quiqie
05-03-2011, 09:29 PM
Can someone translate this article please?? :)
The strongest impression of the past World Championships for me were the words of 2002 World champion Ilia Averbukh: "When I look at Marina Zueva and Igor Shpilband's dancers, I find myself thinking that I don't understand how they do it. What's even worse, I totally can't understand what we could do to catch up with them. "
In the World Championships final on Saturday, Zueva and Shpilband made another sensation: three ice dance couples coached by them were on the podium. Such an impressive result even overshadowed the fact that the Olympic champions and 2010 World champions Tessa Virtue / Scott Moir were defeated by their teammates - Meryl Davis / Charlie White.
To tell the truth, I didn't care who - Virtue/Moir or Davis/White - would become the World champion. I worried much more about who would finish third - before the competition, the chances to do so were equal for both Russian couples - Ekaterina Bobrova / Dmitry Soloviev and Elena Ilinykh / Nikita Katsalapov.
European champions Nathalie Pechalat and Fabien Bourzat were other bronze medal contenders, but [to medal] would be harder for them: after it was announced that the championships was postponed until the end of March, Alexander Zhulin gave them a vacation, which apparently did them no good: when they returned to Moscow, they were completely out of shape. In addition, the group began having [interpersonal relationship] troubles. Zhulin knew that right after the end of the season, his athletes were leaving to train with Anjelika Krylova and her husband Pasquale Camerlengo. The coach pretended he didn't know about it, but once you came at the rink it was clear that the French couple was already cut-off slice of bread. Good result in Moscow would be a miracle.
Ilinykh / Katsalapov were a different matter.
When Maia and Alex Shibutani danced away with bronze, two-time World champion in ice dance Maxim Stavisky said he thought it was crazy to award it to someone on their first year in seniors. I don't think that the famous figure skater would have said the same about Lena and Nikita should they outskate Shibutanis, but it's not the point. Zhulin's skaters finished seventh with the tenth result in free dance. They failed, to put it short. And, as sad as it is to admit it, their failure was a logical last link in the past season's events.
Two ex-junior couples, Russian and American, started the season in early autumn, quite frankly, from non-equal positions. Ilinykh / Katsalapov were World Junior Champions, while Maia and Alex Shibutani finished there fourth, and that meant that regardless of their performance at any competition Ilinykh / Katsalapov would by default get higher program components score.
Spring and summer brought some adjustments to the status quo. Shibutanis had their programs ready by April. Ilinykh / Katsalapov began practices few months later.
To all the reproaches that the talented athletes didn't work as they should, Alexander Zhulin reasonably explained that he didn't want to force the preparation to avoid the athletes' exhaustion. Across the ocean, Shibutanis pushed relentlessly forward.
Neither of them made senior Grand Prix final, but the Americans were above the Russians in the rankings. Then they were second at the Four Continents Championships and finished the season with bronze at their first World Championships.
Logically, young debutants were not supposed to win in Moscow. However, the French couple had gifted the bronze to their rivals: Fabien Bourzat messed up step sequence, tripped and knocked his partner, and that cost them two points.
Now World medalists Maia and Alex will start next season with a solid advantage over the Russian couple. In the same component score, which is so handy when technically skaters are equal. Now, even despite their young age, the Shibutanis obviously will be considered the leaders of the world ice dancing. And Ilinykh and Katsalapov, despite their evident talent - as one of the middle-ranked teams.
Russian champions Ekaterina Bobrova and Dmitry Soloviev in Moscow finished sixth, 0.09 points behind the Canadians Kaitlyn Weaver / Andrew Poje and three points behind the French couple. Their main problem was not their mistakes or the scoring. The problem is that season after season the best Russian ice dancers are stubbornly milking the same style and the same technical elements.
In comparison with the free dances of all three Zueva and Shpilband's couples it was particularly noticeable and looked like a total creative impasse.
And this is ice dancing, one of the disciplines where the positions of the Russian school were always exceptionally good.
