This off-season, Alexander Zhulin's group has become the final and unconditional flagship of Russian ice dancing — after the transfer of repeated national champions and European championship winners Alexandra Stepanova and Ivan Bukin, as well as current Russian champions Elizaveta Khudaiberdieva and Yegor Bazin. But not always sparring at the highest level in figure skating went smoothly. Scandals, intrigues — Sport correspondent conducts retro-investigation.
As for Zhulin’s group, we should not forget that the silver medalists of the 2022 Olympic Games in ice dancing Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov also train with him. It is clear that in the current situation, without international competitions, there is hardly any reason for them to continue their careers. However, if the wind changes, then the 2021 world champions may return to the sport — age allows them to do so. And then it can become quite crowded on the Zhulinsky ice. But in his group there is also Elizaveta Shanaeva/Pavel Drozd and Sofya Tyutyunina/Andrey Bagin, duets with their own ambitions, which are clearly not limited to looking in the back of eminent competitors.
«
“This is a normal phenomenon — two or three strong couples in a group, more is probably impossible,” said Zhulin, answering the question whether he has the strength to work with all athletes. “The quality will suffer. But do not forget that we have a powerful coaching staff, four serious people. We replace each other all the time, and I don’t see any problems at all. «
However, just over 10 years ago, Zhulin already had a situation with powerful sparring on his ice, which ended in failure. In his group, the Frenchmen Natalie Pechalat and Fabian Bourzat and the powerfully progressing Elena Ilyinykh and Nikita Katsalapov trained. Talented Russians, world champions among juniors, were destined for a great future, and the experienced French duo, the strongest at that time in Europe, was an excellent guide and irritant for them.
But the sparring ended as soon as it began. In 2011, Zhulin had to say goodbye to the French couple. The coach himself then said that the French Figure Skating Federation insisted on such a decision, which was unhappy with the fact that Zhulin devotes more time to his compatriots. However, Pechalat, in turn, said that the Russian Figure Skating Federation put pressure on the specialist — for exactly the same reason, only in reverse.
The truth is most likely in the middle — both federations were dissatisfied, especially since Pechalat and Bourzat, who failed to get into in prize-winners that Ilyinykh and Katsalapov, who remained seventh behind the main competitors in the national team Ekaterina Bobrova and Dmitry Solovyov.
Remarkably, after the French, the young Russians also changed their coach. It was a bolt from the blue, because it was Zhulin who was considered the one who would make Elena and Nikita Olympic champions. But Ilinykh and Katsalapov thought differently and went to Nikolai Morozov, who led them to the bronze of the Sochi Olympics in ice dancing, gold in the team tournament, and then to disintegration. Athletes, in whose history there were both personal relationships and a love triangle, could not work further. Zhulin, on the other hand, was left without top pairs for some time — until Bobrova and Solovyov were transferred to him. And then Katsalapov also returned — already with a new partner, Victoria Sinitsina.
How to be honest
Just at the time of the heyday of the Ilinykh/Katsalapov pair, two duets dominated, which were cited as an example of a successful sparring partnership. Canadians Tessa Virtue/Scott Moir and Americans Meryl Davis/Charlie White worked in the group of Marina Zueva and Igor Shpilband in Canton, a suburb of American Detroit. This place was then called the center of world dances on ice. Virtue/Moir and Davis/White not only changed each other in turn at the top, but also dragged along a whole peloton of other promising duets. For example, the current world champions of the Americans Madison Chalk and Evan Bates, who then went to the budding ones, as well as the bronze medalists of the same Moscow World Championship — 2011 from the USA Mayu and Alex Shibutani.
But the prose of life destroyed this seemingly ideal construction. First, Zueva and Shpilband broke up with a scandal — the interests of the tandem fell under the influence of personal ambitions. Virtue/Moir, Davis/White and brother and sister Shibutani stayed to train with Zueva, Chalk and Bates began to work with Shpilband. Zueva eventually became the triumphant of the Sochi Games — Meryl and Charlie won gold, and Tessa and Scott won silver. After that, the Canadians took a break for two years — and then returned, but not to Zueva, explaining that «the coach was not always in our corner of the ring.»
In fact, the secret of coexistence of strong skaters in one group is understandable, and the same Zueva spoke about this — to be honest with students. And give everyone everything you can and should. However, this is the case when it is easy to say but hard to do. Especially in dancing, where there are a huge number of concepts far from sports — «pair number one», «make a bet», and so on and so forth.
“It seemed to us that Natalya Vladimirovna wanted to make Olympic champions out of Angela and Oleg,” for example, two-time winner of the Games Evgeny Platov explained in an interview the reason for his and Oksana Grischuk’s departure from Natalia Linichuk shortly before the 1998 Olympics. Their then sparring partners in the group Anzhelika Krylova and Oleg Ovsyannikov were young and assertive. Just like Grischuk and Platov themselves in 1994. Then they swept like a crazy whirlwind through the arena of the Norwegian Lillehammer and won the Olympic Games against much more eminent competitors.
