Russian rocket has not changed style: Trusova left Tutberidze when she wanted to

Alexandra Trusova again decided that she needed a change. Ice of the Crystal again now becomes a stranger for her. We will discuss. Condemn? And what’s the point. Yes, and the move is quite expected. Admittedly, it’s kind of belated. But the style is the same.

Alexandra’s departure from the Eteri Tutberidze group then, immediately after the Olympic Games, would ideally fit into the picture that everyone saw from the outside. There is a goal – the gold of the Olympic Games. And there is a way to it: five quadruple jumps in a free program. Sasha did them all with the departure. And jumped back into history. But again, she missed the target. She lost some gold in the short program, which gave Anna Shcherbakova an advantage of more than five and a half points.

And so it happened: what I wanted to do, I did. What I wanted to get, I didn’t get. She didn’t need silver in Beijing. She didn’t own the gold.

After the Olympic Games, Russian figure skaters no longer had a world championship. The time has come for the show and, albeit sports, but parties. Walking in front of the camera began: try one sport, another, imagine yourself in the role of long jumper Daria Klishina, and then Elena Isinbayeva, picking up a pole. Or announce a project that has not yet been implemented: invite the phenomenal skier Alexander Bolshunov to the skating rink, and take skiing lessons from him.

So the summer flew by, and September swept to the open skates of the Russian national figure skating team. Just a week ago, Sasha performed at them in Moscow. She managed to show a new short program – the blues, at the same time telling how the coaches consulted with her what to choose, clarifying her desires. On the second day of the skate, Trusova did not go out on the ice, explaining that she had practically not skated in recent weeks due to an injury. It didn’t get to the free program. “Nerves on edge” could not be assessed.

Did Khrustalny expect Alexandra to leave right now? And what exactly will change, for example, the answer “yes”? Nothing, like the opposite. By the way, there are no official messages yet from any of the participants in the events, but they are not so important either.

What’s important? It seems to me that only this: what role does Sasha personally assign to herself, if not in the most difficult coming in every sense of the word, then in subsequent seasons? That is, when big sport again turns to face Russia.

Why did she leave Eteri Tutberidze for Svetlana Sokolovskaya’s group? For daily comfort (also in every sense of the word – from the absence of competing skaters on the ice to the presence of a close friend Mark Kondratyuk on it, a change in a tough training schedule)? Or behind a new reboot in the name of that same golden goal?

As it is customary to say, and in recent years we have already speculated on the topics of sudden and shocking transitions of figure skaters, there are plenty of them, there are no serfs on the ice. True, there are rules for transitions in the form of a transfer window in the spring, and not in the fall. But the window has long since become a formality. Why it is necessary to leave first, and then notify the federation, is also a question, but it has also become formal and unanswered.

Poking around in the relationship between coaches and athletes is generally a worthless task. If there are problems inside, then we will never understand them with a 100% guarantee of the purity of the output. Something shoots out, like Sasha’s tragically famous phrase in Beijing, “you knew everything.” And something remains out of prying eyes.

Do I need to worry: for the new coach Sokolovskaya, for the old coaching staff, for Sasha herself? Worrying is definitely not worth it. It’s about the figure skating elite. They know what they are doing.

Is this a challenge for coach Mark Kondratyuk, Alexander Samarin and Sofia Samodelkina? Of course, a challenge. After all, everyone has long learned: the student wins, the coach loses.

Will Alexandra’s transfer to CSKA somehow affect Sofya Samodelkina, who only joined the Sokolovskaya group in the spring and did not expect such a competitor? What words will Sasha find, after all, explaining his decision? What comments will Sokolovskaya and Tutberidze give? What joke will Mark Kondratyuk have to fight back from Trusova’s “theft” from Khrustalny? And – yes, crown: did the skater prepare a bouquet for the former coach?

Questions of this kind anyone throws at once more than a dozen. We can ask them for now to each other, if there is nothing else to occupy your head with or, on the contrary, you want to unload.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 28881 dated October 3, 2022

Newspaper headline:
“Theft” of a Russian rocket