#rusfed

[myshkafs]

ON NATIONALITY SWITCHES, AND THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION:

Recently as of maybe a few months ago, we've seen two Russian athletes switch nationality in the span of 2 weeks. Sofya Samodelkina switches to Kazakhstan, and Sofya Titova switches to Armenia for the upcoming season.

Is this the first time we've seen Russian girls switch nationalities? No. Will it be the last? Definitely not. However, it is the first time that students of such a high profile coach (Evgeni Plushenko) and coaching team (Angels of Plushenko) have switched, and the first time that 2 have switched in such quick succession.

There have been rumours about Samo's switch since august of last year, so this isn't so surprising. She ranked 11th at RusNats, and was not a top skater at her time at CSKA, before she was kicked, so it makes sense for her to want to switch out. She was relatively competitive in the JGP back when Russia was still eligible for intl. starts, and was pretty decent on the junior circuit, including a silver medal at the 2021 Russian Junior Cup Final and Gold at the same event in 2020, along with some 4th place finishes at Russian juniors Nationals, 2 JGP medals (bronze at Rostelkom and 3rd in Slovenia) and a win at the 21-22 Denis Ten memorial.

When she graduated to Senior level, though, it just. Stagnated. We've known for a while that Russia's oversaturation alongside the biased judging makes it impossible for any up and coming talents to succeed, where the Eteri bonus holds so much weight. Samo finished 11th at both RusNats and the Russian GPF, and her only medals of the season came from her performances at the GP stages, where she came second at the 2nd stage Velvet Season, where her only competitors were Adeliya Petrosyan, Veronika Yametova, and a, at the time, struggling Alexandra Trusova who was fighting through injury and a lack of motivation. She then won the Volga Pirouette Stage, which again, her only competition at that event was Sasha, who wasn't landing any Ultra-C where Samo had a 3A.

All in all, her level of performance just was not enough to get her to that place of success she needed to be at, and with Russia's ban from intl. sport, it was only looking like it would get worse, despite her improvements from switching to AOP full time late last year. Samo, who had stated before that she wished Beijing would be postponed because she knew it was her only shot at going to the olympics, is grasping at straws to stay competitive, and it just so happened that her mother was born in Kazakhstan, making her eligible for citizenship by descent.

For her, I completely understand where this has come from. She will be an eligible senior when she returns to the international stage, and has the technical ability to blow people like Kaori Sakamoto and Loena Hendrickx out of the water. Is it worth is? 100%. She'll be able to get back out there, potentially stake her claim for some senior titles she wouldn't win under Russia, like National Championships and Four continents.

I think Kazakhstan would also be relatively grateful for the heightened exposure her fanbase would bring to the domestic Kazakh events, and hopefully she'd be able to contribute to building that domestic sport up by earning them places on the international start that they lost in womens ever since the departure of Elizabet Tursynbaeva. The problem here stems in that I feel Samo and other girls who defect to other federations will be in for a rude awakening when they don't get the inflated scores they were getting under the Russian flag, and that it may be harder for them to bridge the gap between them and skaters like Kaori and the Japanese who are so strong in their components.

Back when the season was in full swing, we saw how AOP athletes suffered from the underscoring in place of the Eteri girls getting inflated scores. We saw, in 22-23, Sasha's components drop and her STSQ and spins falling for lvl 4 to 3. Sofia Muravieva is a great example. Mura had the scores to best Kamila and Akatieva in the SP, but was rarely given them.

And so Plushenko made his ultimatum to the federation: Continue devaluing his athletes, continue to give them scores less than what they deserve, and they will jump ship, and compete for a federation that wants them. I found this interesting, because we all know Plushenko has quite the reputation for being loud mouthed, and a Patriot??? It made no sense that he would actively encourage his athletes to leave the Russian federation, and so I thought originally it was all hot air. This combined with that Samo's nationality switch had been whispered about BEFORE Plushenko even said anything.

And then Titova. She has no discernible ties to Armenia that I could find, so the switch seems odd. But again, she's not the most competitive, and in a world where the Russian juniors are arguably MORE competitive than their senior counterparts,,, its ruthless. If she wanted any chance at being competitive, she'd have to switch. The timing was smart, she's ineligible for seniors right now, but will be able to make a name for herself outside of Russia on the international stage having never competed outside RUS before, as an armenian skater, and can build up titles and respect in both division. Most people will be unaware she was even tied to RUSFED at any point. She has an abundance of time to wrack up titles and earn Armenia more placements.

