The career of one of the most promising Russian figure skating coaches, Sergei Rozanov, began to decline. The specialist who worked in the teams of Eteri Tutberidze and Evgeny Plushenko is still in search of himself. Sport talks about the factors that led to this.
Rozanov appeared in a large coaching environment unexpectedly for many, but expected for those who are in the know. In the second half of 2017, Sergey's friend — Daniil Gleikhengauz — invited him to work at the Khrustalny skating rink in the Tutberidze team. By that time, her group had already grown to an impressive scale, the depth of the line-up had formed both at the adult and junior levels, and the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang loomed on the horizon, where Eteri Georgievna went for the first time not only for the first place in the women's singles, but immediately for gold and silver. There were not enough hands or eyes to work with a large team in such conditions, and at that moment Rozanov did not have a permanent job and was clearly eager for big tasks. In a word, they approached each other almost perfectly.
Then Sergey was perceived as a beginner in the coaching profession, although in fact he had experience. Having not achieved significant success in his sports career, he, as often happens, was able to become a worthy specialist — first in private lessons (the so-called tackles), and then in a full-time job. Before joining Khrustalny, Sergei coached at the Moskvich school, where he even managed to cross paths with some future students of Tutberidze (for example, with Daniil Samsonov and Nikolai Kolesnikov). However, in its context, I heard about the team of the pair skating coach Nina Moser. But it didn’t come to full-fledged cooperation there — according to knowledgeable people, Sergey allegedly failed to cope with something like a test task.
One way or another, Rozanov came to the Tutberidze team as a more or less recognizable specialist in a professional environment with experience working with children, albeit a small one. This is exactly what he was asked to do at Khrustalny — they gave him an unplowed field of juniors and novice skaters, among whom real champions were growing up. Over the years, Kamila Valieva, Daria Usacheva, Maya Khromykh, Sofya Akatieva, Adelia Petrosyan, Veronika Zhilina, Alexandra Trusova, Alena Kostornaya and others passed through his hands. The vast majority of coaches throughout their career fail to collect such an impressive list of students — Rozanov mastered this goal when he was not yet thirty.
His appearance in the group really benefited Khrustalny. Under him, the youth of Tutberidze began to massively learn and jump ultra-si, and Sergey himself acquired a reputation as a strong technical specialist who knows how to work with complex jumps. Akatieva’s impressive technical progress and Zhilina’s quads were associated with him, and Kostornaya openly called Rozanov the director of her triple axel, thanks to which she won all international starts in the 2019/20 season. And Sergey proved himself to be a capable manager who knows how to find an approach to anyone. Years later, one specialist who worked with him spoke of him as follows: «Sergey's main talent is he knows how to convince.»This skill came in handy for Rozanov 2.5 years after joining Khrustalny. In the spring of 2020, two-time Olympic champion Evgeni Plushenko, who by that time had already had his own academy for three years, undertook a blitzkrieg — in a short time he took both the two main stars Tutberidze (Trusova and Kostornaya) and the designer of her junior car. Some media wrote that after finding a job with Plushenko, Sergey lured other young stars. Many refused, but two important transfers — Kostornaya and Zhilina — were nevertheless made with his direct participation.
Then it seemed that the departure of Rozanov would be an even more tangible loss than Trusova and Kostornaya. On the eve of the covid season, Tutberidze's group thinned out, but not completely thinned out — both names remained (Anna Shcherbakova), and the reserve was almost in full. But who will take care of them? If we accept as a fact the assertion that Sergey was the author of most of the ultra-si among juniors, Khrustalny could be on the verge of a serious technical crisis. Meanwhile, Zhilina at the Plushenko Academy under the guidance of Rozanov began to jump the quadruple lutz …
However, the Tutberidze team quickly recovered from the loss and made a qualitative leap forward. From the point of view of technology, the mass appearance of the triple axel in the group can be considered the starting point. Until the 2020/21 season, almost all the stars of Khrustalny tried to learn it, but only Kostornaya managed to jump in the competition. However, with the departure of Sergei, the element was mastered in the shortest possible time, first by Valiev and Akatieva, and then by Petrosyan. And this is provided that the quads they continued to go in a continuous stream.
The quality of performances among juniors did not decrease either. Akatieva won all the starts of the season at her age, Petrosyan lagged behind her quite a bit, and Valieva, Khromykh and Usacheva made their debuts at the adult level with success. While new stars continued to grow in the younger group of Tutberidze.It turns out that Khrustalny didn't really need Rozanov? Not everything is so clear. Firstly, Sergey's status as a strong technical specialist, on the one hand, is actually justified — ultra-si appeared under him. On the other hand, here is what two figure skaters from completely different headquarters said at different times about his methods of work:
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“I have a story with a rib on the lutz as follows. Even when I was in Khrustalny, I jumped the lutz in a straight line. And Sergey Alexandrovich (Rozanov) told me to do it as if from a semicircle. In this position, it is very difficult to hold the outer rib — the leg she goes to the inside herself. Probably, that's how I jumped.»
