rfisher
Let the skating begin
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Exactly. And Russia is unique at this point in time. They are the only nation with this kind of depth in ladies. Japan is next, but they seem to have run out of juniors (at the moment, albeit, they have some very young skaters already doing 3As) and all the junior phenoms have moved to seniors. But, the oldest is Miyahara and IMHO, she shouldn't have been top 3 this year at Nationals. I suspect to see her drop next season. Korea is on the upswing. Russia only has 3 slots for the big events. The younger skaters will get higher TES and will push the others out. Every other country has 1-2 good skaters and they can pretty much skate as long as they want. That won't be enough in Russia to stay in the top 5. Maybe an individual skater will have 2-4 years at the top of the Russian hierarchy. Maybe they won't. I don't care and just enjoy today. The sad thing is there are a lot of quality skaters who will never make that top 3. (((((Gubanova)))) and they'll quit skating.Nobody is saying that either, they just are not competitive because of the depth, Medvedeva or Zagtiova will have to do 7 triple programs or/and add triple axel. This year it was possible for Zag, Tukt and Med to go to the Euros if they delivered but Med didn't and Tukt is sick. Russians are not pushing these athletes out, but they fail and move on to do other things in life like Sotskova. What you are indirectly asking for is a system without depth, under that these athletes can compete at worlds year in and year out like during Petushkova, Doronina era.
Yes, these athletes will struggle irrespective of nationality due to puberty, but we are glad to have seen them for this long.