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- Feb 2, 2019
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Alexey suffered a stress fracture in his right foot (his landing foot, and his picking foot for Flip and Lutz) in the season after he won the Junior Worlds title.
Not much is known about how the initial injury occurred, but it lead to his withdrawal from both of his GP events in his first senior season. It must have happened around October 2018.
In a later video interview Alexey himself said that over-training was not the cause for the stress fracture. However, there was also a lot of talk about adding the 4F to his competition layout at the time and given what is known about the training methods of Team Tutberidze which seem to be based on countless repetitions everyone may draw their own conclusions. Fact is, an MRI revealed his picking foot was broken in three different places. He spent a couple of weeks with his leg in a cast, then did some physical therapy and then went straight back on the ice. The plan was to podium at Russian junior nationals to get another Junior Worlds assignment to defend his title and have a chance at GP spots next season. So roughly three months after his first stress fracture, in January 2019 Alexey was back in competition with two 4Ts and two 3As in his FS.
He got the ticket to Junior Worlds but never made it there because first there was the domestic Junior Cup final. On the morning after the SP, Alexey said his foot hurt so much that he could barely get out of bed. Naturally he had to withdraw from the competition and it marked the end of any dreams of defending his Junior Worlds title. Another MRI revealed a recurrence of the previous injury. This time, according to an interview from May 2019 he stayed off the ice for one and a half months, only doing physical therapy and working out in the gym. For the first week back on the ice he only practised gliding, then he began jumping. After a few days, the pain in his right foot flared up again and it turned out that the fracture wasn't properly healed after all and he had to discontinue on-ice training once more.
It isn't clear what exactly went down in 2019/20 but Alexey finally showed up for the last domestic competition of the season, the Russian Cup final. His planned program content looked promising with multiple quads announced for the FS. However, the performance itself was hard to watch. Apart from a beautiful 3A out of nowhere, the only jumps landed were a 3S, a 2T, and two 2Lo's and it was very obvious that he was in no condition to jump any quads.
Before the beginning of the next season, Alexey left Tutberidze for Viktoria Butsaeva, citing "differences in the athletic approach" as the reason for the coaching change. Butsaeva said in an interview that he came to her completely out of shape (then again, it was the first Covid spring) but managed to restore his 4T and 4S over the summer break. Alexey performed relatively well in his comeback skate in October 2020 with a reasonable layout, landing 3A's and 4S's and backloaded Flip- and Lutz combos. However, at a domestic event six weeks later, he competed SP and FS layouts without any Flips and Lutzes, making the commentator and fans wonder if anything was up. Shortly afterwards, his coach announced his withdrawal from Russian Nationals. The old injury had become acute again and doctors said that "if he wanted to have any chance to continue his career, he had to stop skating now."
Two months later, Alexey was back in competition with a normal layout but an unsuccessful skate to end the season.
Whatever magic his doctors and coaches did over the summer worked as Alexey opened the 2021/22 season with a stunning and easy 4Lo on top of his 4S and 4T and skated better than he ever did before. In training he even showed 4F again.
Alexey performed sometimes more, sometimes less successfully with a relatively stable content (a two quad SP and a three quad FS) through the next two and a half seasons.
Fast forward to the National Championship in December 2023. In the SP Alexey fell from his last jump, a 3A and was unable to complete the program. In the replay one could see how his landing foot just gave way underneath him. MRIs revealed no fracture but ligament damage. His coach said that the new injury was likely a consequence of the previous stress fractures.
Alexey had to skip the rest of the season, but he has restored all his triples already and said that he doesn't promise anything, but he believes he will compete next season. So Alexey is back to doing what he does best, which is not giving up.
Imo, it is pointless to wonder what could have been if Alexey had taken the whole season off after his initial injury. Figure skating careers are awfully short.
I do believe coaches should do everything in their power (responsibly manage the training load, educate their skaters about proper nutrition,..) to avoid stress fractures in the first place.
Sorry for the wall of text, @surimi put me up to it.
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