My only concern is, is Russia prepared to lose more athletes? We've seen two in the space of 2 weeks defect, and all I can say is, will there be more? Will Plushenko encourage his juniors to look outside of Russia when they cannot compete with Eteri's students and Russian judging? And is Russia prepared to lose more and more athletes the longer they're banned from international sport?

Even from the perspective of Ice Dance, they had the departure of Smolkin/Davis to Georgia, using Eteri's Georgian Citizenship to justify Diana's switch in nationality, and her marriage to Gleb to cement it, and the pair of Karina Akopova/Nikita Rakmanin to Armenia.

In the world of Ice Dance, sure, this isn't a big loss, but Diana and Gleb abandoning Russia altogether and training in US/Canada could be foreshadowing, along with departures such as Samo and Titova, of the future of RUSFED and what this means for their development. The oversaturation and the blatant corruption is discouraging athletes, driving them away from not only the sport, but their country. And if the Federation doesn't make changes soon, they're in danger of seeing this worsen, and the potential for a collapse of this integral part of their sports economy, as more and more athletes decide to leave.

And the potential for success if they choose this route is already being proven. Sofya Samo had just within the last 2 weeks won the Summer Championships of Kazakhstan with a healthy 20 point margin between herself and second place Sofia Farafonova. And while Samo, on a clean slate will have to wait to build up her ranking to go to any major comps, she'll most likely be in the running for a national title by the end of 2024. Titova, likewise, will most likely be in the running for an Junior title in Armenia, and potentially a senior one if she is eligible.

Athletes are seeing the appeal in leaving for success in an easier climate, than sticking around to be mistreated by judges and beaten by 12 year olds with 3As and Quads. And RUSFED has tp recognise now, with so many departures over this last season, that they have a problem.

Now, do I necessarily think it's ethical to allow athletes to leave like this? If they have dual citizenship, sure. If not, and other countries are offering them citizenship to skate for them, then it becomes more tricky. I recognise the trouble that Ice dancers and Pairs face to find partners, but for singles, where the only benefit is to become more competitive, especially in a climate where the Russians are trying to outmaneuver a ban,,, especially when those athletes go on to still live and train in Russia and only visit the countries they compete in to well, compete, it becomes a lot harder to say whether its right or not. On one hand, those athletes have the ability to provide more opportunities for domestic athletes if they do well, but on the other hand, they're also taking opportunities from domestic athletes on principle, and for many domestic athletes who have worked hard, it will feel like a slap in the face to have a Russian athlete waltz in a snatch up all the titles they've worked for for years, under veryyy different conditions and with less resources.

And the ban, although many complain, must be upheld. (On that, though, I will talk more in depth in another post about my thoughts.)

All in all, the switches will be interesting to observe, and we'll see what happens as the season progresses, if any more athletes decide to make the decision to leave.

[riza-hawks-eye]

Yuna Kim sure knew what she was doing when she decided to skate to Send in the Clowns at Sochi.

[petitmimosa]

I vote for lifetime ban on the skaters and staff who proudly stood at the rally with their Z jacket on.

[raininyourblackeyes]

I'm literally presenting the paper we had to do for our little doping class. The topic is abuse of trimetazidine in sports (to quote our professor a few months ago "It's a quite concerning case that's happening now, so I put a topic about that here."). I raised my hand to sign up my group for that quicker than light.

Good luck to me keeping a straight face tomorrow.

[austerlitzborodinoleipzig]

Vibes from the medal ceremony

Loudest applauses for

Nathan

Kaori

And Chock/Bates (Tho I was standing right in front of a couple of Bock fans apparently those guys were LOUD.)

Also spotted two Russians speaking dudes saying the medals were well deserved 😅 and I hope RusFed is choking.

