Evgenia Medvedeva: 'You have only one life'

[curious]

Maybe they aren't comparable sports, but i still think we ought to wait and see before we come to and hard-and-fast conclusions.

As for Carolina, she won her first Olympic medal at 27 years old. And she still was first after the SP at Worlds. Yes, Carolina has the luxury of no competition, but still, a lot of it comes down to the individual and I think Carolina should be given a lot of credit to keep going after a dismal performance at 2010 Olympics.

And honestly, Zhenya shouldn't even think about down the road or who is going to be competing for World spots. That's a good way to completely psych yourself out. She is right to focus on where SHE is and her goals.

Also I completely acknowledge that some people may miss the totally dominant athlete who could not put a foot wrong. But honestly, that wasn't the main reason I liked Zhenya in the first place. Sure, I was impressed with her technical ability and consistency, but I also liked her inner grit and strength. So for me, I'm looking forward to where she goes on this next phase of her career. I'm not going to worry to much about placements and what not, and again, neither should she -- she needs to, as she said in the video, focus on being the best version of herself as a skater. That's all she can control, really.

Exactly. She is coming back from an injury. If she goes all out this early in the season trying to catch up to zagitova she is going to risk her health not something she wants or needs. i

 

[vorravorra]

IMO Evgenia already had actual skating skills.
Unless someone really believe that the judges just handed titles to her.

She won a lot of titles with the skills she has AND skating clean programs AND the ability to perform at her best when it counts most.
AND having a unique style all her own.

I have no problem at all with her coaching change, or wanting to approach her training differently, or wanting to improve her jumps.
She knows what is best for her health and her career.

But parts of this post make it seem like she only won in the past by "papering over weaknesses" and getting gifted by the judges.
And only now will she actually have any skills.

Of course she had skating skills. But really worth the marks she was getting for them, which would mean essentially close to the best in the world? There are girls even in Eteri's group with better SS than both Zhenya and Alina. Both Zhenya and Alina had/have a lot of transitions which sort of compensated for weaker basics. But Zhenya herself admitted in so many words that her SS are not where they should be (and even that made people angry at her because apparently it was not an honest admission but a veiled criticism of Eteri ).

 

[vorravorra]

Exactly. She is coming back from an injury. If she goes all out this early in the season trying to catch up to zagitova she is going to risk her heath not something she wants or needs.

Zhenya's job is to make it to the main competitions and preferably medal there, not necessarily beat Zagitova this season. And, as has been said in this thread, Zagitova is going to be 18-19 one day too. Then it would be a fair comparison, if Alina even stays in the sport that long, of course.

 

[moriel]

Zhenya's job is to make it to the main competitions and preferably medal there, not necessarily beat Zagitova this season. And, as has been said in this thread, Zagitova is going to be 18-19 one day too. Then it would be a fair comparison, if Alina even stays in the sport that long, of course.

Technically, it is somewhat comparable, since Alina is coming back from growing 7 cm since the Olympics. Considering how many skaters never recovered after their growth spurts (Radionova for example), that is not entirely neglectable for comparison purposes.

 

[vorravorra]

Technically, it is somewhat comparable, since Alina is coming back from growing 7 cm since the Olympics. Considering how many skaters never recovered after their growth spurts (Radionova for example), that is not entirely neglectable for comparison purposes.

How could she have grown 7 cm and still be 158 cm according to her profile? She was close to Zhenya's height at the Olympics already?

 

[skatesofgold]

How could she have grown 7 cm and still be 158 cm according to her profile? She was close to Zhenya's height at the Olympics already?

I think she might have grown 7 cm since the beginning of the 2017-2018 season, but I'm not sure she's grown that much since the Olympics. Her NBC Olympics profile had her height as 5 feet 1 inch. That's only 1 inch of growth because 158 cm is equivalent to 5 feet 2 inches.

eta: I looked at her ISU profiles using Wayback Machine and she was 152 cm in September 2017. That's a 6 cm growth spurt over the past year.