Sylvia
Flight #5342: I Will Remember You
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Starting a new thread with this news (thanks to @wobbly for the heads up in the OES News thread; oops I missed seeing @GoneWithTheWind’s post & link in the German news thread until well after I had started this thread):
March 14th announcement (machine translation copied out below):
www.schaatsen.nl
The KNSB has appointed Aljona Savchenko as national figure skating coach. The Olympic champion of Pyeongchang (2018) in the pair riding [skating] will lead the National Training Center Figure Skating (NTK), which will start next spring in Heerenveen. Savchenko, a German of Ukrainian descent, moves to Friesland for this.
“We are proud that Aljona has chosen us. With her wealth of international experience, she will be able to significantly improve the quality of our best art fighters together with the coaches at our Associations for Talent Development”, says Remy de Wit, technical director of the KNSB. “The search for the best national team coach took longer than we wanted. There was great enthusiasm for this position, but care was our top priority.”
Aljona Savchenko (38) is a big name in the world of figure skating. In her active career she specialized in horse riding [paarrijden], in which she built up a glittering career. That brought her four European and six world titles. The highlight of her career was the Olympic gold, which she won in 2018 with her French partner Bruno Massot. She won bronze twice at previous Games.
After her active career, which she ended after the 2018 Games, Savchenko became a trainer-coach. De Wit: “She has also clearly focused on guiding individual drivers. We are convinced that Aljona will be of great added value as a coach for both pairs and individual drivers.”
The new national team coach spent the past few days in the Netherlands. Today the signatures have been placed under the contract, which provisionally assumes a collaboration until mid-2024. Now that the name of the national coach is known, the KNSB will continue to fill in the newly formed NTK staff in consultation with Savchenko.
It is not yet known which figure skaters will join the National Training Center in Heerenveen. “The enthusiasm among the potential participants was great,” says De Wit. “But everyone wanted to know: who will be the national coach? And what will the program really look like? These are also valid questions for athletes with a lot of ambition. We now have an answer to both questions, which we will discuss with the potentials."
The new national coach Aljona Savchenko was born in 1984 in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, but has had German nationality for some time. Since 2003 she has competed as an figure skater for Germany. She still lives and works in Oberstdorf, but she will soon move to Friesland. When that will happen exactly depends on the current war in her motherland, where her family still lives.
"I would prefer to start working in this position tomorrow, because I think it is a big challenge as national coach to take figure skating in the Netherlands to a higher level," says Savchenko. "But there is a war going on, one man is destroying my motherland. This war has a big impact on the Ukrainian people and therefore on my family. My parents are now safe with me, but my three brothers are still there and I am very concerned about them. We have to be strong now and we are doing that. I am trying to get started in Heerenveen as soon as possible. I am glad that the KNSB is offering me this opportunity. My ambitions are great: I want to that the riders I will be working with will ultimately achieve the same as what I have achieved in my active career. I want to show them and experience that that is possible if you work hard every day for it."
Tweeted by the NED federation: https://twitter.com/schaatsennl/status/1503349340882059275
March 14th announcement (machine translation copied out below):
KNSB strikt olympisch kampioene Savchenko als bondscoach kunstrijden
De KNSB heeft Aljona Savchenko aangesteld als nationaal bondscoach kunstrijden. De olympisch kampioene van Pyeongchang (2018) in het paarrijden zal leiding gaan geven aan het Nationaal Trainingscentrum Kunstrijden (NTK), dat komend voorjaar in Heerenveen van start gaat. Savchenko, een Duitse van...
www.schaatsen.nl
The KNSB has appointed Aljona Savchenko as national figure skating coach. The Olympic champion of Pyeongchang (2018) in the pair riding [skating] will lead the National Training Center Figure Skating (NTK), which will start next spring in Heerenveen. Savchenko, a German of Ukrainian descent, moves to Friesland for this.
“We are proud that Aljona has chosen us. With her wealth of international experience, she will be able to significantly improve the quality of our best art fighters together with the coaches at our Associations for Talent Development”, says Remy de Wit, technical director of the KNSB. “The search for the best national team coach took longer than we wanted. There was great enthusiasm for this position, but care was our top priority.”
Aljona Savchenko (38) is a big name in the world of figure skating. In her active career she specialized in horse riding [paarrijden], in which she built up a glittering career. That brought her four European and six world titles. The highlight of her career was the Olympic gold, which she won in 2018 with her French partner Bruno Massot. She won bronze twice at previous Games.
After her active career, which she ended after the 2018 Games, Savchenko became a trainer-coach. De Wit: “She has also clearly focused on guiding individual drivers. We are convinced that Aljona will be of great added value as a coach for both pairs and individual drivers.”
The new national team coach spent the past few days in the Netherlands. Today the signatures have been placed under the contract, which provisionally assumes a collaboration until mid-2024. Now that the name of the national coach is known, the KNSB will continue to fill in the newly formed NTK staff in consultation with Savchenko.
It is not yet known which figure skaters will join the National Training Center in Heerenveen. “The enthusiasm among the potential participants was great,” says De Wit. “But everyone wanted to know: who will be the national coach? And what will the program really look like? These are also valid questions for athletes with a lot of ambition. We now have an answer to both questions, which we will discuss with the potentials."
The new national coach Aljona Savchenko was born in 1984 in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, but has had German nationality for some time. Since 2003 she has competed as an figure skater for Germany. She still lives and works in Oberstdorf, but she will soon move to Friesland. When that will happen exactly depends on the current war in her motherland, where her family still lives.
"I would prefer to start working in this position tomorrow, because I think it is a big challenge as national coach to take figure skating in the Netherlands to a higher level," says Savchenko. "But there is a war going on, one man is destroying my motherland. This war has a big impact on the Ukrainian people and therefore on my family. My parents are now safe with me, but my three brothers are still there and I am very concerned about them. We have to be strong now and we are doing that. I am trying to get started in Heerenveen as soon as possible. I am glad that the KNSB is offering me this opportunity. My ambitions are great: I want to that the riders I will be working with will ultimately achieve the same as what I have achieved in my active career. I want to show them and experience that that is possible if you work hard every day for it."
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