5 years? Eteri has been coaching in Russia for more than 10 years now, i remember Polina Shelepen at Russian Nationals in 2009 when she landed a 3F-3T-2lo, i remember pretty much all her skaters she brought at domestic and international competitions and how they changed (both the skaters and her approach on each generations).
If you read carefully, I wrote 5 years
at the top, as an elite level coach
Yeah, she started as a base coach in some small suburban rink, should all those years account to her coaching pattern of top ranked athletes though? I don't think so.
While the number of successful students she had is astounding, she clearly has spent way less time in the game, than someone like Rafael, Mishin or Buyanova or even Brian.
90% of ladies in figure skating have back problems, i recall an interview where Ashley Wagner said that figure skating in general is really bad for your body, certain spins like layback and bielmann in particular.
Of course they do, thus, why does Liza stand as an example of a particularly healthy athlete to you?
I don't think Liza's any healthier than any other female athlete.
Satoko's back is doing much better, despite the fact that she's almost Liza's age.
Strongly disagree on the rest: she landed her 3Ltz-3t most of the time this season despite it looks very different from the very same combo she had in the pre-puberty days (technique completely changed but they had to do it, body also changed)
You're right, she did. But besides that, what other 3-3 combos she has? She uses 3t-3t in her short, and overall, it doesn't appear to me that she's very confident with 3-3 combos specifically, since she relies on her 2a a lot.
Besides, the fact that she's not using 3lz-3t in her short is quite telling that she's not entirely confident with that combo.
Disagree. Lena Radionova is perhaps the clearest example of great athlete who desperately needed a technique rework since 2015 and never did it. You could have seen her trajectory from a mile. Body was growing, jumps were still very junior, in particular her 2a: small and forced but also other jumps like 3lo (always messy) or 3F (inconsistent). She should have done what Brian tried to do with Evgenia this season, increasing height and distance on her 2a, it takes time i know, but it's soo needed.
Well, I think we're looking at the problem from 2 standpoints.
As I said, I think if the growth sprout is too drastic and too sudden, it doesn't really matter which technique the skater had to begin with.
Liza started having problems with her jumps despite having a textbook technique, so it was obvious Lena would encounter problems too.
I don't think Lena had a perfect technique, but I don't think it was poor. She managed to adjust to her growth sprout in her first years as a senior, later on, she kept growing and without reworking her technique, there was no way.
And I mentioned her not as an example of someone 'with perfect technique', I think she's someone that still has a potential
if she was to rework her technique, to be back at the top. But she probably doesn't want that anymore, and Liza does. It's a question of motivation of an athlete.
You say Liza was on the right path, but that path was very challenging. Many would've given up, given how many unfortunate seasons she had, missing out on second Olympics.
Disagree, Alina's jumps regressed from the previous two seasons and you know it as well. 3ltz, 3F, 2a got off axis often this season, more than in the past, you can watch it on all replays you want, 3ltz-3lo is sometimes underrotated on the loop (especially in the free program), she trained hard for Worlds, the whole team was following her preparation as they revealed in an interview, they didn't fix a thing with the actual dynamic of her jumps though. We'll see if they fix at least her 2a for the next season but i doubt they will.
Well, I don't think we're understanding each other here.
Saying Alina's technique was reworked didn't mean she had perfect jumps all season long. She was struggling with her growth sprout quite a lot during this season.
It meant that she had struggles, but those struggles were resolved for the most part by worlds.
I don't think it's quite fair to take Alina's flaws during most part of this year as an example, when she was actively growing. She was having problems, I think it's normal for someone who's growing to have some regress in jumps, that happens. It takes time to take it back to where it was once, and it can be a long and hard road (as it was for Elizaveta)
By saying that Sergej reworked her jumps, I meant that at worlds, almost all of her jumps looked quite strong, 3lz, 3f weren't off axis, moreover, at practices she was adding 3lo to almost every single jumping pass + jumping 3lz-3lo-3lo-3lo again. She was struggling for the most part of this season, yet I think at worlds she started to regain her confidence in her jumps.
I could a 100% see that there was a lot of work done by Worlds.
Elizaveta experienced growing problems too, let's not forget that, so if we take Elizaveta's 2013-2014 season, she was doing way worse that season than Alina was doing this year.
So if we have Elizaveta getting back on top at 22, then Alina has at least 5 years to get her 2a back on that axis.
I don't think we'll come to an agreement here

We would probably stay true to our own opinions, and the time will show where it will all go.
