Mouaden / Bigot are talented children but every time I read about the mentality of their coaching team, the coach(es?) remind me of Tutberidze.
There is nothing in common between Eteri Tutberidze and Barbara Piton, except that they are people who are thinking of their sport and their coaching as to where to make a breaking point with their athletes
2002 Igor Shpilband, IAM would be a much more appropriate comparison.
In the case of Russia and Tudberidze, they just mimicked the 90s-early 2000s when youngsters (Baiul, Lipinski, Hughes) waltzed in the international senior level, made a blast in year 1, won their olympic gold medal at 15-16yo the next season, then vanished the year after.
And to eliminate the random factor, they mass produced those pre or barely into puberty girls so they would be so dominant that there was no way the olympic gold would escape them
And Tutberidze success validated their plan.
There is little room for individuality and care in that process.
Ice dance doesn't rely on the same premises as female figure skating. The plan can't be to have extremely young light girls for jumps' sake, and you can't waltz in ice dance and pretend to the olympic gold. Careers have to be long term.
Shpilband mastered the newly created CoP elements and trained his dancers especially for them, to the point his programs were looking like lego constructions where you already know all the pieces but they are so solid and so mastered that they win, while everyone else was still struggling with learning how to perform the elements. Be sure that when Virtue/ Moir entered his center, he had a pre-established plan for their career, for the olympics they were aiming at, for when exactly they would have to break through to be in the best position to achieve their goal. A world level coach has to think that way or he/she wouldn't be in the position he/she is otherwise.
IAM has broken his model with its scope. It has considered ice dance like a world market where they thought themselves as the most professionalised center, with the best facilities, a global approach to their athlets' needs. That's why they can brand themselves as "benevolent" as it is engraved in their top international athletes philosophy. And it works.
At senior level.
Now various coaches are thinking about how to upset the apple cart. Zanni, Margaglio. I've long thought that Italy was the first country to try to emulate IAM with their own means. And it shows now.
Barbara Piton is someone who has honed her development skills for a looong time, keeping a low profile, never going above novice level, taking advantage of a french specificity : an ice dance branch that starts as kids learn to skate. And now that Lyon is not the mandatory place to be, that Gailhaguet is gone, she has a window of opportunity she wouldn't be allowed to have otherwise.
But in term of global approach and attention to her skaters' need, she's on the same line as IAM who remains the model to beat. This is no Russia.
She has just aimed at what IAM can't reach : kids. Because their parents won't send them to train on the other side of the world so that age is not "market oriented".
She hasn't been starving and drugging them, has she?