I wouldn't be too happy about quite successful performances of Russian ladies and Artur Gachinsky, because the huge gap between [Russian skaters] and the champions speaks volumes about weakness of Russian field. Women's free skate brought unexpected news: Alena Leonova - student of St. Petersburg coach Alla Pyatova - will start training in Nikolai Morozov's group and right after shows in Korea will go with a new coach for two months to Hackensack for summer practices.
Due to incredible performance in Moscow of all of students, without exception, Nicholai now has a chance to become one of the most sought-after coaches in the world. I don't think his statement that he stops working with foreigners should be taken literally . Especially if you consider that Morozov still plans to spent a lot of time abroad.
In Moscow, however, the coach made a surprising comment about Ando, saying it was quite possible that she would no longer skate for Japan. When asked which country she was going to represent, Nikolai shrugged: "Russia".
Go figure how much of the joke was in that answer.
As for his Russian student 23-year old Sergei Voronov, Morozov said that he has ceratin hopes for the next European Championship. Due to Arthur Gachinsky and Konstantin Menshov's combined efforts, Russia has two spots at the European championships (Gachinsky earned two also for the World Championships 2012), and Morozov seems to have no doubt that Voronov's going to take one of them.
Gachinsky's bronze in Moscow was considered the grand achievement (and grand achievement it is). But he was almost forty points behind the World champion Patrick Chan.
In an interview after the competition, Chan said he didn't think that either of his programs was skated perfectly because he put too much effort in quads.
Chan did two jump combinations with quad, both of them got him over 16 points (with base value 14.40), and in the free skate he did one more quad. Nonetheless, he admitted that he sometimes felt uncomfortable. That to perform such jumps in practice and in competition is a very big difference.
It is clear that the the more competition practice, the more confidence and the bigger points gap between Chan and the rest of the field. The question is, what can be done to catch up with him?
Maybe Alexei Mishin's student will indeed be able to do that, but only provided that in addition to a perfect, flawless jump technique, other program components, including choreography, will be very quickly elevated to the same level. Now it's a far cry from that.
And so we can conclude that Russian skaters were true contenders only in pairs skating.
ETA: Oops, sorry [B]Loves_Shizuka, I didn't see you have already made a translation. :o
The strongest impression of the past World Championships for me were the words of 2002 World champion Ilia Averbukh: "When I look at Marina Zueva and Igor Shpilband's dancers, I find myself thinking that I don't understand how they do it. What's even worse, I totally can't understand what we could do to catch up with them. "
In the World Championships final on Saturday, Zueva and Shpilband made another sensation: three ice dance couples coached by them were on the podium. Such an impressive result even overshadowed the fact that the Olympic champions and 2010 World champions Tessa Virtue / Scott Moir were defeated by their teammates - Meryl Davis / Charlie White.
To tell the truth, I didn't care who - Virtue/Moir or Davis/White - would become the World champion. I worried much more about who would finish third - before the competition, the chances to do so were equal for both Russian couples - Ekaterina Bobrova / Dmitry Soloviev and Elena Ilinykh / Nikita Katsalapov.
European champions Nathalie Pechalat and Fabien Bourzat were other bronze medal contenders, but [to medal] would be harder for them: after it was announced that the championships was postponed until the end of March, Alexander Zhulin gave them a vacation, which apparently did them no good: when they returned to Moscow, they were completely out of shape. In addition, the group began having [interpersonal relationship] troubles. Zhulin knew that right after the end of the season, his athletes were leaving to train with Anjelika Krylova and her husband Pasquale Camerlengo. The coach pretended he didn't know about it, but once you came at the rink it was clear that the French couple was already cut-off slice of bread. Good result in Moscow would be a miracle.
Ilinykh / Katsalapov were a different matter.
When Maia and Alex Shibutani danced away with bronze, two-time World champion in ice dance Maxim Stavisky said he thought it was crazy to award it to someone on their first year in seniors. I don't think that the famous figure skater would have said the same about Lena and Nikita should they outskate Shibutanis, but it's not the point. Zhulin's skaters finished seventh with the tenth result in free dance. They failed, to put it short. And, as sad as it is to admit it, their failure was a logical last link in the past season's events.
