The disappearance of figure skater Alina Gorbacheva: sports doctor stressed the lack of psychologists

“In single sports, the coach-athlete relationship can be very tense.”

16-year-old Alina Gorbacheva, the champion of Russia in women’s single skating among juniors, disappeared in Moscow. Alina disappeared on August 28 in the evening – after classes at the Chkalov Arena ice palace, she went through the park on the banks of the Moskva River and disappeared. Traces of the figure skater are looking for cynologists with dogs, divers. We found out some details of what happened.

On August 28, Alina Gorbacheva’s mother filed a complaint with the police about her disappearance. According to sources that require confirmation, on the evening of August 28, the athlete allegedly quarreled with the coach, after which she left the ice palace. Alina’s entrance to the park was recorded by surveillance cameras. After that, her traces are lost, she stopped communicating and did not come to an apartment in Khimki, where she lives with other skaters.

The belongings of the missing athlete were found on the beach on Pokrovskaya Embankment. Where she is is still unknown.

Alina Gorbacheva was born in Krasnodar and has been skating since the age of 7. Her coach is Sofia Fedchenko. In February 2023, Gorbacheva became the winner of the Russian junior figure skating championship in Perm. In July, the athlete turned 16 years old.

About the relationship between figure skating coaches and their pupils, “MK” talked with a member of the International Association of Sports Sciences ISSA, sports doctor Leonid Ostapenko.

– The relationship between a coach and an athlete, regardless of the sport, is always very difficult, – says Leonid Ostapenko. – Firstly, the coach almost always looks at the athlete as his child. takes care of him

But the fact is that the coach has several pupils. And psychologically, the athlete expects that he is alone. In single sports, where coach and athlete are especially close, the relationship between them can be tense.

In team sports it is different, where the coach has to distribute attention throughout the team. In those sports where the athlete works for the team, and not for himself personally, the “coach-athlete” relationship is more balanced.

Therefore, the task of the coach in single events is not to single out anyone, regardless of performance.

Leonid Ostapenko also noted a serious shortcoming in our sport – we have very few psychologists attached to the teams of athletes. Teams, according to him, are trying to save even on ordinary doctors, to say nothing of psychologists. “Since the Soviet Union, this is a very big miscalculation,” the sports expert believes. – Previously, each sports team had a special doctor. When everything was put on a commercial basis, the teams began to save on doctors, nutritionists, psychologists, and so on.