2019-20 Russian Ladies' Figure Skating | Page 68 | Golden Skate

2019-20 Russian Ladies' Figure Skating

Scott512

Scott512

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Joined
Feb 27, 2014
When can we expect the music choice selections for Alina and the Grand Prix selections for Alina? By the way happy bday Alina! Sweet 17. Someone play dancing Queen for her. ;)

Another question about Alina is will she take more steps in learning triple Axel or quad this summer? I hope so but only if she really really wants it.
 
Maju

Maju

On the Ice
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Jan 3, 2019
lesnar001 said:
Call me an old fuddy-duddy....
But I'm certainly glad this is her exhibition number and not the short program! :drama:

I hope she has a lot of fun with this one like she did with her Lara Croft routine.
Click to expand...
Same! I’m very relieved too. Like someone said it doesn't lend itself well to interpretation. It will be fun as a gala program.
 
F

flanker

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Country
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lesnar001 said:
Call me an old fuddy-duddy....
But I'm certainly glad this is her exhibition number and not the short program! :drama:

I hope she has a lot of fun with this one like she did with her Lara Croft routine.
Click to expand...

Call me the same too :) But I'm still waiting impatiently for the competitive programs. Eteri's team is thrilling us :)
 
nussnacker

nussnacker

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Mar 16, 2019
I thought about ignoring this, because comments like these belong in long overdue to be created "my personal problems with Eteri" thread.
But I want to say that people sometimes go to extremes to vilify a certain person, because it's something people tend to do, see things as extremes, people either see someone either as an angel or a devil. I am not going to say she's perfect, but debunking a few myths is worthy.

Tolstoj said:
I look at history from that group, their skaters, what coaches say during interviews, interviews from former students (which even if it's not 100% accurate, there's always some truth), to make my own guesses on the Eteri's miracle, and i want to clarify that these are guesses on what's happening there, and what might happen going forward, not a personal opinion on what's good and what's bad (that's a whole separate debate):
Click to expand...

Eteri hasn't been coaching as long for people to be making correlations, and correlations also don't mean causality. If I want, I can make a few correlations about other coaches too, it's quite easy.

Tolstoj said:
- One thing we can all agree, is that they train hard, probably harder than any other group in Russia, maybe in the world. That's something you realize just by looking at the details in their programs, like spins, how fast and centered they always are, that alone we all know requires practicing: spinning is mostly an acquired skill, how good you are at spinning mostly depends on how much you train them.

We know from interviews they train each element hundreds of times, even without mentioning the most recent controversial one with Polina Shuboderova, i recall even Daniil Gleichengauz admitting that earlier last season: very early in the season Alina made the same mistake in the 2a in the SP two-three times, journalists asked them why not changing the entrance and Daniil said those were very unusual mistakes, cause out of hundreds of attempts at their rink Alina rarely made those mistakes. They probably track the failure rate of each element for every skater to see what's worth trying and what not. That's why Evgenia landed all kinds of combos in practice but in competition it was always 3F-3T, 3S-3T and 3Lo-3T (when she was missing the flip in the short)
Click to expand...

They do work very hard, there's no doubt.
One thing people are missing, they don't have more ice time than other groups occupying that rink. From interviews it's pretty evident that they all skate 4 hours a day. They work hard during those 4 hours, aka don't waste their time playing around, yet I feel like people somehow think that they stay there overnight making kids jump until their legs fall off.

As for Daniil, why are you implying that 100 attempts all happened within one day? It's a simple statistic, that all skaters and coaches use for tracking jumps and combos. The percentage of successful attempts is not an "Eteri invention/thing", all skaters do that to understand whether or not it's worth it to put the jumps/combo in the program.

Tolstoj said:
I believe there is even a 1-2 months period (which the last interview mentions) where it's just crunch time to get things done (the rest is practicing for the muscle memory) and that's why Kanysheva for instance already has a 4T, when few months ago she was fine but a bit inconsistent with Panova dealing with only triples, sometimes underrotating them.
Click to expand...
Well Kanysheva was trying quads with Panova too, as per interviews from Panova. So I think it was almost there when she came.
She had a pretty good first half of the season and she was very consistent, and apparently after underwhelming second half, when she didn't make it to worlds and got second at "Children of Asia", they quickly decided that their current situation is not working for them. But my guess is as good as yours. =)

Tolstoj said:
- Looking at their skaters throughout the years, to me Eteri/Sergei's coaching style seems very much trial and error, the catch is that they don't fix the mistakes with you but with the next one: they try several things with one skater, some of them works others don't, they keep those that worked and try to fix the mistakes with the next generation. That's one of the reasons why their next generation of skaters is most of the time better than the previous one (the other reason is that they have a wider pool to choose from now, so it is really cherry picking for them while previously Eteri and Sergei had to work with not the best talents)
Click to expand...

who was their trial in this case? what were the learnings and how did they apply their "learnings" to other skaters?
Could it maybe be that their "new generation" skaters are... more talented?
As a famous coach Eteri obviously got a lot more exposure and students flood to be coached at her school (same for Rafael or Orser or any other popular coach).
She didn't have that before, so I think it comes down to the actual talents she got in the first place.

