#andrei zhurankov

[alena-kostornaia]

BUSINESS Online: Two years ago, Kostornaia was last* in the Championship of Russia. She was told that she would not become a star

Sports.ru released an article written by Rustam Imamov analyzing Alena Kostornaia’s growth within the past two years. Translated by Edwin, edited by @birdie02​.

[*t/n: Technically, Alena placed 16th out of 18 at the 2017 Russian Junior Championships.]

Last week, Alena Kostornaia won her first Grand Prix competition of her career. She performed three 3As and outscored Olympic Champion Alina Zagitova by 20 points. Earlier, Alena just as confidently beat the 2015 World Champion Elizaveta Tuktamysheva at Finlandia Trophy.

Now Kostornaia is one of the main favorites of the season. They say that Alena is the most talent skater in gliding and interpreting the character within the music. She is admired by many experts, distinguished among the three juniors [turned seniors, including Alexandra Trusova and Anna Shcherbakova] from Team Tutberidze.

But only two and a half years ago, practically no one believed in Kostornaia’s prospects at the international level.

Some insider’s notes:

Kostornaia secretly watched Team Tutberidze practices before moving to the group. [t/n: Before Alena moved to train under Eteri Tutberidze, she studied from Elena Zhgun at the same rink as Eteri Tutberidze, Sambo-70.]

Eteri kept Alena for a test period for a week.

Belief in Kostornaia’s 3A was returned by her friend Daria Pavliuchenko, who performs in pair skating.

Skating and musicality is the merit of coach Elena Zhgun, as Alena herself says.

Nobody believed in Kostornaia before her transfer to Team Tutberidze

Back in 2017, Kostornaia contemplated ending her career, hinting at the lack of prospects to get into the national Russian team.

“I’ve never been on the podium of major tournaments, and they always told me that you won’t get there. You will not become a star. You are behind the top ten, you are only average. I heard this all the time,” Alyona modestly told in an interview with Channel One.

There was justification of this criticism. In February 2017, the Russian Junior Championships was held in Saint Petersburg. Alina Zagitova confidently took first place, and the fight with her for the victory was led by Stanislava Konstantinova and Alexandra Trusova. At that competition, Kostornaia took 16th place. Alena lost to Zagitova by almost 60 points. 

A year later, in an interview with the Russian Figure Skating Federation, Alena admitted that this tournament was her point of no return. There were two ways further. Either look for a new coach and develop, or quit figure skating and concentrate on studying. Fortunately, the skater chose the first.

Alena knew where to go right away - to Team Tutberidze. According to a source from Kostornaia’s entourage, her decision was influenced by one of the  Russian Cup stages, where she got into the same workout with Team Tutberidze skaters. Alena looked at Zagitova and Polina Tsurskaya, who won all the medals in the international junior competitions in 2017 and could not understand what she was doing wrong. Why did the students of Tutberidze win, but she did not?

“The girls who worked with Eteri Georgievna had good results. And I also wanted to stand on the podium,” Kostornaia argued.

Kostornaya secretly watched skaters from Team Tutberidze in training

Before training under Tutberidze, Alena skated with two specialists. The first coach is Marina Cherkasova, silver medalist of the Olympic Games in pair skating. With Cherkasova, Kostornaia received basic knowledge about sports.

At the age of seven, she moved to Sambo-70 – but not to Tutberidze, but to the Tchaikovskaia group. Elena Tchaikovskaia is a well-known trainer who trained World champions and Olympic champions (Maria Butyrskaya, Natalia Linichuk and Gennadi Karponosov, Lyudmila Pakhomova and Aleksandr Gorshkov). But due to her age (Tchaikovskaia is 79 years old now), she acts more like a consultant coach. The main work with Kostornaia was conducted by Elena Zhgun.

Zhgun did not have a bright career in sports, and besides Alena, she did not work with any high-level skater or skater. Normally, her group belonged to the same sports school, Sambo-70, along with the Khrustalny, the “Crystal,” department where Tutberidze works. Therefore, Kostornaia kept in touch with the strongest skaters of Eteri Georgievna - with Zagitova, Tsurskaya, Evgenia Medvedeva, and little Alexandra Trusova and Anna Shcherbakova.

Alena several times secretly sat in the stands of the “Crystal” and watched the Team Tutberidze girls train. In the end, her parents helped her arrange the transition. The Sambo-70 leadership was not opposed: it was not fundamentally important to them which skater trained under which coach. Eteri's consent was necessary.

