Alena Kostornaia
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Beautiful .. black horses are stunningThis is my favourite photo from Alyona's new photoshoot.
Make sure to click it to see the picture in high resolution.
but do not be fooled; Alyona has peppermints
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- Dec 9, 2019
Is this photo from Phantom of the Opera?
She looks quite at ease in the twist, but his make up is quite impressive too!
I'm being quite late about Alyona Kostornaya!
She looks quite at ease in the twist, but his make up is quite impressive too!
I'm being quite late about Alyona Kostornaya!
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- Nov 12, 2021
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Aliona officially got married. At the wedding among the guests were Dasha Usacheva and Anna Shcherbakova
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- Dec 9, 2019
Here's a tweet of their wedding, from a selfie by Daria Usacheva, with Anna Shcherbakova:
Congratulations to the newlyweds, I wish them the greatest happiness!
Congratulations to the newlyweds, I wish them the greatest happiness!
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2014
oh...wish her/them to be happy!
congratulations!!
at the same time...deeply inside I do feel...sorry. Aliona has/had an extraordinary talent... heavenly qualities in her skating and all has been left unrealized....because she never was understood or guided and injuries was a result of this.
wish this marriage to be a new chapter in her more or less sad story
congratulations!!at the same time...deeply inside I do feel...sorry. Aliona has/had an extraordinary talent... heavenly qualities in her skating and all has been left unrealized....because she never was understood or guided and injuries was a result of this.
wish this marriage to be a new chapter in her more or less sad story
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- Aug 8, 2023
Shes had an insanely successful career and produced some of the best programs ever. Ultimately I wouldnt be too upset. And long term assuming her marriage goes well her life will probably end up a lot better all things considered than it would've if she stayed in singles and learned quads or whatever. Theres a lot of factors that go into someones career that we're blind to, we can always assume from the outside some athlete had more in them but we dont really know. Aliona seems convinced quads were too much for her and likely she knows better than us. I dont think her career has been some tragic waste of talent like most people see it; to me, honestly, it was one of the most fruitful ladies' singles careers I know of, and if her marriage lasts then shes basically living the peak life path.oh...wish her/them to be happy!
at the same time...deeply inside I do feel...sorry. Aliona has/had an extraordinary talent... heavenly qualities in her skating and all has been left unrealized....because she never was understood or guided and injuries was a result of this.
wish this marriage to be a new chapter in her more or less sad story
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And I'm happy she invited Anya! 
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- May 28, 2023
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MUCH HAPPINESS FOR THE MARRIED COUPLE <3
Regarding her career, while I agree that is definitely no waste, such a beautiful skater, so talented, I can't help wishing she enjoyed more hardwork, more trainings and discipline, but I suppose one can't change her personality/behaviour/character, however if she had been nore disciplined, trained better, longer, harder, the results would've happened.
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- Aug 8, 2023
Yes but, my thought is that if she were a hard working and disciplined person, that might mean an instrinsic piece of her artistic personality is lost - its all a very complex system. I think its important to just accept an artist for who they are and appreciate their work, its probably best not to try to see her as a sum of her parts. I think we have to realize if we changed one thing we think is for the better it could mean ultimately we lose something really special, and Kostornaia is special.
I know Valieva has all things, but shes very different.
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POINT VERY WELL TAKEN
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- Dec 7, 2022
How do you guys know she's not a hard working or disciplined person?
There's a difference between being hard-working and being ready to completely bow to others.
I don't think Kostornaia would have become the skater she did become without really, really hard work. It also looks like she's really working on the pairs elements. Just because people have personal limits doesn't mean one has to question their work ethics. I don't know her and I don't know what she actually did or didn't do, but to me it very much looks like this "she's a wild child" is something that some people have said about her to deflect and because she's not ready to do absolutely everything all the time that is demanded from her - which I would consider healthy, normal and reasonable as a start, but she has internalized this view that others have spread about her.
There's a difference between being hard-working and being ready to completely bow to others.
