Igor Shpilband fired

[let`s talk]

Since neither of these coaches has lived or worked in Russia for more than 20 years, I seriously doubt that the Russian posters have much in the way of knowledge or insight into the situation. Not that those of us who live in North America have any idea of what went on either.

Some reading comprehension issues I observe here. The Russian posters were not talking about "insight into the situation". They were talking about Marina's personality. She is famous for making her way via libelling other coaches in the nasties ways possible in order to get rid of them. Slander is a punishable offense in all civilized legislations. I am sure you know.

Agreed, DL. Also, a lot of those posters may harbour resentment since Marina and Igor did defect.

It doesn't make any sense. She didn't defect the USSR. Igor was the one who did. And by your logic he should be the one who is hated by Russians. But he is not, on the contrary.

Sorry your stomach is so weak that a "firing" would cause vomit.
When it comes to sports in the US, if a coach is felt to be doing something unethical or not doing his best, he can be fired midseason, post season, or pre season. This is no different than any other sport. It's a shock, but it happens.

The puke was obviously of a moral nature rather than physical since a Russian stomach can be beaten only by a Ukranian ones in a bar . What "unethical things" he did is what we are all asking about. Any firing can be argued in a court. They should have a valid reason to fire him. But they don't even bother to vocalize any. They simply come with a bunch of excuses that they change daily. This story stinks, and when it happens, people start speculating. It's quite a normal reaction. Some recent ones from Russian FS boards, just for fun: 1). Marina has a star fever and decided to have purely her own OGM- D/W, in Sochi. 2). Diva Skate Chanada chose to get rid of Igor who wasn't as much in love with V/M as Marina was. 3). Pisseev heavily bribed Marina in order to weaken Canton and clean up for Russians the road to the Olympic podium. 4). ... 5). ..., etc.. N). [the current winner of the konspiracy award] Igor seduced Marina's son Fedor. And Alex, Scott and Charlie suddenly became homophobic.

That's why executives insist on Golden Parachutes in their hiring contracts.

I think it takes place when lay-offs or mergers happens, i.e. when the employment position itself becomes unavailable. Firing is when no bonuses or benefits are paid, because the worker did something that cannot be tolerated: racism, sexual harassment, stealing, gravy violation of working discipine, etc. If one of those took place, they would have already told us. So I assume nothing of that nature happened. This loud firing just looks silly to me and unprofessionally done. :disapp:

 

[KKonas]

Yes, but not choreographers who can be an equal partner in preparing top teams for World and Olympic medalist success. Who can travel with the teams and manage them at the highest level. Who know the pressure cooker atmosphere of the Olympics and how to prepare students mentally. Back when he established his partnership with Marina (and left DSC with her), she knew far more about this than Igor - she had seen it all with G&G. Making champions at that level goes far beyond the technical - so much is stress management, mental preparedness, focus, etc.

Yes, all true, but that's the job of the coach not the choreographer. Igor was a Junior World silver medalist and Junior World gold medalist and had already built up a sagging US dance program before Marina joined him in 2001. I'm not saying that the Shpilband/Zoueva was not highly successful as obviously they have been. I am just saying that Igor was treatedly shabbily. Considering Zoueva's political history, anyone trusting her should be careful to watch their back.

 

[dorispulaski]

I might be wrong but it seems many people on this board say that Shpilband is the technical coach of the two? But how do we know that? I always thought the Shpilband/Zoueva partnership was kind of equal in knowledge/skill. What were his accomplishments with US teams before he was with Zoueva and did Zoueva have any before coaching together with him?

Igor has been a coach in the US since his 1990 defection. He had amazing success for a US coach within 5 years, while partnered with Liz Coates. In 1998, they won "US Coach of the Year".

Marina only began with Igor in 2001.

In the 1990 to 2001 time frame he coached:

Jamie Silverstein and Justin Pekarek up till 2000 when they retired. (Jr World Champs, bronze at 4CC's, 2nd US Nationals

Punsalan & Swallow (long term US champions) till they retired in 1998. They were some of his very first students. Gorsha Sur, who defected at the same time Igor defected, recommended Igor as a coach to Liz & Jerrod.

Lang & Tchernyshev

Belbin & Agosto (2nd & 3rd at World Juniors prior to Marina's arrival, )

Joseph & Butler (2nd US Nationals 1998) World Junior Champs 1998

Eve Chalom & Matthew Gates (US silver medallists). This is particularly notable as Eve Chalom is almost entirely deaf, due to an accident in childhood.

And let's talk, in management in the US, you can be fired at a complete whim. Yes, it is most popular to fire people during mergers, but it can occur any time.

A famous firing, from which I think the USA slang word to fire came from:

http://www.rightattitudes.com/2010/02/03/folklore-origin-expression-you-are-fired/

However, legend has it that the term originated in the 1910s at the National Cash Register (NCR) Company.

