘s why she didn‘t let Zhenya upgrade her technical content. EVIL ETERI!
B) she clearly wanted Zhenya to win, hates Alina, didn‘t celebrate at all with her. EVIL ETERI!
I don‘t even like Eteri but man, that‘s getting ridiculous. Maybe she just wanted the OGM and OSM and made sure her best two skaters would earn them? Maybe there isn’t any conspiracy at all. And even if there is, Zhenya made the right choice so that she doesn‘t have to worry about this anymore and can move forward. If she can do it, then we should, too. We also shouldn‘t forget that this exact
overtraining made Zhenya who she is right now. Two times World, European, GPF, National Champion, OSMedalist. She thanked Eteri and Sambo in her statement, she didn‘t make any accusations about bad training and everything. Then, why would we?
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:agree:
:hap93::dev3:
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