This made me think of Karine Arribert's approach, and how her skaters may not reach the pinnacle of the sport but seem to be in a vastly healthier environment than most competitors.
Recently a guy she had as a student from childhood to early teens (back to Zoé and Pierre-Loup time) wrote
a book where he considers her as his 2nd mum and the ever benevolent cornerstone of his life (even when he disappointed her, even after he left her center and trained elsewhere, even in his adult dreams where she hands him a triumphant sign that says "I don't wish to die anymore" after he is finally diagnosed with light bipolarity).
It' a guy whose story starts with his passion for ice dance, his ups and downs in competitions, in training, in mood, his student and young adult life (discovering he was gay - here at the
Gay Games) with its ups (he had a prestigious higher education) and downs (depression) to finally discover that he is bipolar. He made
stand-up comedy out of it and wrote that book about his fight for mental health.
She invited him to present his show in Villard and to talk to her current students.
On her Instagram, she wrote that the book really got her thinking.
Arribert has a completly different approach to ice dance than other top coaches. From the moment she doesn't accompany her best couples later in the season, you can see her accompanying her solo dancers in competition and encouraging them all the same, be they gold medallists or 20th in a Tournoi de France's novice rankings. She's not obsessed with elite level. She's also a keeper (Eva, Marie, Lou, Louise are Villard's babies) and she just pushes her dancers to the best of their abilities.
She also refuses that families go into debt for their children's training. She voluntarily is the cheapest option to elite ice-dance training. Everything is counted. The most visible things are the recycled costumes and the very limited coaching team.
OTOH, she's a builder. With little means, she has build up her center brick by brick around Loïcia and Théo's evolution. She's still learning international competition (she started to make her dancers travel outside of Europe only 4 years ago; Sheffield is her 6th Euros and she has only been to Worlds 4 times). And the ones that will benefit the most are
the ones that come after.
And as a builder, she has done more than just build a center. She is training young coaches too. And she collaborates with her ex-students like Pierre-Loup Bouquet or Stanislas Etzol or ex Martial Jaffredo who have centers of their own and are prominent in the younger categories of french ice dance. That long collaborative story is starting to pay off in couple building. She is certainly the french coach with the most "offsprings" AFA coaching goes. And I watch Violetta Zakhlyupana's passage in Villard, Mahil Chantelauze's, Tiffany Zahorsky's but also Théo Le Mercier's (his father coached young Olivier Schoenfelder, Théo and Loïcia but also Dania Mouaden), Martin Chardin's (who was Barbara Piton's last "prototype" before Théo Bigot ; his ex-partner under Barbara Piton joined Martial Jaffredo as coach), Emese Csiszer's and several others as a young generation looking for something different that they might in time try to reproduce elsewhere.
As a coach, she has always been careful to protect her skaters, especially the girls. She unsuccessfully tried with Zoé who ended up hating her own sport, because being "different" (in style, clothes, choices) at the time meant being an outcast (I loved how Louise Walden tiptoed around the subject in an
AnythingGOE's video). Zoé refused to make compromises in order to have a chance at better rankings. For her, it was Karine or nothing. Arribert had to ask Zoé and Pierre-Loup to leave her to train in Lyon or abroad and they refused (At the time, Arribert was forbidden to make choreo for singles, asked to not appear at the barrier for programs she had choreographed in favor for Muriel Zazoui ; some french judges labeled her "crazy"; when Zoé and Pierre-Loup called it quit in January 2011, nobody thought she would make a comeback). With Loïcia who is not a Villard baby but a Villard early teen, Arribert has been extremely careful that she didn't got burnt in the same way. She had her work on every detail the judges raised. BUT she still put a stop when they told Loïcia to lose weight in order to ease more acrobatic lifts.
It's her dancers that have always outlined how important she was for them and how much they loved working with her.
During covid lockdown, current and old dancers from Villard gave news through videos in Villard's youtube channel or facebook, and that was the first thing they were saying.
