My only comment is Rylov would have to be incredibly stupid to leave Panfilova for anyone. That girl is special! She is the driving force behind that team. Her posture, landings, positions in lifts are really unparelled in a junior girl of her age. All respect to Rylov (who is a great skater), but he is nothing without that amazing young lady.
It may be true that Panfilova adds something special to the team in terms of artistry and refinement, but refinement and elegant finishing positions can only take you so far. Perhaps her character drives the team, and Rylov admits so. Many other athletes of a high level also have a very similar, driving character. Her positions in lifts are special, but the thing in the end is that she cannot jump. They are most known for their throws and twist. The other day I did a side by side of their Throw 3Lo vs her Side-by-side 2Lo. The difference in height is insane. Who is making up for the lack of difference? At the end of the day, the throws and twists are the point getters. So if Panfilova does grow significantly taller, then I guess they will never be the same with new partners, Rylov without the driving force and Panfilova without the throws and stability in lifts. Still, I could see Rylov getting another girl and throwing her pretty darn high. But no doubt, Panfilova is special.
That’s the theory. In reality the situation is a bit different. Changing a partner is always a risk, so Kolesov would have to carefully balance his current situation with Akhanteva against the risk of changing the partner. In your ideal world, there are queues of girls waiting to pair up with him. In reality it is not so. Why do you think Volodin risked partnership with Atakhanova, even though he knew that she had been injured recently? If there was such a queue of girls wanting to skate with him, wouldn’t he choose someone healthier? Look at Volodin trying with a girl from singles...if the gossip is true, it didn’t last even a whole season. And before her, Volodin skating with an acrobat girl - again, he spent lots of time teaching her pairs and then something didn’t work out. Do you think he would waste so much time teaching Vasilieva and Sobinina pairs if he knew in advance that the partnership will last only a year or even less? Also, why do you think that Ialin decided to try with Vislobokova, even though he knows she has been struggling with her jumps for over a year and her figure is not as compatible to his as anyone else might be
I am not going to claim that jumps are not important, because they are, but why do you think at the last GP Panfilova/Rylov managed to beat pairs who did one triple in the SP and three triples in the FS? They beat Kadyrova/Balchenko, who did clean triple flip with positive GOE in the SP, and clean 3T and combination 3S-1eu-3S in the FS. All with positive GOE. And yet Panfilova/Rylov beat them both in the SP and in the FS. Similarly, whole last season they were beating pairs who did triples, including a pair who did 3F and 3Lz. I know it sucks that Panfilova struggles with jumps, but in the FS is 11 elements, and she struggles with only two. The rest of it is on a very high level. In the SP, doing double axel is not that huge difference from 3T pointwise, and they can make up the points in their other elements. Rylov would be fool to risk getting a new partner because many pairs never manage to get their elements to that level. Jumps are hard, but getting everything to a very high level is not easy either.
Also I find it funny that people automatically assume that their weakness in SBS jumps is wholly due to Panfilova. To me it looks like Rylov is the worse jumper. You don't see it much because they usually stick to double jumps and so rarely mess those up, but when they tried 3S at Rostelecom Rylov doubled (it doesn't look intentional, his takeoff was wonky) and Panfilova tripled but fell. Also, in those rare instances when they failed even their double jumps (RusNats last year), both of them had problems. I don't think Rylov can rotate well in the air (he is bent at the hip) and he barely gets much lift either. Panfilova doesn't jump high but she rotates fast and is straighter in air.
I think this comes from some interviews, I may be mistaken but I think she mentioned herself that she was the one that was really working on the triple, implying that his was stable. I agree that he's not the best jumper, but I think at Rostelecom there was probably a miscommunication as to which jump they were doing. The 2S from him looked intentional. Although in this interview, it seems more even. that they both struggle with jumping https://www.goldenskate.com/2020/06/panfilova-and-rylov-we-need-to-move-on/
Yes, they are going to compete at the St. Petersburg Championship. Akhanteva / Kolesov and Vislobokova / Ialin at senior category, Kostiukovich / Briukhanov at junior one. By the way, junior competitions start today.
Again, you are talking about so many potential girls...it doesn’t work that way in a real life. Ilia Spiridonov took on a girl who is from singles. You seem to show it as an example how the girls are queueing to have a partner. Let’s wait where the partnership will go. Whether it will last more than 2 years and whether they at all manage to get on the main senior team. You know, not all ex-singles ladies turn out as well as Kadyrova. There are the ones like Antipova, Mary Beth Marley, but also Vasilieva.... one can spend six months wasting time teaching them everything they need to know about pairs, and then it doesn’t last longer than a year or two. Maisuradze retired because he struggled to find another partner, despite his previous successful career. No one was rushing to skate with him. Getting a girl from singles is like a getting a secret santa present - it may be a gem, or it may be useless. And the skater never knows what he is getting, because even though the girl has a consistent jumps, that doesn’t guarantee that a) she will like pairs and will want to do it long-term, b) she will not start struggling with puberty and lose the jumps after a year, c) the pressure won’t get too much for her like it was for Antipova, Marley and Conners.
Well, your advice about picking up a girl who is 17+ to minimise the risks doesn’t seem to fully work either. I can name several single ladies (with full set of triples) who switched to pairs, lasted a year or two and then disappeared, or have been moving from one partnership to another and not getting anywhere.
Mary Beth was diagnosed with an eating disorder, but it was probably bulimia, not anorexia. Of course, these illnesses are related. Bulimia can turn into anorexia if not treated. Marley/Brubaker were well-matched partners on the ice and as a team they were fast developing into excellent competitors. The age difference was probably difficult in terms of them understanding and communicating well with each other.
It would have been a huge pressure for her to be expected to learn pairs discipline so fast, while also moving to seniors (as a single skater she was junior, but suddenly she started in pairs in seniors). I am pretty sure moving to seniors is a big step for every skater, but moving to seniors while you are in a new discipline, and at the same time suddenly in this new discipline and in seniors immediately start with international competitions... with a guy who was successful before so suddenly everyone expects that they will continue to be successful... I don’t think many people appreciate enough the pressure put on the young skater in her situation. I would definitely not say that her problems were purely lack of maturity and body image issues. That would be like saying that eating disorders happen because the person just wants to be slimmer. That’s a very simplistic and incorrect view. There is the element of control in eating disorders - the person feels like they are losing control in life and therefore they control the only thing they feel they can, and it is food. Mary Beth’s eating disorder didn’t come out of nowhere, the pressure on her must have been huge, so saying it was immaturity and body issues is like completely disregarding what she went through. Her story is so similar to Antipova.
