BS: Figure skaters: plus ca change . . .

Subject: RE: BS: Figure skaters: plus ca change . . .
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 13 Apr 22 - 03:51 PM

I couldn't agree more with everybody. This thread brought to mind an excellent book I read back in the 90s about this very subject. My house has eaten my copy, so I went to the mighty river to see if it was on Kindle (it isn't), but there's an updated edition with some further material, so - guess what - I bought it again. It's WELL worth a read:

Little Girls In Pretty Boxes: The Making & Breaking of Elite Gymnasts & Skaters

Subject: RE: BS: Figure skaters: plus ca change . . .
From: keberoxu
Date: 11 Apr 22 - 12:36 PM

USA figure skater Tara Lipinski weighs in.

Olympic Russian Figure Skating Scandal

Subject: RE: BS: Figure skaters: plus ca change . . .
From: keberoxu
Date: 25 Feb 22 - 09:31 PM

Leeneia, your opinion on those jumps
homes in on the very thing that the skating choreographers and coaches
rely on to push their athletes ahead of the competition.

If you look at the reports on this latest Winter Olympics
and the women's figure skating competition,
it is precisely those things the skater does up in the air,
before dropping back down to the ice,
that were intended to make Olympics history --
by some accounts, history WAS made this year,
as in "first women's figure skater to execute quadruple- or quintuple- somethings."

I am entirely out of my depth with all the technical names
for these moves and manoeuvers that the figure skaters execute,
and many reports are full of these terms.

Finally, that positive result from the drug test.
What a fuss was made of this.
It seems to be only the tip of the iceberg, though.
Russia is notorious, for years, for "doping" of skating athletes,
I can't speak for other sport (swimming, perhaps?).
The thing that really transfixes me, though, is that
a rigidly regimented and controlled career of
a fifteen-year-old girl -- exactly who gave her the three drugs?? --
casts an unfavorable light upon the school and the coach behind her.

Subject: RE: BS: Figure skaters: plus ca change . . .
From: leeneia
Date: 25 Feb 22 - 10:38 AM

That's so sad, Steve.

Subject: RE: BS: Figure skaters: plus ca change . . .
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Feb 22 - 05:34 AM

Few or none of the Russian teenage skating prodigies ever make it to the next Olympics. Keep producing them, keep discarding them...

Subject: RE: BS: Figure skaters: plus ca change . . .
From: Donuel
Date: 24 Feb 22 - 11:47 PM

Some say
Dimitri Sonavich Shurzabastard coaches with waterboarding techniques.

Subject: RE: BS: Figure skaters: plus ca change . . .
From: keberoxu
Date: 24 Feb 22 - 10:50 PM

There was an interview with a well-known coach named
Romain Hagenauer, who teaches in Montreal, Quebec.

He remarked on Russian figure skating coach Eteri Tutberidze.
He said that what he knows of her teaching methods is that
her discipline is like the military, a form of brutality, and that
if he did in Montreal what she does in, where is it, Moscow,
then he would be kicked out of his profession
and forbidden to have anything to do with children students.

Subject: RE: BS: Figure skaters: plus ca change . . .
From: leeneia
Date: 24 Feb 22 - 10:15 PM

In my opinion the Olympics exploit young people using nationalist pressures. Wikipedia says:

"At the modern Olympic Games, as of the conclusion of the 2020 Summer Paralympics, eight Olympic/Paralympic athletes and three horses have died as a result of competing in or practising their sport at Games venues; one other death was potentially a result of competition. (?) "

I haven't watched the Olympics for many years. I particularly hate to see ice skaters jumping into the air, spinning and then slamming down onto the ice on their skate blades. That seems so dangerous.

Too often I have heard of gymnasts, now adults, who live in pain because their young joints were abused by competitions.

Subject: BS: Figure skaters and Russian drama
From: keberoxu
Date: 24 Feb 22 - 09:41 PM

We have old closed Mudcat threads about figure skaters
in the Winter Olympics twenty years ago,
with much muttering about doping scandals, coaching, and judging.

Well, doesn't that sound familiar, after what happened
in the Winter Olympics this year.

As everybody must know by now, the story being a sensation:
The fiercely competitive Russian figure-skating coach,
Eteri Tutberidze, had big plans for three Russian athletes
to sweep the medals platform for women's figure skating:
Kamila Valieva, Alexandra Trusova, and Anna Shcherbakova.
(I think that's how you spell them.)
Probably in that order, because
Valieva was doing extraordinary work,
Trusova pursued an ambition for a certain jump and
to do it an unprecedented number of times in one routine,
and Shcherbakova was getting variable results.

And as the entire civilized/plugged-in world now knows,
Valieva didn't even make the medals in finishing fourth;
Shcherbakova took the gold for her artistry and poise;
Trusova's athletics got her the silver medal,
but the roughness of her skating lost out to Shcherbakova;
and the Japanese figure skater won the bronze medal.

It seems, reviewing and searching for news and commentaries,
that while there was enough fuss with
Valieva getting a positive banned-drug test result
AND being a minor competing as a professional
-- decisions are still being argued over on that point --
while coach Tutberidze's other two protegées
were both competing for Olympic figure skating medals,

for the Russian public and fans, the drama started well before
the Olympics in Beijing.
As witness this English-language version of
a Russian report.
This is BEFORE the Beijing olympics, and already
the report has a fan's fanatical intensity.
It even mentions Yulia Lipnitskaya.

And she was the sensation at the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014,
also a protegée of coach Tutberidze,
and ended up in treatment for anorexia nervosa,
retiring from the profession.

Russian figure skating team (January 18, 2022)