“I knew that Eteri Georgievna was very demanding. Therefore, it took a long time to prepare,” Alena recalled. “I came to see her, skated a little, and when the ice time ended, they seemed to have taken me in.”

It turned out that Tutberidze had decided to arrange a trial period for Kostornaia. She watched her for a week, freezing the signature of the transition documents. Alena even performed at a competition for Tchaikovskaia when she was testing with Tutberidze. Only in the second week did Eteri come up to Kostornaia after practice and told her that she was on Team Tutberidze.

Kostornaia won her first competition after she transferred to Tutberidze

From then, Kostornaia’s history is more like a fairy tale. In one of her interviews, skater Anastasia Gubanova doubted Zagitova’s success, accusing the Olympic champion of a too sharp increase in results. But Alina’s growth was still gradual and continued, and Kostornaia’s was unprecedented.

Alena won the first competition with Eteri Tutberidze, majorly updating her personal best. She then was seeded for the Junior Grand Prix series and in the JGP Final she placed second, losing to Trusova by only one point.

In December 2017, Kostornaia placed third in the Russian Senior Championships. Behind her were the winners** of the World Championships in recent years, Elizaveta Tuktamysheva and Elena Radionova, and the winner** of the 2012 World Championships Alena Leonova. “I know a lot of young skaters, I know girls who train quads. But I only heard about Kostornaia for the first time in October of this year [2017],” Andrei Zhurankov admitted in a television broadcast.

[**t/n: Within the three skaters mentioned, only Tuktamysheva is a World Champion. Radionova and Leonova are Junior World Champions. Leonova was the silver medallist at the 2012 World Championships.]

It is impossible to accuse Zhurankov of lack of professionalism, because before the transition to Team Tutberidze, almost no one had heard of Kostornaia. To reiterate: the Russian Junior Championships, where Kostornaia was 16th, took place in February 2017, and the Russian Senior Championships, where she won the bronze medal, took place in December 2017. The difference is less than a year.

“Earlier in training [before moving to train under Tutberidze], I did not give all my best,” Kostornaya told the Russian Figure Skating Federation. “Back then, it seemed to me that I was working. And when I moved to Team Tutberidze, I realized that I had never worked hard during training before. Everything I did [previously] was useless, because I stopped by, did a jump and stood for five minutes. No duty nor discipline.”

According to Kostornaia, Zhgun also was a demanding coach; she insisted on the careful study of each element in training. However, Zhgun could not find the right words to motivate Kostornaia [to work harder]. Tutberidze could.

Kostornaia is afraid of the 3A

In fact, at the 2017 Russian Championships in Saint Petersburg, Alena won her ticket to the Pyeongchang Olympics. But technically, Kostornaia could not go to the Olympics nor to the World Championships. In Russia, skaters can compete among the senior ranks from the age of 13, but in the international scene, skaters must be at least 15 before July 1st of the season.

Alena was a little unlucky – her birthday on August 24th. Therefore, Kostornaia spent the entirety of last season in the junior ranks [for international competitions], even though she was already 15 years old.

This fact was very sad for the skater. She openly said that she was bored of skating internationally as a junior. Last season, her average results were higher than those of Konstantinova, Daria Panenkova, Tsurskaya and even Medvedeva, even though these skaters performed in the senior Grand Prix series, whereas Kostornaia competed in the junior Grand Prix series.

Alena was on the podium at every competition, but she rarely won. She was constantly beaten by Trusova and Shcherbakova due to the complexity of their programs. Anna and Alexandra competed with quads, but Kostornaia did not. Despite Alena’s advantage in artistry, musicality, skating and gliding, the main share of success in modern figure skating is given by jumps.

Alena answered her rivals with a 3A. Kostornaia tried this jump for the first time while still training with Zhgun, and she began to jump it consistently in Team Tutberidze thanks to Sergei Dudakov, a specialist in jumps. Unfortunately, during one of the training sessions last year, she twisted her ankle, and as a result was not able to go to the Junior World Championships. At a press conference, Alena hinted at forgetting about the jump.

She was stopped by the risk of a new injury, and she was afraid of this jump. As Kostornaia told a BUSINESS Online correspondent at IDF 2019, her friend Daria Pavliuchenko, who performs in pair skating with Denis Khodykin, helped her to cope with this fear.