Tolstoj said:
- this point is very much a consequence of the previous one: they don't fix the elements as the body grows. Alina Zagitova is growing and she kept the same elements the way they were and things are starting to regress a little bit, if you look her 2a is now shorter and she often gets off axis in the air. Two seasons ago in juniors it was a strong element for her.
Click to expand...
Well, all people going senior will have problems with their jumps during their growth sprout.
Look at Junhwan Cha, who is constantly marked with URs, and by his own words, his main problem is him growing very fast.
Sofia Samodurova's jumps got much lower than they were in juniors, and again, it's a result of growing up, and Sofia didn't even grow as much.
Doesn't mean no one is trying to fix anything though, it just takes time and can't be done in an instant.

Tolstoj said:
- Reading and hearing Eteri's interviews, she doesn't seem to care to keep a skater successful for many years to come, she wants to give the same chance to all her skaters, meaning most of her skaters have 1-2 years to win as much as possible. After that she will probably already have a new young group to push and you're no longer the leader, that's why skaters feel a bit disposable.
Click to expand...

Why does refusing to play favorites means "not caring for their careers"? Giving equal opportunities means she's not intending to hold any of her students back in the favor of one student, which is admirable and fair. I mean, Mie Hamada trained Rika to be at the top, can you say she doesn't care for Satoko's career and she became disposable, because Satoko can't jump 3A? She's also coaching Honda sisters to learn quads now at a very young age, I guess Rika is disposable too, since newer generation is coming for her with numerous quads under their belts?
Both coaches strive to help all their students to show the best performances their natural talent is capable of producing, and it's nothing but their job. If a parent gives his child for training and entrusts their career to that coach, it's horrible when coach chucks those students away in the favor of one star student. I think examples of junior world champions Adam Rippon and Nam Nguen are more than showing what happens, when coaches play favorites.


Tolstoj said:
3) How much will 3A grow and will they keep this technique by 2022? By the time Olympics arrive, they will be 18-19 years old. Look at how many skaters from that group lasted that long. Not many.
Click to expand...

I think it's worth looking how many junior worlds/junior gran prix top-5 athletes fared well in seniors. Not many. Very very few.
Puberty is very tricky and not everyone is lucky to have gradual puberty, when they grow up slowly and do not to gain too much weight all at once.

Liza Tuktamysheva is someone who experienced a lot of problems because of her puberty, and props to her for continuing, because she was written off twice.

But besides her, there are far more junior stars who weren't even as lucky as Liza to be able to get those comebacks and struggled as seniors and retired.
Elena Radionova was never an Eteri student, and watch what puberty has done to her, when she started growing very quickly.

What happened to world junior champions and medalists like Ann Patrice McDonough, Yukina Ota, Caroline Zhang, Agnes Zawadzki?
Sydne Vogel who once beat Tara Lipinski to become world junior champion and finished shortly after?
Rachael Flatt - junior world champion, then 7th at Olympics, 9th and 12th at Worlds and then her career was over.
That's just to demonstrate how tricky is puberty for skaters, especially for ladies.


Tolstoj said:

4) How sustainable is that training approach with the quads and triple axel? Have you ever wondered why Eteri isn't as successful with the boys as she is with the girls? The official answer from Eteri is that "boys are too emotional", while i've always speculated for years that her training consists in a huge number of attempts for each element, they want to make sure everything is extremely consistent, now apply that to quads: we keep hearing from top male skaters because of the nature of the quad (higher, riskier) they can't be treated as triples, there are days of no jumping to avoid injuries.
Click to expand...


Eteri had success with men, with adult men. Voronov's most successful seasons to date were with Eteri, when he got euro medal and made his first ever GPF.
I also think some coaches are better with men, and some are better with women, there's nothing wrong with that.