[suiwenjing]

in light of recent ISU rusfed unban (with heavy restrictions still in place). we all know that any major organizations like say an international governing body of a sport are obviously going to be in the pocket of the american empire so i'll spare the criticism there because fork found in kitchen. but it is interesting (pathetic and shameless) how figure skating fans are just completely uncritically in support of america as a global hegemon. i say this not as a fan of russian skaters - i personally have never enjoyed the skating that their training style cultivates and i did enjoy the break from constant rusfed string-pulling that the ban brought. but everyone in this "community" has so much smoke for russian skaters being allowed to compete in international competition and especially on twitter people who watch russian skating have been nearly completely ostracized. people whine about competitions being held in china as it's "authoritarian" (lol) or whatever else and list radio free asia when asked for sources. constant praise for american skaters zero qualms with comps being held on american soil while we are currently a year into an active genocide and several war fronts (necessary to maintain empire) and political repression and instability domestically. why can russian skaters (and chinese skaters, to an extent) not be divorced from their country of origin but american skaters can be? why is supporting america in sport apolitical when america is objectively worse on the global stage? like wouldnt it be so much easier and less exhausting for the community to just say you believe all of america's geopolitical adversaries and peer-competitors are evil and america can do no wrong. guilty until proven innocent vs innocent even if proven guilty. it's just irritating because everyone postures as politically engaged and "radically" (lol again) socially conscious but basically has the same belief system and outlook on the world and as any sitting democratic congressperson. you don't even try to be morally consistent. you people stand for nothing

[yunamaocaro]

rusfed payed big bucks for that neutral athlete thing 😭

[sergeifyodorov]

is valieva actually terrible at skating? i'm a fake figure skating fan and only really pay attention during olympics seasons... i remember the doping scandal and her disappointing free skate but that's all i know...

ok i'm not some kind of Technical Expert and this is a question much better suited for @tofumilanesa than me (sorry for the tag!) but... yeah. and it's on purpose too

before we talk about Skating though we have to talk about Silly Little ISU Politics, which is always a dreadful chore and just a real slog. the ISU (international skating union)(figure skating governing/judging body) is the one that determines the rules for how fs is judged over the years. in essence there's 2 parts of a figure skater's score: the TES (technical score) and the PCS (program component score). the TES measures the value/quality of each individual element (jumps etc) and the PCS measures "skating skills, performance and composition, and transitions." see how little skating skills is part of that? less than half of half of the whole score.

if you've also noticed how little of this is objective, correct! shmoozing to the ISU can get you... generous judgments on your more borderline calls -- bad technique can get glossed over way more easily. especially by larger federations, and especially, in ladies' singles, by The big federation (Rusfed.)

All that to say is that the Russian girls are being judged. pretty kindly. So if you're coaching them, you don't really have to do things like "ensure they're good enough skaters not to get their asses torn to shreds by the PCS panel" and you can focus more on getting that fourth rotation out of that underfed teenager.

so all these girls (and it's not just Valieva -- Shcherbakova, Trusova, Kostornaya to some extent, and the newer generation of Petrosian and Usacheva and Tikhonova and the like, as well as the older girls like Medvedeva and Zagitova) come out of the same camp (all trained by Eteri Tutberidze, who you can immediately recognize at the edge of every rink by her bleach blond it's-gonna-be-may hair and sour expression) and they learn how to spin in the air and that's it. bad initial technique is not trained out of them, because dedicating the time to learning how to jump more safely (ex. EVERYONE has a flutz. except trusova but it's not like her tech is great either) is time you are taking away from getting that stable quad. this training is intensive enough that there's a phrase -- the "Eteri expiration date" where these girls retire at 17 sharp, from injury or anorexia or both.

(this is not necessarily an all-of-Russia problem -- Elizaveta Tuktamysheva is 25 and still going. That being said, no Russians who are competitive on the world stage besides her come out of anywhere except Eteri's camp, so it might as well be.)

anyway, back to skating technique and kamila: figure skating doesn't place nearly as much an emphasis on forward speed as hockey does, but it places a lot More emphasis on efficiency, depth of edges, and smoothness.

probably the best example of this is crossovers -- if you watch a program like, say, valieva's bolero (she skates it clean at GP Rostelecom), whenever she does crossovers, she's doing three or four and putting her whole back into it. You can watch her shoulders bob up and down as she's stroking -- meanwhile, watch bronze medalist Kaori Sakamoto go, and she needs barely two and all her power is coming from her legs.

