- Joined
- Mar 23, 2014
The Russian skaters only get state funding if they place high and produce results otherwise their on their own just like American skaters are. Nikita Katsalapov had to use his own Olympic winnings to train with Zueva in the US when he switched partners. Now that they are producing some results chances of them receiving state funding go up but it wasn't handed to them from the start, they had to earn it.
And being state funding doesn't mean results otherwise Russia would have a much longer history in ladies then it does. Russian girls are not winning medals because of money from their government. Their winning because they got the goods PLUS mental strength. Gracie probably has more talent then all the Russian girls yet can't produce results because she doesn't have the mental strength. State funding isn't suddenly going to win Gracie world medals or give her the mental strength she so desperately needs.
I'm not referring to specific skaters like Gracie, I'm referring to the depths of the two programs as a whole.
Russian girls are not winning due to money from the government, I agree, and I did not say otherwise in my post. Russia does, however, have a much larger pool of overall talent than the US due to the differences between the two countries.