NCR founder John Henry Patterson (1844–1922) is widely recognized as the pioneer of sales management and for developing formal methods for training and assessing salespersons. Nevertheless, Patterson, for all his genius, was quirky. He was obsessed with total control of everything around him. He imposed his personal values on employees. As a food and fitness fanatic, he had employees weighed every six months. He often dismissed employees for trivial reasons just to break their self-confidence and recruited them back soon after.

John Patterson’s employees and customers branded him abusive and confrontational. Patterson once dismissed an executive by asking him to visit a customer. When the executive drove back to NCR headquarters, he observed his desk tossed out into the lawn. Right on time, his desk burst out into flames. He was “fired.”

Thomas Watson Sr. was “fired” by NCR

Famously, NCR’s star sales executive Thomas Watson Sr. met a similar fate. In 1914, Watson argued that NCR’s dominant product, mechanical cash registers, would soon go obsolete. He proposed that NCR develop electric cash registers. Peterson resisted the idea. He demanded that Watson focus on nothing but sales and not worry about innovation. Following an argument at a meeting, Patterson dismissed Watson. In a fit of anger, Patterson had workers carry Watson’s desk outside and had it lit on fire. Thomas Watson Sr. was thus “fired.” Thomas Watson Sr. then joined a smaller competitor, Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R,) which soon grew into International Business Machines (IBM.) Thomas Watson Sr. led IBM for forty years and turned IBM into the world’s leading technology company.

Apparently, the experience was extremely traumatic for Watson. He forbade firing at IBM for anything much other than felonies and incompetence so blatant that managers had to go through a process so Byzantine that it was referred to as "loading the silver bullet." Even during the Depression, there were no layoffs (i.e. mass firings). In fact, a manager who fired people because of cost was himself fired for disobeying the directive on firing.

 

[Violet Bliss]

The sudden firing has been criticized as unprofessional but it is very business savvy. When you want to oust a strong opponent from your organization, you have to prevent him from taking business with him. The Canton fsc obviously feels strongly about keeping its top teams which are also world's top teams. Once it was decided Shpilband should go, they wanted to make sure going with him would not be a good option for the top skaters. Why would they be nice and "professional" to allow him to prepare to leave while setting up his new business ready to receive the prized and potential students? No, they did the opposite. Now blindsided and in shock, Shpilband is just beginning to scoop out a location and start his school from scratch. He had obviously thought he could and would be allowed to operate it out of his old location. He completely misread everybody involved.

 

[bekalc]

The sudden firing has been criticized as unprofessional but it is very business savvy. When you want to oust a strong opponent from your organization, you have to prevent him from taking business with him. The Canton fsc obviously feels strongly about keeping its top teams which are also world's top teams. Once it was decided Shpilband should go, they wanted to make sure going with him would not be a good option for the top skaters. Why would they be nice and "professional" to allow him to prepare to leave while setting up his new business ready to receive the prized and potential students? No, they did the opposite. Now blindsided and in shock, Shpilband is just beginning to scoop out a location and start his school from scratch. He had obviously thought he could and would be allowed to operate it out of his old location. He completely misread everybody involved.

You seriously think that there aren't top students who won't go to Igor really? Fact of the matter is Igor was the one who built that school, Marina was a late addition. The Russians have already said that they will HAPPILY take him on as a coach. I have to laugh at the matter that Igor is going to have this huge difficulty getting top students. I would love to see him get I/K.

 

[Tonichelle]

Igor has been a coach in the US since his 1990 defection. He had amazing success for a US coach within 5 years, while partnered with Liz Coates. In 1998, they won "US Coach of the Year".

Marina only began with Igor in 2001.

In the 1990 to 2001 time frame he coached:

Jamie Silverstein and Justin Pekarek up till 2000 when they retired. (Jr World Champs, bronze at 4CC's, 2nd US Nationals

Punsalan & Swallow (long term US champions) till they retired in 1998. They were some of his very first students. Gorsha Sur, who defected at the same time Igor defected, recommended Igor as a coach to Liz & Jerrod.

Lang & Tchernyshev

Belbin & Agosto (2nd & 3rd at World Juniors prior to Marina's arrival, )

Joseph & Butler (2nd US Nationals 1998) World Junior Champs 1998

Eve Chalom & Matthew Gates (US silver medallists). This is particularly notable as Eve Chalom is almost entirely deaf, due to an accident in childhood.

Didn't he coach Roca & Sur as well? Or did he just talk Gorsha into defecting with him?

 

[ice coverage]

Yes, but sometimes people just make a stupid mistake. Take V/T at worlds- the death spiral is not the hardest element for a pair. It is very rare for pairs to fall on it. But they did and it was probably the first time they ever did so at a competition.