Going over to Tatiana Tarasova, Grischuk and Platov did in Nagano what Vircha and Moir would repeat only 20 years later — they became two-time Olympic champions. Also feeling that their previous trainer is «not in their corner of the ring». “In a champion way, everyone wants 100% attention,” Platov also uttered such a phrase, and it’s probably impossible to invent a compromise that would allow the coach to satisfy such a desire of several top students at once.
«Everyone has gold, but I don't»
What is almost impossible in dancing is quite real in single or pair skating. Here it is much easier to create a healthy sparring partnership. First of all, because there are jumps and other technical elements that are judged much more transparently than dancing. Therefore, in almost every group there is competition between the skaters, which forces them to either pull or push — depending on the level. It is clear that each coach will avoid potentially explosive situations — for example, to breed especially zealous or, more precisely, jealous ones on different ice, as, for example, was the case with Alexandra Trusova and Alena Kostorna when they trained with Evgeni Plushenko. But most often, sparring in these types of figure skating works, moreover, it is one of the main methods for improving the skills of athletes.However, conflicts also occur. Of course, Plushenko himself is immediately remembered, who, being an athlete, ousted Alexei Yagudin from the Mishin group. He went to Tarasova, and two outstanding specialists for a long time turned into antagonists — and their students into sworn enemies. But in the end, the lightning burned out, the thunderstorm died down — and after this time it turned out that that gap benefited everyone. Yagudin won the 2002 Olympics, Plushenko took the gold of the 2006 Games, plus three more Olympic medals of the highest and close denomination. And Mishin and Tarasova finally reconciled.
The most famous Russian pair skating coach is Tamara Moskvina, and she constantly unified in the group of strong pairs. As a rule, this led to the success of everyone — for example, Oksana Kazakova and Artur Dmitriev won the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, ahead of the younger Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze. And four years later in Salt Lake City and former sparring partners became champions.
But at the beginning of May, a rather rare event for the Moskvina group happened — one of her top pairs, as they say, was impatient. Alexandra Boikova and Dmitry Kozlovsky decided to change St. Petersburg to Moscow, and Moskvina to Eteri Tutberidze — more precisely, to those who work with sports couples in her group, until it is announced who will directly patronize the two-time champions of Russia. There was no scandal as such — the former students publicly thanked the former coach. However, it is not difficult to assume that if Anastasia Mishina and Alexander Gallyamov, who have achieved great success in recent years, had not been in the Moskvina group, Boikova and Kozlovsky would hardly have packed their bags.
The Tutberidze group is generally impossible to imagine without constant sparring of students. This is her strength — at almost every tournament, skaters from Khrustalny take medals, most often gold ones. But a side effect of such a tool is deafening scandals that now and then shake the information space.A measly 1.31 points separated Alina Zagitova and Yevgeny Medvedeva at the Pyeongchang Olympics, but the media outburst resulted in hundreds of conventional megatons of power. Medvedeva, according to Tutberidze, accused the coach of not holding back her competitor in juniors, then there was a dramatic departure of the two-time world champion to the Canadian coach Brian Orser, and all this took place to the sound of a cannonade of fierce battles between two fan groups, nicknamed «bends» and «bearbots», on the Internet.
Now passions, of course, have subsided over the years, the skaters communicate with each other, neither one nor the other has officially completed their careers, but they don’t seem to be going to perform in big sports either. The sign «Zagitova vs. Medvedeva» is still alive, but fading every year. It is periodically used — for example, at the 2021 Channel One Cup, where the skaters were made captains, or at the recent show program tournament. But it is felt that this confrontation is no longer relevant.
But Alexandra Trusova has much more recent wounds, who, as you know, was extremely dissatisfied with the results of the Olympic Games in Beijing, where she lost to Anna Shcherbakova, “sparring partner” from the Tutberidze group. “Everyone has gold, but I don’t”, “I hate it” — those who watched the broadcast from the Chinese capital remember the emotional reaction of the figure skater who remained with silver, despite five quad jumps with varying degrees of purity in the free program.
And although it seems like the fault of the coach that Sasha did not have enough points to win Olympic gold, no — the second and now, probably, the final departure of Trusova from Khrustalny “Last year was no surprise. Fans of the «Queen of Quads» and the Olympic champion, of course, water each other on the Internet. And Tutberidze, according to the hashtag slogan, «works on.» There are enough sparrings even without those who left the group — for example, Sofya Akatieva against Adelia Petrosyan, and Kamila Valieva clearly did not say her last word. Some of them may not stand the competition — but this is no longer the specifics of figure skating, but the true law of sports.