What happened to the Russian Ladies?

[PolymerBob]

"What happened to the Russian Ladies? "

Unfortunately, the same thing that happened to the American ladies, the Canadian Ladies, the Chinese ladies, the Finnish ladies, the Italian ladies, - well, I think you get the idea.

 

[Joesitz (RIP)]

I don't understand the title of this topic. When have there been stella Russian Ladies other than Irina?

The title should read: The Russian Ladies will be a force sometime soon.

Joe

 

[gio]

I don't understand the title of this topic. When have there been stella Russian Ladies other than Irina?

The title should read: The Russian Ladies will be a force sometime soon.

Joe

Well Joe, Maria Butyrskaya was also a stella. She won one gold and two bronze at Worlds and three golds and some other medals at Euros, plus the National title. I think she could be compared to Sasha Cohen (who certainly is a stella) in terms of medals, with the exception of the Olympic medal (that Sasha won and Maria didn't).

With the title I wanted to express that once the Russian skaters were more competitive, because they did win medals at Worlds (Slutskaya, Butyrskaya, Sokolova and Soldatova), at Euros (the 4 plus Olga Markova and Vikka Volchkova) at Juniors (the girls I named in the first post). The title was also the question of where did finish the Russian winners of the Junior Worlds and why weren't they able to win at Seniors. The state of Russian Ladies skating seemed bright at the end of the 90s, when Russian skaters were able to win Junior titles. So, from here it came the name "What happened to the Russian Ladies?".

 

[gio]

"What happened to the Russian Ladies? "

Unfortunately, the same thing that happened to the American ladies, the Canadian Ladies, the Chinese ladies, the Finnish ladies, the Italian ladies, - well, I think you get the idea.

It isn't the same!!!
Not to the American Ladies since they have Kimmie, Caroline, Ashley, Mirai. Not to the Finnish since they have Kiira, Susana, Laura. Not to the Italian since we have Carolina, Valentina, Stefania. All these girls are promising talents and were in the top10 at Seniors or Junior Worlds this year and/or last year.
The Chinese Ladies had just Lu Chen.
The Russian had a lot of Ladies that could be at least in the top10, not to talk about medals.

 

[Medusa]

Germany has a talented couple in Pairs (S/S won gold at Euros and a bronze medal at Worlds).
So, the question is, why those two countries are investing in FS, but not in Ladies FS?

Well, I think part of the reason is, that you have to have a certain shape for being a figure skater, especially a female one. And for example I am 5 ft 6 and I'm really small here in Germany, most of the girls I know are taller than me. We are also not really graceful and petite here, a French woman for example weighs 8 kilos less than the average German woman. So the pool of female skaters we could choose from is very small to begin with. We have the same problem with gymnastics, our men are really doing fine there, not stellar but fine - but we didn't have a decent female competitor there in years or perhaps decades.

And to be honest - we had to import Savchenko from the Ucraine, there was no girl good enough in our own country.

 

[Geesesk8]

http://en.rian.ru/sports/20070330/62857661.html

 

[Buzzz]

Thanks for the link. A lack of results like this will always result in turmoil but hopefully young skaters will see the lack of depth at the top as an opportunity.

 

[heyang]

As the article mentions, a lot of the famed Russian coaches have left the country for more lucrative careers. Thus, you see the improvement of many non-Russian teams, especially in Ice Dance. Also, a lot of the former Russian success stories (Kulik, Gordeeva, Yagudin, Platov, Zhulin, etc) have moved to the US and are either inspiring audiences in the US, coaching and/or choreographing.

Russia has lost some of its role models and best coaches. It's not that surprising that they likely have undeveloped talent. Also, with the political and social changes, there probably isn't money and time for parents to get their kids interested in participating.