Tolstoj said:
I think that's a problem Eteri/Sergei have already identified and their solution is by reducing the height and increase the prerotation: look at Trusova, Shcherbakova, Samsonov quads, yes these elements are big considering the heights of these skaters but do you think Eteri/Sergei will increase the height of the quads as they grow? that's something i'm curious to see but i suspect the answer is no (but i guess that also depends on how the judges will score these smaller quads), Adian Pitkeev's 4T was bigger (and because of that much more inconsistent)
Click to expand...

Comparing men and women in this sport is not doing it justice.
Most top men from different schools have textbook technique on triples and quads, with very few exceptions.
Very few top women in figure skating history had textbook technique, we can legitimately count them. Very few among current female skaters have textbook technique, like 2-3?
Men and women are very different in this sport, and practically every single lady, no matter where she was taught her technique, "prerotates" her jumps. And this was the fact long before Eteri came to the scene.
People act as if all other ladies are jumping textbook but aren't validated for it and cheater Eteri students get away with something, when in reality
almost all ladies jump like that, and they are all doing very well with that technique as seniors. According to Doug Haw, that doesn't add any stability to the jumps, once you learn the jumps one way, it's really hard to fix it.

If you think coaches are purposefully reducing the height of someone's jumps, one of the GOE bullet points, I think you're making wrong assumptions.
Jumps will decrease as person gets heavier, and it will become harder to lift the body to the same height, but it doesn't mean it's made purposefully.
And sometimes, jump height can be improved, but it's not easy at all.
If increasing the height was an easy thing to do, Satoko would've done it a long time ago.
 
L

Lunalovesskating

Moonbear power 🐻
Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 3, 2018
flanker said:
Call me the same too :) But I'm still waiting impatiently for the competitive programs. Eteri's team is thrilling us :)
Click to expand...
Maybe they are taking their time to find the perfect program for Alina and to perfect the choreo or they are just straight up teases and love to torture us while we wait for news XD I think we will surely know until The ICE in July what Alina's programs are, as usually one new program is presented there.
 
esteticlove

esteticlove

Final Flight
Joined
Oct 20, 2017
nussnacker said:
who was their trial in this case? what were the learnings and how did they apply their "learnings" to other skaters?
Could it maybe be that their "new generation" skaters are... more talented?
Click to expand...

I don't know if it's just me but I thought that Tolstoj was very respectful in his words and just gave his own analysis on the topic without being anti-Eteri, so I found your wording a little bit too harsh. Anyway to answer your question about the trials and errors - I remember once that there was a very old interview with Eteri about Julia, I guess it was from 2013-14. Eteri was saying that she was always nervous when Julia had to make her jumping passes. So, in one competition Julia missed her combination from the first part of her program and Eteri told the interviewer that she almost got crazy internally because she knew that Julia had to do the combination in the 2nd part, which is a lot harder because the legs get tired. But Julia managed the combination and Eteri was pleased that it was possible - to do a difficult combo in the 2nd part of a program. Well, as we all know how things turned out - at the following seasons we had Medvedeva with fully backloaded SP and after that we had Zagitova on the junior and senior circuit with also a fully backloaded FP. So, yes, I don't know any real facts about the team because I lack the right connections but to me it appears that sometimes simple things and errors lead to strategical moves for the future. Like they saw that Julia managed to do a hard combo in the 2nd part, why not try to do more jumps then? Some skaters struggle with it, but some don't and they get great scores. Probably, with quads and 3A would be similar.

PS Unfortunately, I can't give a link to the interview because I have no idea where to find it. But if someone remembers it, please share.
 
nussnacker

nussnacker

one and only
Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 16, 2019
esteticlove said:
I don't know if it's just me but I thought that Tolstoj was very respectful in his words and just gave his own analysis on the topic without being anti-Eteri, so I found your wording a little bit too harsh. Anyway to answer your question about the trials and errors - I remember once that there was a very old interview with Eteri about Julia, I guess it was from 2013-14. Eteri was saying that she was always nervous when Julia had to make her jumping passes. So, in one competition Julia missed her combination from the first part of her program and Eteri told the interviewer that she almost got crazy internally because she knew that Julia had to do the combination in the 2nd part, which is a lot harder because the legs get tired. But Julia managed the combination and Eteri was pleased that it was possible - to do a difficult combo in the 2nd part of a program. Well, as we all know how things turned out - at the following seasons we had Medvedeva with fully backloaded SP and after that we had Zagitova on the junior and senior circuit with also a fully backloaded FP. So, yes, I don't know any real facts about the team because I lack the right connections but to me it appears that sometimes simple things and errors lead to strategical moves for the future. Like they saw that Julia managed to do a hard combo in the 2nd part, why not try to do more jumps then? Some skaters struggle with it, but some don't and they get great scores. Probably, with quads and 3A would be similar.

