2019-20 Russian Ladies' Figure Skating

[LiamForeman]

I've been following skating since Dorothy Hamill. But I was losing interest in the 2010 Olympics quad, with all the Yuna/Mao wars and the Americans were really boring. Then I started seeing Yulia's videos when she was 11 and her skating was amazing to me, and I enjoyed watching her progress to 2014 Olys. And since then I've been amazed at the Russian girls setting the standard. I'm glad to be on this forum because it is very Russia focused, and it's great to see videos posted of practice jumps and all the Russian competitions.

 

[karina17]

Weirdly enough, the lady who got me watching FS was Liza Nugumanova. I was never really into watching sports, or even TV in general, and I'm living in the tropics so you can imagine that winter sports don't get much coverage at all.

So the first time I saw a figure skating video was on Instagram. I think I was about 14, and my friend posted this video on her spam account:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BLLXsiRANyi/?igshid=16ttmsof8is2b

She captioned it with something like "she's so cute I love her sm", and tagged Liza. So from there I found Liza's account, then I found a fanpage which had posted some pieces of her programs. Then I went on YouTube to find the full programs, and you know how it is when you have the YouTube Recommended bar...I just kept clicking and clicking, and finding more and more ladies' skaters.

Honestly, I feel like those skaters with big social media presences help the sport gain publicity more than you might think. I have two friends who were introduced to FS because of an article about Liza Tuktamysheva saying she would kick Trump's (Goldenskate won't let me say this word, but you know what she said.)

 

[Happy Skates]

Weirdly enough, the lady who got me watching FS was Liza Nugumanova. I was never really into watching sports, or even TV in general, and I'm living in the tropics so you can imagine that winter sports don't get much coverage at all.

So the first time I saw a figure skating video was on Instagram. I think I was about 14, and my friend posted this video on her spam account:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BLLXsiRANyi/?igshid=16ttmsof8is2b

She captioned it with something like "she's so cute I love her sm", and tagged Liza. So from there I found Liza's account, then I found a fanpage which had posted some pieces of her programs. Then I went on YouTube to find the full programs, and you know how it is when you have the YouTube Recommended bar...I just kept clicking and clicking, and finding more and more ladies' skaters.

Honestly, I feel like those skaters with big social media presences help the sport gain publicity more than you might think. I have two friends who were introduced to FS because of an article about Liza Tuktamysheva saying she would kick Trump's (Goldenskate won't let me say this word, but you know what she said.)

Omg this iconic video!!! I love this vid, no wonder it brought more viewers into skating .

 

[karina17]

Omg this iconic video!!! I love this vid, no wonder it brought more viewers into skating .

Same! I still watch it from time to time. It just makes me happy for some reason.

 

[MMisMis]

Weirdly enough, the lady who got me watching FS was Liza Nugumanova. I was never really into watching sports, or even TV in general, and I'm living in the tropics so you can imagine that winter sports don't get much coverage at all.

So the first time I saw a figure skating video was on Instagram. I think I was about 14, and my friend posted this video on her spam account:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BLLXsiRANyi/?igshid=16ttmsof8is2b

She captioned it with something like "she's so cute I love her sm", and tagged Liza. So from there I found Liza's account, then I found a fanpage which had posted some pieces of her programs. Then I went on YouTube to find the full programs, and you know how it is when you have the YouTube Recommended bar...I just kept clicking and clicking, and finding more and more ladies' skaters.

Honestly, I feel like those skaters with big social media presences help the sport gain publicity more than you might think. I have two friends who were introduced to FS because of an article about Liza Tuktamysheva saying she would kick Trump's (Goldenskate won't let me say this word, but you know what she said.)

Amazing dance!
Thanks, I've never seen him before!

 

[Vandevska]

Weirdly enough, the lady who got me watching FS was Liza Nugumanova. I was never really into watching sports, or even TV in general, and I'm living in the tropics so you can imagine that winter sports don't get much coverage at all.

So the first time I saw a figure skating video was on Instagram. I think I was about 14, and my friend posted this video on her spam account:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BLLXsiRANyi/?igshid=16ttmsof8is2b

She captioned it with something like "she's so cute I love her sm", and tagged Liza. So from there I found Liza's account, then I found a fanpage which had posted some pieces of her programs. Then I went on YouTube to find the full programs, and you know how it is when you have the YouTube Recommended bar...I just kept clicking and clicking, and finding more and more ladies' skaters.

