Well, whatever problem anyone might think Stepanova has should probably look further to their coaches. Tell me a single team from Svinin and Zhuk that got a level four step sequence this quad - outside of Russia. I can tell you from the top of my head that none of them did, either Senior or Junior. The only teams that I can remember getting those level 4s came from either Kustarova, Rumiantseva or Zhulin.
Svinin and Zhuk can package a team to the max, but the TES is always suffering - I mean, S/B lost to Z/G in BV in both programs, that's not promising. I know people have an aversion to Zhulin, but send some of those kids to him to skate alongside S/K, at least as a last resort. Also, Gorshkov produced good teams in juniors, but the work he did deconstructing I/S was just ridiculous, so I don't trust him that much yet.
But S/B had the chance to establish themselves as number one in Russia, but all I saw was how much Z/G got close to them, unless it was an Olympic bonus or whatever.
Of course the aversion to zhulin is his catastrophic handling of b/s which meant no world or Olympic medal for an entire quad for the first time ever. You can blame bobrova for the catastrophic failure but he didn’t do anything to improve her hunched bent posture and bad skating skills. No one in Russia is the answer to anything. They don’t know anything about how to win in modern ijs.
I still think that if she were on a "flat" she wouldn't be able to keep up with him (would not curve). I remain unconvinced!
Something is knocking down the levels! When she is supposed to be on inside edge she is on outside edge or vice versa or their is really no edge use for certain moves. Her skating is damaging the team enormously and why z/g beat them in TES.