PS Unfortunately, I can't give a link to the interview because I have no idea where to find it. But if someone remembers it, please share.
Click to expand...

There was nothing harsh intended from my side, and I was nothing but respectful.
It’s in the eye of the beholder I guess:)

I legitimately did not understand the concept of “learnings” being applied to further generations in this particular case.
To me skaters are unique and they are not identical machines, that can be fine tuned, each of them are different and have their own stronger and weaker sides, go through puberty in their own ways, hence I don’t get how learnings can be applied, if skaters are different.
Which learnings from Alina were applied to Sasha? Which learnings from Evgenia were applied to Polina and Alina?
The example you gave is not something new, quite often coaches leave a solo jump for the later, so that a skater could attach a second jump, if it was missed. It’s quite common and I don’t think it had anything to do with backloading strategy.
 
Scott512

Scott512

Record Breaker
Joined
Feb 27, 2014
lesnar001 said:
Call me an old fuddy-duddy....
But I'm certainly glad this is her exhibition number and not the short program! :drama:

I hope she has a lot of fun with this one like she did with her Lara Croft routine.
Click to expand...

Lol agreed. Hoping the baby woman who turned 17 today is getting some major input to her choices of music for next season's programs and exhibition. I'm also very pleased this will be Alinad exhibition music only. That is fine. I'm pretty sure this music choice for exhibition proves that she will be skating competitively next season.
 
Scott512

Scott512

Record Breaker
Joined
Feb 27, 2014
nussnacker said:
I thought about ignoring this, because comments like these belong in long overdue to be created "my personal problems with Eteri" thread.
But I want to say that people sometimes go to extremes to vilify a certain person, because it's something people tend to do, see things as extremes, people either see someone either as an angel or a devil. I am not going to say she's perfect, but debunking a few myths is worthy.



Eteri hasn't been coaching as long for people to be making correlations, and correlations also don't mean causality. If I want, I can make a few correlations about other coaches too, it's quite easy.



They do work very hard, there's no doubt.
One thing people are missing, they don't have more ice time than other groups occupying that rink. From interviews it's pretty evident that they all skate 4 hours a day. They work hard during those 4 hours, aka don't waste their time playing around, yet I feel like people somehow think that they stay there overnight making kids jump until their legs fall off.

As for Daniil, why are you implying that 100 attempts all happened within one day? It's a simple statistic, that all skaters and coaches use for tracking jumps and combos. The percentage of successful attempts is not an "Eteri invention/thing", all skaters do that to understand whether or not it's worth it to put the jumps/combo in the program.


Well Kanysheva was trying quads with Panova too, as per interviews from Panova. So I think it was almost there when she came.
She had a pretty good first half of the season and she was very consistent, and apparently after underwhelming second half, when she didn't make it to worlds and got second at "Children of Asia", they quickly decided that their current situation is not working for them. But my guess is as good as yours. =)



who was their trial in this case? what were the learnings and how did they apply their "learnings" to other skaters?
Could it maybe be that their "new generation" skaters are... more talented?
As a famous coach Eteri obviously got a lot more exposure and students flood to be coached at her school (same for Rafael or Orser or any other popular coach).
She didn't have that before, so I think it comes down to the actual talents she got in the first place.


Well, all people going senior will have problems with their jumps during their growth sprout.
Look at Junhwan Cha, who is constantly marked with URs, and by his own words, his main problem is him growing very fast.
Sofia Samodurova's jumps got much lower than they were in juniors, and again, it's a result of growing up, and Sofia didn't even grow as much.
Doesn't mean no one is trying to fix anything though, it just takes time and can't be done in an instant.



Why does refusing to play favorites means "not caring for their careers"? Giving equal opportunities means she's not intending to hold any of her students back in the favor of one student, which is admirable and fair. I mean, Mie Hamada trained Rika to be at the top, can you say she doesn't care for Satoko's career and she became disposable, because Satoko can't jump 3A? She's also coaching Honda sisters to learn quads now at a very young age, I guess Rika is disposable too, since newer generation is coming for her with numerous quads under their belts?
Both coaches strive to help all their students to show the best performances their natural talent is capable of producing, and it's nothing but their job. If a parent gives his child for training and entrusts their career to that coach, it's horrible when coach chucks those students away in the favor of one star student. I think examples of junior world champions Adam Rippon and Nam Nguen are more than showing what happens, when coaches play favorites


I think it's worth looking how many junior worlds/junior gran prix top-5 athletes fared well in seniors. Not many. Very very few.
Puberty is very tricky and not everyone is lucky to have gradual puberty, when they grow up slowly and do not to gain too much weight all at once.