“I had a day off after the Russian Test Skates and I decided that something needed to be changed. I tried the 4S, but it didn’t work out,” Alena recalls. Upset, she went to Daria Pavliuchenko's home. When Alena sat wearily at Daria’s house, Daria supported her and said that she could do anything. “The day after I went to practice and Sergei Rozanov offered me to try the 3A again. I made up my mind and landed it on my second attempt.”

The second reason Alena decided to jump the 3A is the opinion of experts. At the Russian Test Skates in Moscow, experts began to bury Kostornaia’s chances, pointing to a weak technical base. Two years later, she is again spoken of as an “average” skater.

“I walked around and heard from different sides that “well, yes, you’ve done well, but if only you had jumped something [more complex]. These ‘if only’ piss me off!” Said Kostornaia. “Does that mean that in the second half of the season I will skate again in the juniors [ranks]?”

Kostornaia is now jumping three 3As in two programs. In terms of base-value, a 3A is less valuable than a quad, but it is no less important.

Firstly, the Axel is a compulsory jump; it must be executed in the program, but you can choose the type of element [1A, 2A, 3A, etc.]. A more valuable version of the jump [t/n: switching 2A to a 3A] gives Kostornaia an advantage of at least 10 points.

Secondly, the 3A can be jumped in a short program. It is prohibited to jump a quad in the ladies’ short program. Since the 3A is a jump with 3.5 revolutions [it doesn’t have full 4 revolutions], the element is allowed.

Even with her 3A, Kostornaia thinks about quads. She tried 4Ts and 4S using a special harness and has successfully attempted these quads several times. “When you watch how Sasha does three, four, or five quadruples, you involuntarily think about making [your program] harder,” says Kostornaia. “It's a shame others do them and you don't.”

An important advantage of Alena is enhanced metabolism. She, like any athlete, must monitor her weight, but she does not have to race after the scales, like most skaters. Kostornaya can afford proteins, fats and carbohydrates in a required amount and it will not affect her weight.

Choreography and skating skills were acquired from Zhgun.

And yet, the main feature of Kostornaia, with which she conquered the figure skating world for two seasons, was not complex jumps, but unique skating skills and a program full of connections and other aesthetic elements.

Well-known American journalist Jackie Wong tweeted about Kostornaia after her first international senior start: “This is a unique skater. She can change the idea of what a truly great skating run should look like.”

Young skaters are often criticized for working on their technical value to the detriment of components. Kostornaia’s programs are the exact opposite of this approach. Each element of her program follows from the previous one, and with her outstanding artistry, Alena herself gives a feeling of a picture of completeness within itself.

Starting from the Junior Grand Prix series, Kostornaia has never received less than 7.5 points [in components]. Periodically, they give her 8.0 and even 8.5 points, which is unheard of for junior skaters.

At the same time, Alena owned these gliding skills even before moving to Team Tutberidze. Developing these skills is a laborious process that requires many years of work. “The style of my skating, ideal or imperfect, is not for me to judge, said Elena V. Zhgun. We worked hard to get a feeling of sliding,” Kostornaia recalls.

Alena is also good at interpreting the character of the music. In a recent interview, she admitted that the most important thing for her is to touch the heart of every viewer. “I tried as best I could to fill the arena,” said Kostornaia after skating at IDF 2019. “People come to watch figure skating in the same way as they come to the cinema. They come not only to watch the jumps, but also for everything else.”

In her work on artistry, she was greatly assisted by acting lessons she took as a child. She attended courses at the request of Zhgun. Now, when working on each image [of the program], Kostornaia is trying to get used to the role she plays and convey the feelings and experiences of the portrayed character.

Kostornaia is a unique skater. She is the only one who now combines sophisticated technique with bright and powerful choreography, high-quality skating and amazing gliding skills. The famous coach Marina Zueva complained in a recent interview with BUSINESS Online that only a few skaters think deeply about skating and image. A true champion should be good at everything: perform complex jumps and touch the audience to the core with their skating.

Alena is just such a case. Her programs cannot be limited to sports, where numbers, points and records are put at the forefront.

P.S. People come to figure skating in the same way they come to the movies. They come not only to watch the jumps, but also for everything else, says Kostornaia. This is her main message, her philosophy. Before Kostornaia, skaters focused on either technique or artistry. Kostornaia believes that it is possible to reconcile those sometimes raging supporters of this. Another concept is that it is she who will reconcile these two sides, since Alena cannot but be loved, for she brings us back to the roots!

A shot at the quadsters will have to wait, first and now Alena!