Figure Skating: He's Here, He's Weir, Get Over It

[cabbagekid]

Feb 18, 2022 17:06:29 GMT -4 lpatrice said:

I am also opposed to raising the age, you already have to be 16 in the calendar year to participate in seniors and raising the age won’t do anything about abuse coaching situation, bad interpretation of the scoring system, the over valuation of big tricks, etc.

I don’t actually have an issue with having 16 be the minimum for age, where I do have an issue is when they don’t hold the athlete responsible. If they’re old enough to participate in the Olympics, then they’re old enough to be kicked out because they broke rules, EVEN if it was the adults that they trusted that broke them. You can’t have it both ways where “yes, you can participate and put yourself physically in danger by participating, but you’re too young to know better on what drugs were given to you.” That’s where I have the issue.

I absolutely do not think Kamila did anything wrong, but I also think she should have been held accountable for what happened. If you trust your coach to train you then you should be held accountable for whatever illegal thing your coach does to help you win as an athlete. Her coach should also be banned. Forever.

Having 16 be the age minimum is only possible if the adults surrounding the 16 year old are responsible adults, but as it stands, the adults are worse. As much as I loved watch Kerri Strug do her vault for the Olympics to clinch the gold for USA, I also remember 14 year old me asking my mom why they have her vaulting again when she’s clearly injured.

[royalwave]

I sort of agree on not raising the age. There are also 15 year olds competing in snowboarding and other Olympic sports, so would we just be drawing the line at figure skating or would the age limit be raised across the board? I guess I'd rather see reforms implemented in the way athletes (especially child athletes) can train, diet, etc. Not that I believe the Russians would be inclined to follow them. You have to admit that it's rather amazing what the human body is capable of at various ages and peaks of performance, and I don't think we should not be allowed to celebrate that just because some folks have abused the system.

But I also agree that if we allow kids to compete, they need to be able to function under the same set of rules governing the adults they may be competing against.

I was surprised a bit by Trusova's outburst, only because she had to have assumed she wouldn't be leaving this Olympics with a gold to begin with, right? That was always supposed to be Valieva. However, when an opportunity presented itself I think she thought her coaches set her up to come in 2nd to Shcherbakova and that's why she was miffed. When she finally actually had a chance at a gold, the cards were stacked against her. Who knew she couldn't just jump, jump, jump her way out of a disappointing (for her) short program? I had also heard that the triple axel she fell on in the short program had been giving her trouble lately and that the coaches insisted it be in there (one of the commentators said this--can't remember who). Maybe she could have gotten away without it and came out of that in a better position.

[seat6]

I’ve read elsewhere that Trusova was so angry because she believed she should have skated in the team event and had a chance at gold there. They could have won with her performances and she had not tested positive for banned substances. When she was yelling, “You knew! You knew everything!” She meant, “You knew Kamila had a positive drug test and put her in anyway ahead of me and now I don’t have a gold medal and everyone else does and you jeopardized the entire team with that decision and now I’ll never have a gold medal because my knees, hips, and back are about to go out in a few months and also I am probably full of illicit drugs and you won’t let me drink water and your hair is awful!”

That’s my interpretation.

Source: the internet.

I’ve also read that Eteri strung Sasha along, promising her a spot in the team event and then yanking it away in retaliation for Sasha leaving to train with Plushenko for a year.

Someone said that’s how abusers treat their victims when the victims go back to them and a chill went down my spine.

I’ve seen some folks refer to her outburst as an (understandable) tantrum, but a better way of framing it as is a perfectly reasonable response to trauma.

[Deleted]

May 29, 2005 13:06:38 GMT -4 lpatrice said:

Russians have almost always trained their skaters to pre-rotate their jumps. It’s just a different technique and that in itself is not causing insane harm to these young skaters; Johnny Weir and other non-Russian skaters who were trained by Russians tend to do the same thing. Russian skaters themselves have been doing it for decades. Nathan Chen also does this on a lot of his jumps because his coach is Russian.