Honestly, I feel like those skaters with big social media presences help the sport gain publicity more than you might think. I have two friends who were introduced to FS because of an article about Liza Tuktamysheva saying she would kick Trump's (Goldenskate won't let me say this word, but you know what she said.)

That's adorableeeeee!

 

[Tolstoj]

I am talking about skaters who had major injuries, and their coach did not abandon them, and stayed by their side.

The fact that you are not aware of this just shows how biased you are. Before judging and showing off your prejudice, please learn a bit about the skaters and the team.

Yep that.
Zagitova also had major injuries back in juniors, and has a chronic condition.

And both were fairly unknown back then. Still Eteri stayed by their side, even though they had no medals and titles.

I was talking about years of waiting, in seniors also not just juniors pre puberty.

With that group we don't have such example because there isn't a female skater who lasted for like 5 years in seniors + juniors. All skaters leave before, we'll see in the future. (although i think Tutberidze said in a recent interview she doesn't like to keep skaters for that long).

Also very quickly since with this specific topic, you're either supporter and accept everything as perfection and attack everyone who do not agree with you, or h@tзr and criticize everything, either ways destroy any form of discussion: i want to clarify once again that i'm not biased pro or against, and i've said this in pretty much all my posts.

About injuries, i knew about some of those, i prefer not talk about them because there is not really much to discuss about it. Like i said in a previous post, it happens all the time in figure skating. But again my post was about waiting and supporting an athlete for many years despite unsuccessful seasons, and not just a year or two or 6 months.

 

[Tolstoj]

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.

Why only considering 5 years? it's so arbitrary to decide when a coach is at the top or not, to me if you have top junior skaters you're already an elite level coach and Polina Shelepen got the silver medal at JGPF in 2009. Considering most of Eteri's successes are still in juniors i think it's fair to consider those days too, especially if you think she was also a coach previously in the US.

But obviously you're right she has less experience than Rafael, Buyanova, Mishin, while Brian Orser actually started around the same time although with far more resources.

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.

I said the coaching methods seem healthier, not the skater itself, and that is based on how many years a skater can compete with that training, how sustainable it is. There is no other better metric to judge it.

With Eteri we don't have examples of skaters who lasted for that long in juniors and seniors as top skater, they all tend to leave earlier. Maybe that will change in the future, who knows.

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.

I honestly think she never trained other combos with a triple as the second element other than 3ltz-3t, 3t-3t and 2a-3t, it was like that even in the pre-puberty days. Unlike Tutberidze, Mishin skaters aren't used to train all kinds of combos.

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.

It's never a 1:1 comparison, each person grows differently, technique is different,... but Lena's jumping technique was flawed in juniors too (free leg position on the lutz/flip landings, the small 2a,...), but at the time nobody paid too much attention to it because she was skating with great speed, she had great charisma on the ice, the packaging was so great and no one could match her. Those issues just became more evident in seniors.

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.

Yeah there was a lot of work, i just don't think any of that work changed the jumps, it was mostly just on consistency (and that's fine considering they didn't have much time), meaning all the issues are still there and will become more and more problematic as time goes by, i don't know if they are working on those now, maybe, those who work with her every day at the rink can talk about this. For us we'll see results at the test skates and going forward.

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.

Oh yeah i kept the example of Elizaveta not as the ideal skater but as someone who managed to overcome puberty by reworking and readjusting and managed to stay competitive afterwards, which is quite unique in Russia where the general consensus is that at 22 you're old for figure skating.

 

[nussnacker]

Whole post

1. Why only 5 years? Um, Well because I think it does matter in what conditions the coach started off his career, what resources he had both in terms of facilities and specialists, as well as talents the coach had in his hands.
Someone like Eteri had very little “choice” when it came to picking her students back in the day, Polina herself said in her recent interview that most coaches wouldn’t accept her, because of her physique, but Eteri did.
She also said, now as a coach, she herself wouldn’t even accept herself from the past to her own group. She just wasn’t built for figure skating.

I think Eteri tried to achieve as much as possible with Polina, but that was only as far as it could go, there was a cap to her achievements.
Not everyone can become a top level athlete, there are inherent things like natural talent, body, genetics etc etc.

