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A skating rink with figure skaters is one of the last places on earth where you should look for people with a light character . “Angels cannot survive on ice” — the writer Alexandra Marinina even called this detective novel. Sports tells about the most obstinate figure skaters in Russia and the world.
Beat a partner on bad knees
Some of the athletes are even proud: they say, yes, I wouldn’t want to be friends with myself — I have a character I'm not very happy. European champion Alena Kostornaya, one of the most gifted figure skaters in history, said this in an interview. Along with a rare talent, she inherited an eccentricity and a couple of other traits that one way or another influenced her career.
There are many other examples from scandals of the recent and ancient past. A talented representative of ice dancing, Valery Angelopol, put forward an insane contract to his partner, offering to pay him for everything, including skate laces. And this is against the background of the recent ideal picture of young people almost in love with each other, obsessed with a common goal.
Dancer Elizaveta Shanaeva carelessly injured her opponent with her skate and did not apologize either at the moment or later — this could already be considered demonstrative disrespect.
Once upon a time, two-time Olympic champion Oksana Grischuk beat the sore knees of her partner Evgeniy Platov, although they were only months away from the Olympics. In fact, she was cutting off the branch on which her gold medal hung, not to mention the moral side of such actions.
Olympic silver medalist Alexandra Trusova categorically did not agree to simplify her jump set, despite the fact that this decision could cost her a medal. That is, she showed the same stubbornness that once helped her learn five quadruple jumps. And Sasha, being at the peak of frustration after losing at the Olympics, threw skates at the coaches in the locker room. Now mutual grievances have been forgotten in the name of the common benefit of performing in the show.
Olympic champion Alexey Yagudin is among those who can verbally stand up for themselves and their loved ones. He is sharp-tongued and will always find something to answer. Thanks to this same quality, many are offended by him and consider him a boor.
Athletes with difficult characters may systematically violate the regime, be insolent to coaches, intrigue opponents, or simply seek to unbalance them. In football there is contact wrestling for this, in martial arts there is trash talk. Figure skating has its own techniques: you can cut during warm-ups, take up as much space on the ice as possible. Steal the plaster used to cover calluses, or do some other nasty thing. Right down to the stereotypical glass in shoes and cut up dresses. Or, as happened with the Americans Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, a custom attack with a baseball bat.
Receipt for Zagitova
How do they tolerate obnoxious stars? Differently. All of the above defects and shortcomings are too different to be treated equally.
Coaches can tolerate constant violations of the regime and problems with discipline for some time, but only if the athlete has great potential. Tatyana Tarasova openly called Ilya Kulik’s character terrible, but this did not stop her from taking him on bail after Viktor Kudryavtsev and making him an Olympic champion.
Stubbornness and obsession with results are usually encouraged by coaches — you can go very far with this . But no self-respecting coach will accept an openly dirty attitude towards opponents (although there are exceptions, but unproven ones, which does not allow naming names).
In general, the coaches themselves are not meek daisies. Former athletes, they often have approximately the same set of qualities as their players. Sometimes these qualities are slightly balanced by age and life wisdom, and sometimes they are even more aggravated — due to a feeling of unfulfillment.
One way or another, the coaches understand the rules of the game well and know the price of victories. What was forgiven to the conditional Elena Ilinykh or Nikita Katsalapov due to their talent and prospects will not be forgiven to a girl or boy without outstanding data and appearance. Alina Zagitova was forced to write receipts in an attempt to force her to train, because someone like Zagitova is one in a million.
It seems we can conclude that without hooligans and rebels everyone would be much better off . But imagine what figure skating would look like if all the main characters were like the children of their mother’s friend. Non-conflict, calm, always ready to compromise, concessions, friendly and welcoming. They perceive defeats and victories equally neutrally. Not envious, not angry and not thirsty for revenge.
It would be a Barbie house with Barbie, Ken and their whole gutta-percha company. A beautiful, brilliant world, stupidly boring in its ideality. So let them rebel, argue, be daring and strive to stand out — someone must move the planet forward in the galaxy. The main thing is not to harm each other.