«At that time, the lutz and flip practically did not jump, the rittberger was not very good. Sergey Alexandrovich put me a little flip, but all the same, there was no smell of stability. And then Eteri Georgievna arrived, looked at me. I corrected the mistakes on the lutz, and somehow it worked for me. «
The first quote belongs to Sofia Titova («Match TV»), the second — to Maya Khromykh. Of course, this does not detract from Rozanov's competence, but at the same time, he somehow failed to cope with two future ultras, and even harmed one. At the same time, Tutberidze and Plushenko brought both to quadruple/triple axels.Now we can already say that at that time Rozanov's methods did not pass the test of independent work. Having received his own group at the Plushenko Academy, Sergey began to lose it over time. In fact, by the end of his stay at the academy, Rozanov retained only Kostornaya, while the rest of the stars left — some to other groups, and some to other headquarters. Some of them even indirectly hinted at the reasons. For example, Azerbaijani figure skater Vladimir Litvintsev, in an interview with Sport-Express, said that he stopped working with a specialist not because of the conditions for training, and Zhilina commented on her departure as follows:
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“There was a period when I trained simultaneously in the group of Sergei Alexandrovich and in the group of Evgeny Viktorovich. These were two separate teams, Rozanov had only seven people, including Alena Kostornaya. And then we decided that it would be better to fully train with Evgeny Viktorovich. At the same time, by the way, my mother began to train me again. I immediately remembered Severodvinsk, when we were with her. But I switched … I have a better connection with Plushenko than with Sergei Alexandrovich. «
>If Litvintsev's departure does not go beyond the boundaries of normality, then Zhilina, with whom he worked at Khrustalny and with whom he moved to Plushenko, left for a truly unusual reason. Moreover, as far as I've heard, a large number of injuries in Rozanov's group also played a significant role in the transition, some of which happened during the aggressive jumping of elements. The mother of the figure skater Lyudmila Alferova, who also works at the academy, eventually got tired of it — and she took Veronika and her younger sister Alena. However, all this, of course, was not officially confirmed.It is curious that another distinguishing feature of Sergei — the ability to get along with people — did not work. From various academy coaches, not competing with him for athletes or otherwise, I heard about the difficulties in his context. For example, Dmitry Mikhailov said that «working with Serezha Rozanov in the same team is an unequivocal tension», and Yerem Gazazyan, a specialist in general physical education and the main long-liver of the school, called the period of Rozanov's stay at the academy «a time of troubles».
Perhaps for this reason, by the middle of that season, Sergei began to look for other employment options and turned to CSKA to Elena Buyanova, but was refused in a rather strict form. It is noteworthy that after a short time, insider information about this was confirmed by Elena Germanovna herself, who, as usual, prefers not to appear in the media. «Yes, I didn't. I don't want to repeat the mistakes of other coaches, because the person is not trustworthy,» she said.
Rozanov, however, left Plushenko anyway, but only six months later and not in CSKA, but in a related structure with much less authority — in Dynamo. It was expected that a high-level specialist would be guaranteed to get a job in top Russian schools or even abroad. At one time, Rozanov trained the French choreographer Benoit Richaud in Switzerland, but over time, cooperation came to naught — as well as interest in his person in Russia.
What was the reason? Probably, the most important factor was the very “does not inspire confidence,” as Buyanova said. This almost certainly refers to a greater extent to the «transitional» period in Sergei's career and active negotiations with the Khrustalny skaters about moving to Plushenko's academy. Many Russian coaches did not like this step too much.
However, there is another point. Sergey has earned an ambiguous reputation among skaters and their parents — some of them categorically did not like the specialist's work methods. The rigidity of Rozanov has already been spoken about before, and publicly. The most famous coach of Estonia, Anna Levandi, spoke about him like this: “Last season, Richo had Sergei Rozanov at the training camp. This year he was no longer there, by the way. I think that not only because I couldn’t, somehow disappeared, apparently , the desire of the organizers. The methods that he seems to have transferred from Tutberidze do not work on free people. You can’t yell, you can’t swear at children. «
But let's assume that these are all rumors. In this case, why did he fail at Dynamo, and then he failed to go for a serious promotion? Now he is working in the group of the first coach Kostornaya Marina Cherkasova, trying to revive his career at 33 — so far without significant progress. Be that as it may, in fact, in the person of Sergey, we see, perhaps, the most striking example when a talented specialist cannot fully reveal his potential due to external factors. Or not «may», but already «could not»? However, we will know the answer to this question only over time.
The opinion of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.