And of course, Eteri had a VERY rough start as a coach in general, she was only given an opportunity to coach at some rink that was very hard to get to and was given the most inconvenient times (a slot very early in the morning, and very late in the evening, after hockey players finished their practices).
She hadn’t worked with Sergej from the start, a lot of things were built bit by bit, very slowly.
And the lack of conditions is also a significant factor.

2. Well, I think the sample size with Eteri is all too small to judge now.
As I said, we shall see how things will develop, give it 5 more years to see how it goes.

But also, to be fair Russian ladies field in general was lacking longevity.
I think in Russian field, that is so rich of talents, any injury is unforgiving, the skater gets sidelined and there’s going to be a dozen who are stronger.
Somewhere like in Italy, Carolina could afford to take it slow, in Russia though, that isn’t possible.

But the fact that other than Liza we only have Leonova as an example of an “older” skater is pretty telling that this is not a coach specific situation. Doesn’t particularly mean that Leonova had the healthiest approach to her skating though. It just means, she still has a desire to skate even though she knows she’s not going to medal anymore, she is struggling financially. And not everyone in Russia is willing to live the life Leonova does.

With that intense competition year to year, people just get tired of constant need to be in their best shape.
One bad performance and Rusfed will easily replace a girl with another one.

I think it’s also pretty thing that someone like Talalaikina, who was at the bottom of the ranking at RusNats, could’ve easily won in Canada, or medaled at US.

3. The combo thing is very Liza specific though. Learning diff combos is not an Eteri school phenom, that’s quite normal and all coaches teach that.
Among Mishin’s female students, Sofia is capable to add 3t to anything as well, Liza Nugumanova was practicing and competing with all sorts of difficult 3-3s.

 

[lopsilceci]

I really enjoy reading stories of how you all got into figure skating
In my case, it was also Lipnitskaya and Yuna that first caught my eye.. I saw them for the first time at the Sochi Olympics. In Mexico, winter sports are virtually nonexistent, but since it was the Olympics and it was on tv, I watched.
It's funny because I actually don't remember watching any of the men or pairs or dance. The only skaters I clearly remember watching are Yuna, Yulia and Mao.

After that, I didn't follow FS at all, until... The 2018 Olympics. Before it started, I read about Evgenia coming as the favorite (being almost unbeatable for the previous 2 seasons and breaking records) and was looking forward to watching her the most. But then I saw Alina and she stole my heart and I started following the sport after that.

I came to GS looking for a place to talk about about Alina and other russian ladies and FS in general, which has now become my fave sport and such a big part of my life :luv17:

 

[Autumn Leaves]

Did you hear that some of the Russian ladies may have the chance to improve their Japanese? Eteri published in her Instagram that Shoma will be going to their summer camp. So, all the rumors are true and I may have to start watching men as well... (sigh).

 

[Tolstoj]

1. Why only 5 years? Um, Well because I think it does matter in what conditions the coach started off his career, what resources he had both in terms of facilities and specialists, as well as talents the coach had in his hands.
Someone like Eteri had very little “choice” when it came to picking her students back in the day, Polina herself said in her recent interview that most coaches wouldn’t accept her, because of her physique, but Eteri did.
She also said, now as a coach, she herself wouldn’t even accept herself from the past to her own group. She just wasn’t built for figure skating.

I think Eteri tried to achieve as much as possible with Polina, but that was only as far as it could go, there was a cap to her achievements.
Not everyone can become a top level athlete, there are inherent things like natural talent, body, genetics etc etc.

And of course, Eteri had a VERY rough start as a coach in general, she was only given an opportunity to coach at some rink that was very hard to get to and was given the most inconvenient times (a slot very early in the morning, and very late in the evening, after hockey players finished their practices).
She hadn’t worked with Sergej from the start, a lot of things were built bit by bit, very slowly.
And the lack of conditions is also a significant factor.

2. Well, I think the sample size with Eteri is all too small to judge now.
As I said, we shall see how things will develop, give it 5 more years to see how it goes.

But also, to be fair Russian ladies field in general was lacking longevity.
I think in Russian field, that is so rich of talents, any injury is unforgiving, the skater gets sidelined and there’s going to be a dozen who are stronger.
Somewhere like in Italy, Carolina could afford to take it slow, in Russia though, that isn’t possible.

But the fact that other than Liza we only have Leonova as an example of an “older” skater is pretty telling that this is not a coach specific situation. Doesn’t particularly mean that Leonova had the healthiest approach to her skating though. It just means, she still has a desire to skate even though she knows she’s not going to medal anymore, she is struggling financially. And not everyone in Russia is willing to live the life Leonova does.

