One of the most promising figure skaters of recent years, Sofia Samodelkina, began work with Evgeni Plushenko. Sports tells why the athlete ended up with the two-time Olympic champion.
This transition could have happened earlier. In the spring of 2022, Sofia left Sergei Davydov and had several options for continuing her career. The circumstances at that time were different. The skater’s imperfect readiness, caused by an untreated injury, scared off many coaches. Now, according to information, the skater is in good shape. At the first training session at Plushenko's school, she looked great, and the triple Lutz — triple loop cascade went off with a bang.
There is no doubt that the cooperation between Samodelkina and Plushenko will continue. It seems to be of interest to both sides at the moment. “Angels” in the person of Sophia get a fairly mature (16 years old) and still very promising figure skater with no obvious weaknesses. But with Sophia everything is a little deeper.
The main question is: why does she need the transition at all? More precisely, why now? A month earlier it was reported that Samodelkina decided to join the Kazakhstan national team and had already received citizenship. Some officials claimed that for his sake she probably even had to give up her Russian passport (not officially confirmed), which completely blocks any opportunities to compete in domestic competitions.
In fact, now Samodelkina is an athlete without a national team. If she does not give up trying to go to Kazakhstan, this status will remain with her until the quarantine period expires. And he, as we know from the cases of Diana Davis/Gleb Smolkin and Dario Chirisano, can be completely different. At least a year (official terms from the ISU). Until the end of January 2024, when a year has passed since her last appearance on competitive ice as part of the Channel One Cup, or at best until December 2023, the FFKKR has every right not to give Sophia an exemption. The upcoming season will take place without her in any case.
And that's the minimum. If desired, the bosses of our figure skating can impose the maximum possible quarantine on her (according to internal rules) in the form of two years from the date of receipt of an official request from the host team. And this request may not be received earlier than December of this year, when the next executive committee of our federation will meet. That is, in the event of a large-scale quarantine, Samodelkina may remain out of work until the winter of 2025. Sophia is almost guaranteed not to make it to the 2026 Olympics. In many ways, for the sake of which, perhaps, everything was started.
So, why does Sophia need to transfer? The answer is clear. She needed a coach. After Sophia’s “Kazakhstan” story, relations with CSKA (not with Svetlana Sokolovskaya) became somewhat strained and soon broke off completely. At the same time, she continued to study with Svetlana Vladimirovna, but this most likely could not continue for long. Sooner or later, there would still be a need to change the team for purely formal reasons. There could only be two options for Samodelkina.
The first is Eteri Tutberidze. People come to her for results, and she provides this result with impeccable quality. The result… For a skater who will spend at least a year out of competition? I believe that even purely theoretically, such a situation would not suit both sides. Eteri Georgievna would hardly have wanted to work at the table without guarantees that the labor would ever be cast in precious metal. Moreover, now she already has enough worries. The move to a new skating rink is just around the corner. The housewarming party is postponed for now. They say it’s because of the need to “work on the ice,” but within a month or two it will certainly take place.
Yes, and Samodelkina would hardly have liked exhausting herself in training for the sake of distant goals, increasingly blurring before her eyes with each new roll of the free program. Tutberidze squeezes the maximum out of the body in the shortest possible time. You definitely shouldn’t go to her with a year of downtime in mind.
Plushenko, for the current Samodelkina, is perhaps the most convenient option of all. No matter how much they criticize Plushenko the coach, he is really good at recruiting personnel and creating suitable training conditions. Both the Moscow skating rink and the Gorkinsky skating rink are examples of what modern ice arenas should look like. They are comfortable, stylish and functional – and, as they say, you don’t need more.
In terms of coaching staff, the academy has also done well. In addition to Plushenko himself, the team includes talented young coaches Dmitry Mikhailov and Sergei Alekseev (everything goes to the fact that it is in their group that Samodelkina will train), and one of Yulia Lipnitskaya’s first coaches Artem Znachkov trains with the younger ones. Yes, it would be wrong not to mention the too high staff turnover. Over the past few years, Elena Ilyinykh, Sergei Rozanov, Alexander Abt and Maria Stavitskaya have left the academy or interrupted their regular collaboration with it. But key people remain.
A curious situation with the arrival of Samodelkina will unfold in terms of internal competition. On the one hand, Sofia will have to compete for the attention of coaches with Sofia Muravyova and Veronica Zhilina. They have been at the academy for quite a long time and show very good results. On the other hand, this competition right now does not look like a merciless slaughter of equal rivals for a place in the Sun. If only because Samodelkina still plans to move to Kazakhstan. This means that he is not going to compete for the places of Muravyova and Zhilina in the Russian national team.
There is another factor, the importance of which increases exponentially during quarantine – ice shows. Plushenko is the most powerful player in this market. To be fair, he pays his artists very well, a significant part of whom are students of his school (and in this regard, there have been a variety of precedents in our figure skating…). For Samodelkina, who, with her departure from the wing of the FFKKR, will lose the opportunity to receive a salary from the team and win prize money at domestic competitions, this moment will certainly be important.
Finally, Plushenko is one of the few top coaches who are ready to wait for an athlete during this very quarantine. He's in no hurry. The result in the “Russian” season will almost certainly be ensured by Muravyova and Zhilina, and Samodelkina with her Kazakh passport will become a kind of wild card for the future. Because if the transition does take place as soon as possible and her health stops failing her, bend your fingers:
- Lutz
- Flip
- Rittberger
- Salchow
- Tulup
- Triple Axel
This is exactly the set of ultra-si Sophia collected outside the rentals in her best years. How many girls in the world are capable of this now? Okay, let's lower the stakes — which of the skaters will master at least 20 percent of this set? This is approximately how many Samodelkina is able to restore, even taking into account the crumpled last season and the missed current one.
And now — how many of these girls currently have a chance to be at the 2026 Olympics in Milan? Zero. Or rather one. So we think.
The author’s opinion may not coincide with the position of the editors.