Two ex-junior couples, Russian and American, started the season in early autumn, quite frankly, from non-equal positions. Ilinykh / Katsalapov were World Junior Champions, while Maia and Alex Shibutani finished there fourth, and that meant that regardless of their performance at any competition Ilinykh / Katsalapov would by default get higher program components score.
Spring and summer brought some adjustments to the status quo. Shibutanis had their programs ready by April. Ilinykh / Katsalapov began practices few months later.
To all the reproaches that the talented athletes didn't work as they should, Alexander Zhulin reasonably explained that he didn't want to force the preparation to avoid the athletes' exhaustion. Across the ocean, Shibutanis pushed relentlessly forward.
Neither of them made senior Grand Prix final, but the Americans were above the Russians in the rankings. Then they were second at the Four Continents Championships and finished the season with bronze at their first World Championships.
Logically, young debutants were not supposed to win in Moscow. However, the French couple had gifted the bronze to their rivals: Fabien Bourzat messed up step sequence, tripped and knocked his partner, and that cost them two points.
Now World medalists Maia and Alex will start next season with a solid advantage over the Russian couple. In the same component score, which is so handy when technically skaters are equal. Now, even despite their young age, the Shibutanis obviously will be considered the leaders of the world ice dancing. And Ilinykh and Katsalapov, despite their evident talent - as one of the middle-ranked teams.
Russian champions Ekaterina Bobrova and Dmitry Soloviev in Moscow finished sixth, 0.09 points behind the Canadians Kaitlyn Weaver / Andrew Poje and three points behind the French couple. Their main problem was not their mistakes or the scoring. The problem is that season after season the best Russian ice dancers are stubbornly milking the same style and the same technical elements.
In comparison with the free dances of all three Zueva and Shpilband's couples it was particularly noticeable and looked like a total creative impasse.
And this is ice dancing, one of the disciplines where the positions of the Russian school were always exceptionally good.
I wouldn't be too happy about quite successful performances of Russian ladies and Artur Gachinsky, because the huge gap between [Russian skaters] and the champions speaks volumes about weakness of Russian field. Women's free skate brought unexpected news: Alena Leonova - student of St. Petersburg coach Alla Pyatova - will start training in Nikolai Morozov's group and right after shows in Korea will go with a new coach for two months to Hackensack for summer practices.
Due to incredible performance in Moscow of all of students, without exception, Nicholai now has a chance to become one of the most sought-after coaches in the world. I don't think his statement that he stops working with foreigners should be taken literally . Especially if you consider that Morozov still plans to spent a lot of time abroad.
In Moscow, however, the coach made a surprising comment about Ando, saying it was quite possible that she would no longer skate for Japan. When asked which country she was going to represent, Nikolai shrugged: "Russia".
Go figure how much of the joke was in that answer.
As for his Russian student 23-year old Sergei Voronov, Morozov said that he has ceratin hopes for the next European Championship. Due to Arthur Gachinsky and Konstantin Menshov's combined efforts, Russia has two spots at the European championships (Gachinsky earned two also for the World Championships 2012), and Morozov seems to have no doubt that Voronov's going to take one of them.
Gachinsky's bronze in Moscow was considered the grand achievement (and grand achievement it is). But he was almost forty points behind the World champion Patrick Chan.
In an interview after the competition, Chan said he didn't think that either of his programs was skated perfectly because he put too much effort in quads.
Chan did two jump combinations with quad, both of them got him over 16 points (with base value 14.40), and in the free skate he did one more quad. Nonetheless, he admitted that he sometimes felt uncomfortable. That to perform such jumps in practice and in competition is a very big difference.
It is clear that the the more competition practice, the more confidence and the bigger points gap between Chan and the rest of the field. The question is, what can be done to catch up with him?
Maybe Alexei Mishin's student will indeed be able to do that, but only provided that in addition to a perfect, flawless jump technique, other program components, including choreography, will be very quickly elevated to the same level. Now it's a far cry from that.
And so we can conclude that Russian skaters were true contenders only in pairs skating.
ETA: Oops, sorry [B]Loves_Shizuka, I didn't see you have already made a translation. :o