With that intense competition year to year, people just get tired of constant need to be in their best shape.
One bad performance and Rusfed will easily replace a girl with another one.

I think it’s also pretty thing that someone like Talalaikina, who was at the bottom of the ranking at RusNats, could’ve easily won in Canada, or medaled at US.

3. The combo thing is very Liza specific though. Learning diff combos is not an Eteri school phenom, that’s quite normal and all coaches teach that.
Among Mishin’s female students, Sofia is capable to add 3t to anything as well, Liza Nugumanova was practicing and competing with all sorts of difficult 3-3s.

1. I 100% agree with this and if you read my previous posts I praised Eteri many times for being a self-made woman as opposed to other coaches who just happened to start working in the richest club of the country or started with all the resources they needed. Things have changed though.

2. My feelings are that 5 years from now i'll have this exact same conversation and some Eteri fan will tell me to wait another 5 years. LOL

To me the trajectory of that group and their successes is so clear whether you agree with me or not: they want to make sure they have new champions especially in juniors every year, they are committed to win as much as they can with all their skaters, they are cherry picking a lot more than in the past though (it's quite obvious at this point), i don't believe they are interested on keeping skaters for 10 years because the newcomers are better and that's why they don't bother fixing post puberty technique issues.

Is it a bad thing? No, it's a choice they made based on efficiency, you get more medals this way, you keep the club the most successful in Russia and in the world. The only thing i'd argue is that the casual fan (not us) recognize immediately the athlete who stayed at top for many years like Plushenko or Hanyu while with this approach they will remember the coach more than the skaters since they are so interchangeable.

I'm interested to see what will happen with the boys once they manage to bring a successful one to seniors (Samsonov is a good candidate, Fedotov is also very promising), and also with Tursynbaeva cause her body is different from the typical russian girls and she represents a country that will always fund her and with secured 4CC/World spots every year.

BTW I also brought the example of Talalaykina so many times here cause she was great at Cup of Russia stages (not final maybe), and i believe she was criminally underscored at Nationals (below Tsurskaya who bombed the free?), but that's a whole separate discussion.

3. No i think this is more a yesterday figure skating vs today figure skating.

In many ways Elizaveta was initially taught with yesterday methods, in an era where Russia was frankly very weak in ladies figure skating, but also in general ladies were struggling to skate clean programs so they all used to train only 1 or 2 3-3s and get consistent with those. Adelina Sotnikova was like that, she was training 3T-3T, 3ltz-3lo/3t and 2a-3t (we saw other combos in practices only later in her career after sochi, never in competitions), Alena Leonova is like that also.

While since 2013-14, skaters in particular the russian girls started to bring all sorts of 3-3 combos as backup plans in competitions, and Eteri-Sergej skaters played a big role in this but not only them.

 

[Scott512]

I was talking about years of waiting, in seniors also not just juniors pre puberty.

With that group we don't have such example because there isn't a female skater who lasted for like 5 years in seniors + juniors. All skaters leave before, we'll see in the future. (although i think Tutberidze said in a recent interview she doesn't like to keep skaters for that long).

Also very quickly since with this specific topic, you're either supporter and accept everything as perfection and attack everyone who do not agree with you, or h@tзr and criticize everything, either ways destroy any form of discussion: i want to clarify once again that i'm not biased pro or against, and i've said this in pretty much all my posts.

About injuries, i knew about some of those, i prefer not talk about them because there is not really much to discuss about it. Like i said in a previous post, it happens all the time in figure skating. But again my post was about waiting and supporting an athlete for many years despite unsuccessful seasons, and not just a year or two or 6 months.

Maybe the main reason Eteri girls dont last long is because they get surpassed by younger talent in heir own group. Its a cycle in EGs group that shows no sign of slowing down. There are other factors as well.

 

[Scott512]

1. Why only 5 years? Um, Well because I think it does matter in what conditions the coach started off his career, what resources he had both in terms of facilities and specialists, as well as talents the coach had in his hands.
Someone like Eteri had very little “choice” when it came to picking her students back in the day, Polina herself said in her recent interview that most coaches wouldn’t accept her, because of her physique, but Eteri did.
She also said, now as a coach, she herself wouldn’t even accept herself from the past to her own group. She just wasn’t built for figure skating.