Well, yes and no. When an elite skater or team makes a "fluke" mistake, could it be that he/she/they lost concentration for a split second? And maybe thinking ahead to trickier parts of the program is what caused the momentary "distraction"?
I agree that a "stupid" mistake doesn't mean a skater is "bad" ... but if Shabalin was not immune from a fall during the Finnstep CD, then none of the top ice dancers will be immune during the upcoming Finnstep SD.

As Doris says,

Canton will need to hire a sharp CD coach, at the very least for part time, I think.

 

[blue dog]

Didn't he coach Roca & Sur as well? Or did he just talk Gorsha into defecting with him?

They were coached by Sandra Hess.

 

[dorispulaski]

Toni, It was the opposite AFAIR reading. Gorsha talked Igor and his partner into helping him pack to defect. While carrying suitcases out for Gorsha, Igor & partner were seen by other Russians, and were too scared not to defect themselves, which they did.

Wikipedia has Roca & Sur listed as being coached by Sandy Hess.

Hess also coached Punsalan & Swallow before Roca & Sur decided to skate competitively . Renee used to skate competitively with Donny Adair, before her first "retirement". Sur did choreography for Punsalan & Swallow before going back to competing himself. He recommend Igor to P&S.

At least that's how I remember it?

 

[Violet Bliss]

You seriously think that there aren't top students who won't go to Igor really? Fact of the matter is Igor was the one who built that school, Marina was a late addition. The Russians have already said that they will HAPPILY take him on as a coach. I have to laugh at the matter that Igor is going to have this huge difficulty getting top students. I would love to see him get I/K.

I already said he will have students flocking to him. But not right now. Not until he is well set up and can provide the complete organization demanded by elite skaters today. A top trainer alone is not enough any more. He needs to build a coaching team. With all the concern with Canton's need to replace him, Shpilband faces a lot more difficulties to build his team from scratch. The contenders for Sochi Olympics need assurance and confidence that there is a topnotch facility and faculty as well as enough time to commit themselves to a new environment, especially to switch from a place from where they have achieved great success already. Yes Shpilband's input will be missed there, but it's been expressed that his input had already slipped so much as to cause discontent from these skaters.

 

[Tonichelle]

you're probably right, I didn't follow Ice Dance until 1999 - and even then not really... but it was Gorsha - and that girl he skated with - that got me interested...

 

[dorispulaski]

There is some evidence of that-V&M, D&W and S&S all had a little more trouble getting Level 4 this year than in previous years.

S&S's spins were particularly a problem, and I would cite Keypoint 2 in the Rumba, except that every team had trouble, and different tech panels graded it in a widely inconsistent manner.

Toni--Roca and Sur were wonderful indeed. I think they suffered from bad marking throughout their amateur career though.

 

[nevergonnadance]

This is what Katia Gordeeva said about Zhuk in her book:

Sometime during the summer of 1996, Sergei, Alexander Fadeev, Anna Kondrashova and Marina Zoueva prepared a letter to send to Central Red Army Club officials asking that Zhuk be removed as head coach. He had become intolerable, drinking for days on end, missing practices and becoming increasingly abusive to the boys. He wasn’t fit to be coaching anyone, old or young.

Her father didn't want her to sign the letter but she couldn't stand Zhuk and she did it. Later there was an incident with Zhuk that made her cry and her father finally approved of the change. Her book also suggests he may have harrassed Anna Kondrashova, physically and otherwise. Fadeev has spoken out about his abuse. A young choreographer like Marina is not going to convince the Army Club to fire a colonel on her word alone. On the word of Russian champions, they would do it. And they knew themselves what type of man he'd become.

Before Zhuk died, Zhuk complained about it. Because in her book Gordeeva's father is angry about the letter and says "It's not your idea" Zhuk spun that Gordeeva was manipulated. But KG has always backed up what she said about Zhuk and so have other skaters. There are a lot of stories in her book about the creep he was. Defending himself, Zhuk insinuated Marina had Sergei Grinkov on a string and other slimy insinuations - whatever mud he could sling.

I don't know what happened to Leonovich's career but she didn't undermine him.

Looks like people are following Igor - "I have lots of skaters"

Yes. Doesn't that confirm that he was building his own side business adjunct to the business Arctic Edge was paying him for?

 

[bekalc]

I already said he will have students flocking to him. But not right now. Not until he is well set up and can provide the complete organization demanded by elite skaters today. A top trainer alone is not enough any more. He needs to build a coaching team. With all the concern with Canton's need to replace him, Shpilband faces a lot more difficulties to build his team from scratch. The contenders for Sochi Olympics need assurance and confidence that there is a topnotch facility and faculty as well as enough time to commit themselves to a new environment, especially to switch from a place from where they have achieved great success already. Yes Shpilband's input will be missed there, but it's been expressed that his input had already slipped so much as to cause discontent from these skaters.

