#but Leanne has been so consistent all quad

[senatortedcruz]

Making myself sick thinking about the US women’s gymnastics team for Paris.

[mrtvisterminister]

On Has Beens and Could Have Beens

If you were to tell me in May 2015 that 2 years later, I would be writing about the demise of I/Z, I’d have said you were crazy. But if you told me in December 2016, I would have only asked if things were so bad that Ruslan wouldn’t wait until the end of the quad.

There are a lot of versions of Ruslan’s retirement coming from his camp, Elena’s camp, and other people’s camps. But they all imply that Ruslan made a conscious decision to quit and whether he really has health problems is beside the point. He can no longer skate with Elena, physically or mentally, and would rather teach kids at various rinks around Russia than skate with Elena.

So who could refuse to skate with the lovely, talented Elena? It seems, many. When Nikita ran off with Vika, it was easy to blame Nikita. After all, they had just won a bronze medal in Sochi, Nikita botched the twizzles, he was a known douche, Morozov was involved, and it was leaked to the press during worlds. Sure, there had been whispers years earlier that Elena was lazy and impossible to work with but that was ignored when she chose to work with the unglamorous but hard working Kustarova group. And in that first season, she really did work her ass off and it showed when they somehow made it to the GPF and won Russian Nationals. It seemed either Elena had turned over a new leaf or all those rumors were exaggerated by her enemies

But slowly, it began to be apparent that old habits died hard. Showing up to worlds looking out of shape, the fact that her unemployed boyfriend kept showing up at places he shouldn’t be, and cryptic letters from the federation about proper training habits started implying that Elena was not training as she should. But after a disastrous nationals, the blame went to their coaching staff.

So off they went to a new coach and new environment and things were looking up. But again, rumors began appearing. In July some people posted that while Ruslan was killing himself in training, Elena would not do a thing unless Igor worked with them, and that there was a discrepancy between Elena’s size in her Instagram photos and what she looked like in real life. It was easy to dismiss it then given the bitchy nature of the posters. But photos from other sources, like Louis Thauron or Victor Voronov showed a less in shape version. When respected journalist Elena Vaitsekhovskaya wrote that Elena was 10 kilos overweight and the possibility of the team losing their sponsor, it was easy to dismiss her claims as being motivated by bias. But then a German article also mentioned Elena looking out of shape at summer training but again fans dismissed it.

So Skate America comes and goes with the team looking woefully unprepared and Elena sporting a gut and bat wings and the team being seen back in Moscow by the next weekend. Suddenly, the fans are scrambling for excuses that don’t add up Stories that Elena had bronchitis before the test skates don’t seem to match when you see Elena out and about in Chicago. Or that the sponsor would only pay for Igor when you consider whether a rich guy has that much time to care about ice dance fan wars.

Through all that, it was becoming apparent just how fed up Ruslan was with his partner. While he looked super excited at the beginning to be skating with such a talent, by the time of the Olympians Ball in December, you got the sense that Ruslan was over the whole thing. His look of utter embarrassment at competitions solidified that.

Thus, it became no surprise to me that Ruslan threw in the towel. Nor did it become a surprise to me that Elena and her fans are scrambling to spin the situation to make Ruslan look less sympathetic as possible. Nor is it a surprise that outside of Elena’s most fervent and die hard supporters, no one is really believing anything she says. Because it has become apparent that the stories Elena presents through her fans could best be described as alternative facts. To portray yourself as highly motivated while your partner is lazy doesn’t add up when you are smoking cigarettes and haven’t been seen at the rink in ages while your partner goes to the rink everyday and is still relatively cut for his size despite not training hard. And to use the excuse that it’s just too painful to go to the rink, is well, laughable. We can also scoff that Kustarova's continued love for her as proof of her work ethic. After all, Kustarova coldly banished the ambitious and hard working Anna Yanovskaya, once it became apparent their interests no longer aligned (I.e., Anna wanted a new coach), while she coddled the mercurial Mozgov despite his lack of ambition, because his interests aligned with theirs (well, until he chose Betina over them).