I think Eteri tried to achieve as much as possible with Polina, but that was only as far as it could go, there was a cap to her achievements.
Not everyone can become a top level athlete, there are inherent things like natural talent, body, genetics etc etc.

And of course, Eteri had a VERY rough start as a coach in general, she was only given an opportunity to coach at some rink that was very hard to get to and was given the most inconvenient times (a slot very early in the morning, and very late in the evening, after hockey players finished their practices).
She hadn’t worked with Sergej from the start, a lot of things were built bit by bit, very slowly.
And the lack of conditions is also a significant factor.

2. Well, I think the sample size with Eteri is all too small to judge now.
As I said, we shall see how things will develop, give it 5 more years to see how it goes.

But also, to be fair Russian ladies field in general was lacking longevity.
I think in Russian field, that is so rich of talents, any injury is unforgiving, the skater gets sidelined and there’s going to be a dozen who are stronger.
Somewhere like in Italy, Carolina could afford to take it slow, in Russia though, that isn’t possible.

But the fact that other than Liza we only have Leonova as an example of an “older” skater is pretty telling that this is not a coach specific situation. Doesn’t particularly mean that Leonova had the healthiest approach to her skating though. It just means, she still has a desire to skate even though she knows she’s not going to medal anymore, she is struggling financially. And not everyone in Russia is willing to live the life Leonova does.

With that intense competition year to year, people just get tired of constant need to be in their best shape.
One bad performance and Rusfed will easily replace a girl with another one.

I think it’s also pretty thing that someone like Talalaikina, who was at the bottom of the ranking at RusNats, could’ve easily won in Canada, or medaled at US.

3. The combo thing is very Liza specific though. Learning diff combos is not an Eteri school phenom, that’s quite normal and all coaches teach that.
Among Mishin’s female students, Sofia is capable to add 3t to anything as well, Liza Nugumanova was practicing and competing with all sorts of difficult 3-3s.

Thank you for all that information. I pretty much agree on all of your points.

The great thing about the great coach is that Eteri started from nothing and had to claw and scratch her way to the top like the Tigress she is! She will fight to stay there!

 

[nussnacker]

whole post

well, let's agree to disagree

I don't think Mishin of all people wasn't able to teach Liza new combos in her whole career, also taking into account that skaters that are Liza's age were taught those combos, i.e. Kaetlyn?
Adelina was using 3t-3t not because she didn't learn other combos or had 'old school' tech, it was because she was so consistently inconsistent in general, that they went for the easiest one in oly season specifically.

 

[Tolstoj]

Maybe the main reason Eteri girls dont last long is because they get surpassed by younger talent in heir own group. Its a cycle in EGs group that shows no sign of slowing down. There are other factors as well.

For sure that's one of the reasons.

 

[Tolstoj]

well, let's agree to disagree

I don't think Mishin of all people wasn't able to teach Liza new combos in her whole career, also taking into account that skaters that are Liza's age were taught those combos, i.e. Kaetlyn?
Adelina was using 3t-3t not because she didn't learn other combos or had 'old school' tech, it was because she was so consistently inconsistent in general, that they went for the easiest one in oly season specifically.

Fine think about Leonova, she literally has only one 3-3, other skaters from that era were the same: Kanako Murakami, Akiko Suzuki, Alissa Czisny, Valentina Marchei, Park So Youn, Carolina Kostner, even Yuna Kim...

Osmond is in many ways taught like that, the old way, most skaters in the west still are.

 

[nussnacker]

Fine think about Leonova, she literally has only one 3-3, other skaters from that era were the same: Kanako Murakami, Akiko Suzuki, Alissa Czisny, Valentina Marchei, Park So Youn, Carolina Kostner, even Yuna Kim...

Osmond is in many ways taught like that, the old way, most skaters in the west still are.

Are those skaters considered to be the same generation as Liza?
Mind you, she was born in dec 96, she's much younger than the ones you mentioned, maybe it would be more fair to compare her to the skaters that were born around her time? Gracie, Satoko?

 

[zounger]

Does anyone have the link to the ladies jump height statistics from two seasons before? I found the link of sports.ru but it doesn't have the photos with the numbers anymore.

 

[Alex65]

Does anyone have the link to the ladies jump height statistics from two seasons before? I found the link of sports.ru but it doesn't have the photos with the numbers anymore.

I think you will find it here https://vk.com/basevalue