actually, sakamoto vs valieva is a pretty easy comparison re skating skills: when sakamoto skates, she leans very hard into her inside or outside edges, while valieva doesn't really do that at all. sakamoto's crossovers are a lot more powerful, and she has a much easier and more fluid transition from forward to backwards skating. she's also a lot faster -- and i know we said there's less emphasis on that, but speed with little effort is a really good measure of technical ability, and valieva is basically crawling compared to sakamoto (for an even better example of effortless speed, go watch old yuna kim programs!)

but valieva is 6 years younger, didn't medal, and will have quads for the next year or two before she retires from hip or back injury, while kaori might even show up at the next olympic cycle, so who's to say who's winning that game

[lakemichiganlolita]

i noticed you have some figure skating rpf on your ao3 page - do you still keep up with figure skating or not so much? would be so cool to find another fob fan who also loves skating!

One of my many previous online lives! I haven’t engaged with skating fandom as much the past couple of years but I am still involved in the sport, I skate myself and do follow elite skating albeit not as closely. I try to be aware of what’s going on lol. Mostly I just get mad at how stupid the isu is for letting rusfed do whatever they want forever

[carol-ing]

I hope RusFed does appeal and they just reallocate Kamila's points instead. Sick of them.

[kentwells]

Tell me about hunger games characters as skaters RIGHT NOW.

If u do I might tell you about my half baked clato ice skater au and tbosas ice skater au.

Anyways how are the careers at skating do we think?

- destroyed-by-clato

HELLO. SOAPBOX. also PLEASE tell me abt ur aus. i love figure skating aus. especially from people who know about skating good god i cannot do this anymore do u know how many times i have clicked out of a fs au fic for inaccuracy.

okay. SO. obviously the careers are good. i... think the capitol... is not a bad rusfed analogy. because of all of the spectacle and the intense idea that all of these kids are going to fight as their bodies are breaking down and then they will be replaced by younger, more talented kids.

okay here are my career skating thoughts. it is ACTUALLY the elite sport they would all be involved in if they were normal. clove died because she wanted to monologue. that's a drama queen right there. clove in general ... idk i think of medvedeva for her? like SO solid. So gritty. it might not be elegant but it is going to Happen and she is going to win no questions asked whatsoever. her throwing a million knives perfectly in training is the same energy as medvedeva doing triple triple triples on practice ice to freak out her competitors.

i am alsooo kind of obsessed with the idea of cato and clove doing pairs bc a) she is very short & he is very tall b) partners for life.

glimmer is best dressed alwaysss. that's just how she is.

idk if anyone is familiar with polina edmunds' podcast but it is basically 20 minutes of her dunking on everyone and telling people to improve their technique. unless she's confused in which case she pretends its perfect. i'm obsessed with it. anyways that's so career coded it's insane <3 their convos are 80% making fun of everyone else end of story.

sorry this took me fucking forever but!!! love skating love careers! yay!

[petitmimosa]

lol. russia saying russia isn’t at fault with doping. 

[raininyourblackeyes]

GET DIANA AND GLEB, AND GRASSL, AND NIKA OUT OF THOSE EVENTS

[harocat]

Not a question (again hshdj) but the doping debate about the 2 A's is so wild and left me with very little faith in humanity. Like, people get to see how noodle-hair really is and then pretend to act like she just only doped K*mila like please wake up from your delusions 😭😭😭

Like we know for a fact that those poor girls all train for a horrific twelve hours a day, and that Russia has a STATE SPONSORED doping program, an objective fact. That's literally just not feasible without drugs that enhance endurance and stamina, and that's exactly what was found in Kami's system!

Last year we had to witness a poor woman being unable to compete in the Olympics because she (god forbid) smoked a little bit of weed to cope with her mother dying. Jessica Calalang was banned from competition for almost a year because there was an illegal substance found in some makeup she used. Laurine Lecavelier was banned for four years for testing positive for cocaine. Meanwhile Rusfed has been coasting by for years, drugging their skaters, and even among fs fans ourselves, people are going 'well it must have just been Kami.' Everyone knew it was happening long before Kami's test came out. It's been an open secret forever. The level of delusion.

[riza-hawks-eye]

Imagine taking performance enhancing drugs and still only coming up with that performance.