And now we have probably the most talented ice dancer in the world, sitting around, doing nothing. People will lament that her talent has been wasted and then quickly start arguing about the artistic merits of Papadakis and Cizeron’s next programs. And where does that leave Elena Ilinykh? A few years trying to pretend some Guillaume Cizeron clone is waiting for her, when her best options are Egor Bazin and Daniel Eaton? Trying to turn her beauty blog into something? Media is fickle. She’s lucky Mamun is as dry as the Sahara, Mustafina got pregnant, and Kudryavtseva turned out to be an unappealing bimbo so that extends her media shelf life until the world discovers Pogo, Med, Zagitova, and whoever. Ice age? Not without Averbukh’s say so.

In a way, she reminds me of LeAnn Rimes, who wasted every ounce of her considerable talent and whose life, instead of Grammys and CMAs, consists of food festival appearances, non-existent musical content engagement, a loser husband, a few die hard fans on Twitter that she pays to harass her husband’s ex-wife, and an extremely active social media account. Instead of Worlds and Olympics, Elena is left with a group of die hard fans who exist only to inflate her ego and justify her behavior. Instead of half hour TV profiles, she’s given a minute long segment where she is subsequently mocked by the narrator.

Like LeAnn, Elena can blame her fate on outside forces, like evil federation officials, dishonest partners, and incompetent coaches, but in the end, her own actions and inability to take responsibility were her ultimate undoing. If Elena had spent half as much time in steps and runthroughs as she does on photoshop and spinning stories, we’d be discussing something completely different today.

Is Ruslan entirely blameless in the demise of I/Z? No. He was always the inferior partner in terms of talent and built like Alexander Smirnov, he would never be. And he seemed to have lost his back bone as far as music choices was concerned. But did he put in the effort? Yes. Did he improve considerably? Yes. And who was he without Elena? A seventh place finisher at worlds, a fourth place finisher at Euros. Who was he with Elena?A seventh place finisher at worlds, a fourth place finisher at Euros. Would he have been national champion with Sinitsina? With no Bobrova and Soloviev or Ilinykh and Katsalapov, definitely. Sinitsina and Zhiganshin beat Monko and Khaliavin and Stepanova and Bukin several times, so it's not out of the realm of possibility they could have beaten them. And who knows what a top coach like Shpilband could have done with them. They were a team that worked extremely well together and had an incredible work ethic. A solid work ethic and a top,coach could go a long way.

Elena, the more talented of the two, for whatever reason, was not training as she could and, as a result, her skills regressed. And you can’t blame the inferiority of her partner on that one. Just look at Svetlana Zakharova. She’s pushing 40. Tsiskaridze, Ruzimatov, Filin, Zelensky, are all gone. Her most frequent partner at the Bolshoi of late has been Denis Rodkin, a pretty boy 10 years her junior who entered the Bolshoi with no ballet training. At La Scala, she was once given a 19 year old kid fresh out of ballet school. Do you think she skips rehearsals, shows up to the performances, and leaves the partner to figure out her lift timing, just because she’s Zakharova? Meanwhile, Elena seems to pick and choose what she will work on. Of course, she’ll work overtime trying to find music, and she’ll watch countless videos to see who’s be a great choreographer for them. But the question is, will she actually bother with the endless repetition of steps and elements, once the fun part is finished. Will she run in the treadmill for an hour in July, when there are no competitions? That’s the question.

Right now, everybody is moving on. Sinitsina and Katsalapov have another new coach. Bobrova and Soloviev are working with Radu Poklitaru. Stepanova and Bukin are working with Chernyshev. After a brief period of mourning and after she and her fan girls lose their voices trying to convince the world that she is someone relevant and everybody has worked to destroy her, who will care about Elena Ilinykh?