I don't think Kostornaia would have become the skater she did become without really, really hard work. It also looks like she's really working on the pairs elements. Just because people have personal limits doesn't mean one has to question their work ethics. I don't know her and I don't know what she actually did or didn't do, but to me it very much looks like this "she's a wild child" is something that some people have said about her to deflect and because she's not ready to do absolutely everything all the time that is demanded from her - which I would consider healthy, normal and reasonable as a start, but she has internalized this view that others have spread about her.
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- Aug 8, 2023
Well, I agree with what you're saying, but I don't think anyone was calling her a complete slacker or eccentric uncompromising brat.
I guess, just by Russian standards, it was pretty well discussed that she wasn't as "disciplined" as others; or at least that her personality and ego clashed with trainers. And yes, you're absolutely right, in Russia discipline means being totally submissive to your trainers. You aren't even supposed to talk during training sessions from what I understand, at least with Eteri: I watched probably an hour of raw training footage from Akateva and Valieva and neither of them said a single world during their sessions; just listen and repeat on the ice.
Thing is, I totally understand why she was a bit rebellious and bothered by that atmosphere - I would be too. Thats why I like her, shes more relatable than most of the superchildren Russia produced. It makes me think, maybe she would've been a lot more successful with a coach like Plushenko?
Anyways, the idea is that if she fully subverted her ego and became a canvas like the others girls, she could've perhaps been even more impressive. But for the record, if you scroll up, this is a perspective I argued against. I do totally understand it though and it has basis in what we hear from coaches and Kostornaia herself.
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She has said it herself in multiple ocassions, in multiple interviews and people who have worked with her for years have said the same thing.
How do YOU know that? Are you her psychiatrist or psychologist and have you clinically evaluated her?
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- Dec 7, 2022
I have specifically said I don't know what exactly she did or didn't do and that I don't know her. So it's clear it's my opinion.
I do know enough about psychology to know that this internalization often happens and this very much looks like it, because I haven't heard of any incident or behaviour which would make me feel like she's not hard working and disciplined. What I heard are things like she didn't want to skate with a broken arm/hand. In my opinion such behaviour is healthy and show's she's got her own mind and makes her own decisions about her health, but it is framed as "she's a coward and rebellious". Same about her switching to Plushenko - an athlete who doesn't feel they are in the right place and wants to switch coaches, there's nothing bad about it, on the contrary. Yet it's framed as "she doesn't know what's good for her". It happens to all athletes by the way, who dare to leave Eteri, if only for a while - "how could she!" Well, maybe those athletes have a point and realize the training environment is bad for them personally, so they are looking for another place.
But yet, as you say, she herself says such things about herself. And my conclusion, if I can't see any actual behaviour that I would find lazy, but only, in a very competitive environment, an extremely high level of skating and success (she likely could have had more big titles if the timing of everything would have been different) and the normal decisions of a girl growing up, is that she must have worked very hard to get there and her own talk about her mentality is more likely to be taken from the outside and expectations than to be the actual truth.
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Aliona Kostornaya, of course, is not a model of exemplary behavior and strict discipline. Nevertheless, it is impossible to say with absolute certainty that this was the reason for her failures. Already in the spring of 2020, that is, before moving to the Angels, Aliona lost her triple axel. I do not exclude the possibility that the fall and winter of 2019 was generally the peak of Kostornaya's opportunities, and all paths from the top, as everyone knows, lead down. There would be nothing surprising in this - in the end, Alice Liu exhausted her resource much earlier than Aliona.
It is difficult to analyze all this precisely because Aliona decided to change her coach. I have listened to many of Aliona's interviews about this and I can only say one thing for sure: this decision was impulsive, ill-considered and therefore unreasonable. In addition, Plushenko showed himself to be a frivolous and irresponsible person. I hate to talk about it, because he is a great skater, but what can you do. Almost no work was done with Aliona. She was given medical help, she was promised the best choreographers, but she did not receive real attention from the head coach of the headquarters. Moreover, later, explaining the failures of Aliona, Rudkovskaya stated that Plushenko did not train her at all. All this coincided with the ridiculous decision to abandon the general physical training of athletes (this "brilliant" idea belongs to Rozanov, but the decision was made by Plushenko).