I'm sorry but this is just not correct. I mentioned Elizaveta Tuktamysheva in a previous post, she's Russian and she has excellent technique. It's also not an accident that she's still competing, and almost made the Russian team, at 25 years of age. Nathan does not prerotate to nearly the same degree as the Tutberidze skaters, who sometimes have "completed" a full rotation before they even leave the ice. And when a Tutberidze skater retires, it's almost always due to the same injury: a spinal injury. Teaching terrible technique to prepubescent skaters and treating them as disposable once they reach puberty, as opposed to teaching them with longevity in mind, is exactly why they all end up with severe back injuries.

May 29, 2005 13:06:38 GMT -4 lpatrice said:

I’d also like to point out that women’s figure skating became a revolving door way before Russia started dominating. In fact Evgenia Medvedeva repeating as world champion in 2017 was the first “woman” to do so so since Michelle Kwan did it in 2000-2001. Tara Lipinski, Sarah Hughes, Oksana Bauil, and Shizuka Arakawa are all Olympic champions who were basically one and done or who only won one world title along with their Olympic gold.

This is technically correct but a little bit misleading. Kim Yuna was in the Top 3 at Worlds from 2007 until 2011, and almost (probably should have) repeated her gold medal in 2014. Between 2007 and 2014, Mao Asada was in the Top 3 five times. Between 2005 and 2014, Carolina Kostner was in the Top 3 six times. And they're the strongest examples, there are plenty of other women athletes who lasted at the International level for many years.

Also, Tara Lipinski was famous for her tiny body (she was 15 when she won the Olympics) and her trademark triple loop-triple loop combination. She talks about how she was taught jump drills the same way Tutberidze skaters are. Guess what ended her career -- you guessed it, injury. Shizuka Arakawa was almost 25 when she won the Olympics, Sarah Hughes retired because she wanted to go to college, and Oksana Baiul retired because it was more lucrative, in the aftermath of the Tonya-and-Nancy saga, to turn pro, and she was poor. Meanwhile, Tutberidze skaters shine bright, but burn out very quickly. Medvedeva didn't want to retire, she was forced to by injury. You can't tell me that there's something about their technique that isn't doing them harm, it just doesn't track with the fact that skaters used to last longer than two or three years, unless it was by choice.

I just think the best solution is to reform the judging AND to raise the age. People also said that raising the age limit would ruin artistic gymnastics, which had been dominated by "pixies" in the 80s. Read Little Girls in Pretty Boxes to find out what effect that had on the athletes being trained. Intense athletic training has to start when the athletes are young of course, but if you don't need them to last then you won't care about training them for longevity. If their technique and physical capability has to survive puberty, then the training is totally different. And having a woman's body hasn't negatively affected artistic gymnastics at all -- most of the medalists in Tokyo were over 20, and new skills are still being created.

[lpatrice]

Liza has always had an amazing triple lutz! Probably my favorite after Caro and her 3A has always been good but her technique has changed a lot and she had coaches who recognized that she had to change sine things post puberty and as she got taller and filled out. Get rid of the abusive coaching and coaching practices and fix the interpretation of the code and that solves just about everything.

[technicolor]

Yeah, my understanding has also been that it's not "Russian technique" that is somehow at fault, Arutunian, Moskvina, Mishin etc. also teach "Russian technique" and have had skaters with long careers. Arutunian even became known in the US because older "over the hill" skaters came to him and had their careers resurrected ("older" meaning over 20, the sport is a bit screwed up tbh...). Nathan Chen has been with him since he was a kid, as I understand it.

What seems to make Tutberidze's teaching so harmful, apart from the abusive environment, is that she teaches technique that relies heavily on pre-rotation and super fast torque. So easier to accomplish with small kids' bodies. And yeah, it's pretty damning that many of her students burn out with injuries by age 17/18...