Eteri Tutberidze is losing staff – Newspaper Kommersant No. 182 (7383) of 03.10.2022

One of the brightest Russian figure skaters Alexandra Trusova decided to change her coach. The owner of the silver of the Beijing Olympics, who was the first in history to perform five quadruple jumps in one program, stopped working with Eteri Tutberidze and moved to the school of Svetlana Sokolovskaya. This is not the first demarche of this kind in the career of the Russian woman: in the spring of 2020, the single skater, dissatisfied with the results and the lack of proper attention from the mentor, was already leaving Tutberidze, but then changed her mind and resumed cooperation with her before the start of the Olympic season.

Last weekend, it became known that the group of the famous figure skating coach Eteri Tutberidze left one of her most notable wards, Alexander Trusov. Although the athlete herself did not comment on the transition in any way, according to Russian media, she made this decision due to the fact that she considered the training loads excessive and capable of further aggravating her injuries. First of all, we are talking about back problems: it was because of them that the 18-year-old athlete presented only one short program at the September test skates, and not two, like the rest of the team.

In general, Alexandra Trusova is a character who has played a fundamentally important role in the history of women’s single skating. It was she who initiated the revolution and began to be the first among girls to master quadruple jumps, which today are in the arsenal of everyone who wants to claim any titles of athletes.

At the age of 13, Trusova undertook to study the four-turn sheepskin coat and salchow, which are considered lighter, and then strengthened her jump set with the most expensive quads – lutz and flip. But Trusova’s main breakthrough came at the February Olympics. Then the athlete collected five quadruple elements in a free program – the same number in Beijing, for comparison, was landed only by the American Nathan Chen.

But if Chen took Olympic gold, then Trusova remained only second, behind compatriot and group partner Anna Shcherbakova with a weaker technical set.

The women’s tournament turned into a real drama: Trusova, who was under the guns of the cameras, began to shed tears, pushed away the coach Eteri Tutberidze and threw a short one: “I hate this sport, I hate it all.”

The fact that Trusova will most likely decide to part with Eteri Tutberidze after silver at the main tournament in her career was also indicated by her background. After all, one day, in the spring of 2020, the athlete is already gone from her, citing dissatisfaction with the results. At all major tournaments, including the European Championship and the national championship, she, in the presence of the most difficult content, was constantly inferior to her teammates: both Anna Shcherbakova and Alena Kostornaya (and she didn’t have quadruple jumps at all). Cooperation with a new mentor, two-time Olympic champion Evgeni Plushenko, did not help change the situation. At the 2021 World Championships in Stockholm, Trusova again finished with bronze with a series of falls, leaving not only Anna Shcherbakova, but also Elizaveta Tuktamysheva ahead of herself.

Whether the Russian woman will be able to add or at least remain at the same level under the guidance of the current coach Svetlana Sokolovskaya is not an easy question. The fact is that from among the wards of the coach of the CSKA club, only male single skaters achieved success at the international level. Alexander Samarin took the silver of the European Championship under her leadership in 2019, and Mark Kondratyuk (Trusov has a romantic relationship with him) won the national and continental championships last season and became the leader of the national team. Sokolovskaya’s affairs with women have not been so successful so far: the main achievements of her student Alina Urushadze, representing Georgia, were 15th place at the European Championships and 20th place in the standings at the World Championships.

Alexandra Trusova is far from the first who, after leaving Eteri Tutberidze, is trying to continue performing with another coach.

So far, however, not a single athlete who left the Tutberidze group has succeeded in achieving a breakthrough outside the walls of the Khrustalny Ice Palace.

Yulia Lipnitskaya, who moved after the Sochi Games to Olympic champion Alexei Urmanov, soon after finished career. Polina Tsurskaya, who once defeated everyone at the junior level, after leaving Eteri Tutberidze for Elena Buyanova, did not win anything and also finished career. Alena Kostornaya, who also moved to CSKA to Buyanova this spring, heals injury and on the ice has not yet appeared. So far, the only athlete who has been able to cling to at least some kind of award at the international level remains Evgenia Medvedeva: with Canadian coach Brian Orser at the 2019 World Championships, she took bronze.

Ekaterina Remizova