It became known yesterday that the Russian figure skater Sofia Samodelkina plans to change sports citizenship and play for Kazakhstan. The main question now is whether the Russian Figure Skating Federation will let her go. Earlier this season, the flag change was denied to Dario Chirizano but allowed to Diana Davis/Gleb Smolkin. The correspondent discusses why Samodelkina deserved her chance for happiness.
Figure skating is not a Tula gingerbread. By the standards of people for whom the main value in life is “not to strain,” 16-year-old Sofya Samodelkina practically tortured herself from an early age. She trained for many hours every day. She told how, being a Muscovite, by the age of fifteen she had only been to Red Square a couple of times in her life — there was no time left for idle walks. I got up at three in the morning to catch the morning ice by five in CSKA from Balashikha. Then, when my parents rented an apartment near the skating rink in order to spend less time on the road and not wake up so early, I didn’t see my dad for weeks — he worked for the good of the family and his daughter’s sport.
Samodelkina's victims are not unique and, of course, not isolated. In the same team with an athlete who aims for serious results, his relatives are always there. If the daughter gets up at three in the morning, the mother has to get up at two. You need to help, bring, feed, organize tutors and homeschooling, control the lessons, support at a difficult moment. For example, when, after rolling out new skates, a child has no living space on his feet, the figure skater's mother will never tell her: “We are leaving.” She will bring plasters and help put the skates right on the bloody blisters.
It was always difficult for Sofya to give competitions — in training, where all types of existing quadruple jumps were performed one after another, she had no equal. She even, with bitter irony, once called herself a master of training in an interview, opposing being called «the best junior in Russia.» All its achievements are the result of kilotons of labor, because resistance was on all fronts. Too tall and not weightless enough to simply master quadruple jumps. Not the year of birth to smash rivals, being in his best shape and best age. Wrong type and coaching staff to have the basic loyalty of the judges.
The first junior season was blurred by the pandemic. The first adult season fell on the Olympic selection — too many prims entered the stage, fighting for the main party, so that Samodelkina, with all her virtues, had at least one chance to get into the spotlight beam. And even after the 2022 Olympics, when in normal life there would have been a change of generations with the opening of a portal of opportunities for those who had been standing in the starting drive all this time, Sofia found herself in a trap. Now together with all his rivals in the championship of Russia.
We all seem to have come to terms with the reality in which Russian skaters have been isolated from international competitions since February 2022. We live as we live, we go to Sochi instead of Turin, we try to write and talk about something. The Federation, together with its sponsors, seeks to support athletes through a network of domestic competitions. These competitions are “sold” as a full-fledged replacement for what the International Skating Union (ISU) does, and even as superior to them in scale and organization. Like, it’s bad for them “there” without us, but it’s fine for us “here” without them. But you can only convince people of this, who are as far as possible from sports and do not understand what the strength of little girls with smart eyes and a steely character rests on. Where do their records and desire to be better every day come from.
They come to the rink at 5 a.m., are separated from their families and do not see life beyond the ice, not in order to dress up in a beautiful sequined dress five times a year. And not because they love pain, overcoming and lack of free time. They come because each keeps in memory the once seen image of another figure skater with the coveted round of the gold medal of the European Championship, the World Championship or the Olympic Games. They peck at the smile and tears of happiness of the winner. They want to experience for themselves what it is like when the whole world looks at you and admires you.
With the inability to compete in the main tournaments, all these girls (and boys too) seemed to have dried up the source that gave them strength and motivation. There is nowhere else to take them from, which means that it makes no sense to continue the eternal run. Someone internally freezes himself and tries to wait for better times. Someone just leaves, cutting off his career in mid-sentence. And someone decides to change citizenship in order to give life its former meaning — Sofya Samodelkina also decided on this.
No athlete wants to change the flag for the sake of actually changing the flag. To betray someone there, to refuse something and land on the other side, where the food is warmer and tastier — this is how this story is usually broadcast by indifferent screamers from parodies of television shows. The procedure for changing sports citizenship is difficult, expensive and exhausting, it requires courage and determination from the athlete and his family. And it never seems like a whim. For collecting jackets of different national teams, as if a rabid fashionista buys all new pairs of shoes. It is similar to how a wolf caught in a hunting trap bites off its paw in order to free itself and run away.
This column can be considered an open appeal to the Russian Figure Skating Federation. If you cannot save Sofya Samodelkina and other skaters who have been deprived of the opportunity to compete at the international level for God knows how long, at least let them be saved.
Many will remain. Everyone will not leave, the Russian land will not become impoverished with talents. Release those who want to leave and found the opportunity to do so. We will still remember that they are ours. For so many years they have given you the right to feel your professional greatness and invincibility, to receive unprecedented rotation on television and unprecedented advertising contracts. Give them a chance, for which they did 500 jumps per workout, 500 workouts a year. It is too painful and unfair to turn out to be a person at the age of 16 who has lived his whole life in vain.
The opinion of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.