As a result, Aliona lost the whole season. And the loss of the triple axel has become almost irreversible.
It is difficult to analyze all this precisely because Aliona decided to change her coach. I have listened to many of Aliona's interviews about this and I can only say one thing for sure: this decision was impulsive, ill-considered and therefore unreasonable. In addition, Plushenko showed himself to be a frivolous and irresponsible person. I hate to talk about it, because he is a great skater, but what can you do. Almost no work was done with Aliona. She was given medical help, she was promised the best choreographers, but she did not receive real attention from the head coach of the headquarters. Moreover, later, explaining the failures of Aliona, Rudkovskaya stated that Plushenko did not train her at all. All this coincided with the ridiculous decision to abandon the general physical training of athletes (this "brilliant" idea belongs to Rozanov, but the decision was made by Plushenko).
As a result, Aliona lost the whole season. And the loss of the triple axel has become almost irreversible.
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Thank you very much @Alex Fedorov
I couldn’t have said it better.
It’s a pity, since she is so talented and a gorgeous performer in my opinion.
As for Plushenko, he’s the only man I closely followed in skating and the only who made me want to watch him skate more and more. I don’t watch men’s skating but watching Plushenko was a delight. However, I’m not a fan of him as a coach at all.
I couldn’t have said it better.
It’s a pity, since she is so talented and a gorgeous performer in my opinion.
As for Plushenko, he’s the only man I closely followed in skating and the only who made me want to watch him skate more and more. I don’t watch men’s skating but watching Plushenko was a delight. However, I’m not a fan of him as a coach at all.
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2019
I believe like Icewhite that it was very much a question of timing. She lost her 3A during the first lockdown, which was to be expected, she didn't regain it before the second lockdown, I don't think that she was very anxious yet, but although she had worked quite a lot at home (as show her new extensions after the lockdown, for instance in the Biellmann), she must have lost something by the lack of on-ice practice, which she hadn't recovered when she left Team Tutberidze. It was all of a sudden, if I understand correctly on July 15th the practice went fine (but still without 3A), then on July 16th there were difficulties (I had no confirmation but I do believe that her complaint that the younger skaters were slowing her down/came in her way came that day, the voicing aloud of this complaint maybe prompted by general anxiety) and on July 17th she called Rozanov in emergency to know if Plushenko could take her. This in a context of the Tutberidze coaching team looking overworked and maybe not available for a thorough assessment and reassuring her.
What Eteri Tuteridze vented out when she left, I hope is understood as a venting out and nothing more, nothing to cling to as an accurate truth. She's very invested in her students and doesn't understand what's happened when they leave, and she says things that I view more as a coping mechanism than anything informative (even more so, what she's reported to have said privately to other students on this occasion).
Then, there was another quarantine before being allowed to train at Plushenko's. Then she caught CoViD twice, and we don't know what permanent harm it did her, but it did prevent her from practicing, and I wonder if Rozanov's "brillant idea" wasn't just to prioritise on-ice training over off-ice training during these recoveries. It's CoViD that ruined her 2020-2021 season, nothing else. She had it once more the next season, after her vaccination, but I don't know when. I do think to that it would have been better had Plushenko supervised her training, but as I understand it, Alexandra Trusova's parents forbade it? It was maybe in the contract they had signed in February or March 2020?
If one really want to accuse a person or organisation for the inadequation between her outstanding skating and her titles, it would be the "more" brilliant team at ISU who, mid-March 2020, were planning a physical meeting between the exhausted skaters and 1000 people from the attendance, instead of setting up a safe event as the Korean Federation had wisely done for the Four Continents Championships; I do believe that, had they been serious and worked together with Québec health authorities, World Championships in Montréal 2020 could have taken place, and Alyona Kostornaya may have got a deserved World title.