Well the Russians have already said they will happily provide Igor with everything he could possibly want or need. I have hard time thinking there aren't US rinks that won't happily open their arms to him as well.

 

[Violet Bliss]

Well the Russians have already said they will happily provide Igor with everything he could possibly want or need. I have hard time thinking there aren't US rinks that won't happily open their arms to him as well.

He wants to stay in Michigan. If he goes further away, it will be even harder to get the Canton skaters to go with him. No doubt a coach of his calibre will have a great facility and a stable of eager talented students. But we are addressing the current situation.

 

[callalily]

Yes, all true, but that's the job of the coach not the choreographer.

In theory, yes, but Marina wasn't just a choreographer - she was a co-coach, which Igor absolutely needed to manage so many competitive high level teams simultaneously. And she was the one with the experience in the management and preparation of Olympic winners.

Igor was a Junior World silver medalist and Junior World gold medalist and had already built up a sagging US dance program before Marina joined him in 2001. I'm not saying that the Shpilband/Zoueva was not highly successful as obviously they have been. I am just saying that Igor was treatedly shabbily. Considering Zoueva's political history, anyone trusting her should be careful to watch their back.

I agree that (it looks like) he was treated shabbily. I'm just saying that he partnered with Marina because he knew she had the experience in making Olympic champions that he lacked - I don't think his reasons for leaving DSC with Marina were purely altruistic. It in the end, it may have come back to bite him, but I doubt he'd have had all those extremely successful teams (at the highest level, and simultaneously) without her.

 

[blue dog]

This is what Katia Gordeeva said about Zhuk in her book:



Her father didn't want her to sign the letter but she couldn't stand Zhuk and she did it. Later there was an incident with Zhuk that made her cry and her father finally approved of the change. Her book also insinuates he may have harrassed Anna Kondrashova. Fadeev has spoken out about his abuse. A young choreographer like Marina is not going to convince the Army Club to fire a colonel on her word alone. On the word of Russian champions, they would do it. And they knew themselves what type of man he'd become.

Before he died Zhuk complained about it. Because in her book Gordeeva's father is angry about the letter and says "It's not your idea" Zhuk spun that Gordeeva was manipulated. But she's always backed up what she said about Zhuk and so have other skaters. There are a lot of stories in her book about the creep he was. Defending himself Zhuk insinuated Marina had Sergei Grinkov on a string and other insinuations - whatever mud he could sling.

I don't know what happened to Leonovich's career but she didn't undermine him.

Leonovich was offered to coach in France in the 90's. He was Gusmeroli's coach for a time.

 

[Tonichelle]

Toni--Roca and Sur were wonderful indeed. I think they suffered from bad marking throughout their amateur career though.

Didn't the Swallows also fight to keep them off the Olympic Team? Ice Dance dramas = better than Soap Operas.

 

[DianaSelene]

This is what Katia Gordeeva said about Zhuk in her book:



Her father didn't want her to sign the letter but she couldn't stand Zhuk and she did it. Later there was an incident with Zhuk that made her cry and her father finally approved of the change. Her book also insinuates he may have harrassed Anna Kondrashova. Fadeev has spoken out about his abuse. A young choreographer like Marina is not going to convince the Army Club to fire a colonel on her word alone. On the word of Russian champions, they would do it. And they knew themselves what type of man he'd become.

Before he died Zhuk complained about it. Because in her book Gordeeva's father is angry about the letter and says "It's not your idea" Zhuk spun that Gordeeva was manipulated. But she's always backed up what she said about Zhuk and so have other skaters. There are a lot of stories in her book about the creep he was. Defending himself Zhuk insinuated Marina had Sergei Grinkov on a string and other insinuations - whatever mud he could sling.

I don't know what happened to Leonovich's career but she didn't undermine him.

Yes. Doesn't that confirm that he was building his own side business adjunct to the business Arctic Edge was paying him for?

To counter this, there was a Russian article translated into English a few years ago with a journalist talking about this whole case.
http://www.figureskatingmystery.com/2007/04/yet-more-sex-on-yet-more-ice.html

Scroll to the bottom for the article. What this article does not say is that Vodorezova later wrote a letter to CSKA defending Zhuk but it didn't matter anymore. She could not change anything.

 

[demarinis5]

It is not uncommon for someone to get fired and shown the door the same day, in other words blindsided. It happens all the time in my profession. Of course the individual's infractions have been well documented with the Human Resources Dept. but once the decision is made to fire the individual, you call them into your office, you say you are terminated, you tell them why and security is waiting outside and assists said individual to their office or desk space to pack up their belongings and bye bye. It is not pretty but that is how we handle it. Just saying....