Liza Tuktamysheva is someone who experienced a lot of problems because of her puberty, and props to her for continuing, because she was written off twice.

But besides her, there are far more junior stars who weren't even as lucky as Liza to be able to get those comebacks and struggled as seniors and retired.
Elena Radionova was never an Eteri student, and watch what puberty has done to her, when she started growing very quickly.

What happened to world junior champions and medalists like Ann Patrice McDonough, Yukina Ota, Caroline Zhang, Agnes Zawadzki?
Sydne Vogel who once beat Tara Lipinski to become world junior champion and finished shortly after?
Rachael Flatt - junior world champion, then 7th at Olympics, 9th and 12th at Worlds and then her career was over.
That's just to demonstrate how tricky is puberty for skaters, especially for ladies.




Eteri had success with men, with adult men. Voronov's most successful seasons to date were with Eteri, when he got euro medal and made his first ever GPF.
I also think some coaches are better with men, and some are better with women, there's nothing wrong with that.



Comparing men and women in this sport is not doing it justice.
Most top men from different schools have textbook technique on triples and quads, with very few exceptions.
Very few top women in figure skating history had textbook technique, we can legitimately count them. Very few among current female skaters have textbook technique, like 2-3?
Men and women are very different in this sport, and practically every single lady, no matter where she was taught her technique, "prerotates" her jumps. And this was the fact long before Eteri came to the scene.
People act as if all other ladies are jumping textbook but aren't validated for it and cheater Eteri students get away with something, when in reality
almost all ladies jump like that, and they are all doing very well with that technique as seniors. According to Doug Haw, that doesn't add any stability to the jumps, once you learn the jumps one way, it's really hard to fix it.

If you think coaches are purposefully reducing the height of someone's jumps, one of the GOE bullet points, I think you're making wrong assumptions.
Jumps will decrease as person gets heavier, and it will become harder to lift the body to the same height, but it doesn't mean it's made purposefully.
And sometimes, jump height can be improved, but it's not easy at all.
If increasing the height was an easy thing to do, Satoko would've done it a long time ago.
Click to expand...

What an amazing read when such detail and thoughtfulness. Thanks Nuss. I enjoyed reading your counterpoints to Tolstoj. You both made some excellent points and do so without the hysteria and venom often seen here and the Russian ladies thread. To that I say spasibo.
 
Fluture

Fluture

Record Breaker
Joined
Apr 26, 2018
Maju said:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bxmq-6LoMJb/?igshid=fp3k4a6ttp7e
Alinas new gala confirmed to be Bad Guy - Billie Eilish
So excited!
Click to expand...

Oh, I thought she was such a big Selena Gomez fan? Interesting. I thought she‘d skate to a song of hers for her ex, given how she said she would love to meet her one day and they’re both Puma girls. Would be great for advertising purposes. Seems like something must have changed her mind. I wonder what... or who. Billie Eilish indeed seems to be popular with teenagers these days.
 
lesnar001

lesnar001

Record Breaker
Joined
Jan 19, 2005
Fluture said:
Oh, so she stopped being a Selena Gomez fan? Interesting. I thought she‘d skate to a song of hers for her ex, given how she said she would love to meet her one day and they’re both Puma girls. Seems like something must have changed her mind. I wonder what... or who. Billie Eilish indeed seems to be popular with teenagers these days. ;)
Click to expand...

Wow.
So not using Selana Gomez' music means she is no longer a fan?
And saying you want to meet someone means you also have to use their music?

Seems like a rather Draconian definition of being a "fan" of someone.

"Something changed her mind"....
Did I miss some missive from Alina where she said she was going to be skating to Selena Gomez?
 
L

Lunalovesskating

Moonbear power 🐻
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Joined
Jul 3, 2018
Fluture said:
Oh, so she stopped being a Selena Gomez fan? Interesting. I thought she‘d skate to a song of hers for her ex, given how she said she would love to meet her one day and they’re both Puma girls. Seems like something must have changed her mind. I wonder what... or who. Billie Eilish indeed seems to be popular with teenagers these days. ;)
Click to expand...

One of her comp programs could be to a Selena Gomez song. I mean D.G. said they want to steer away from Warhorses for her programs. I dunno
 
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