WinForPooh

Oh... I'm sorry if I was mean! I really am! I can be an idiot sometimes! (The 'sometimes' part is questionable.) (Also I srsly don't remember it, sorry about that too!)

I don't know if just raising the age limit would do that. It might be one factor. It could mean that young skaters' bodies are no longer disposable, too. Training will have to change so that chances of long-term damage are reduced if they can't compete in the biggest competitions until they're 17. Then a year or two to get the PCS rise, and then have high tech, beautiful programmes. You know, really ideally. If there was some way of making that happen while keeping the current age limit, the question wouldn't matter to me really. I just really hate this acceptance that this is just how things are. Nobody really thought men could jump quads at one point, either.

I guess this has become relevant now that an actual request has been sent for the ISU meeting! I don't know how I feel, really. What I want is a change in the way training is approached so that peaking at 15 and retiring at 18 isn't just how it is. Will there be more incentive for coaching teams to change how they approach training and technique if the girls cannot win a senior competition until they're 17? If Tuktamysheva could jump the 3A when she was not tiny, and Mirai could get the 3A after puberty, and Miki Ando could land 4S in practice after that, and Mao could rework her jumps and get the 3A back, if Gabby Daleman can (reportedly) land the 4T at 20, then I don't think it should just become accepted wisdom that women cannot jump 3As and quads after they're 17 or 18. That's where I'm afraid it'll end and I really don't want that. If training and technique are changed and adapted, it should be possible. That would be progress for the sport. Training girls to rotate extra fast when they're really tiny with the silent accepted understanding that the technique will fail them when they're no longer so tiny is something I don't want to see. ETA: I just saw that Alice on her amazing blog said pretty much the same thing I did! Just saying that I'm definitely not Alice, she's much cooler and more knowledgeable, and I didn't see her new post before I posted this so I didn't just wholesale copy her thoughts and try to pass them off as mine!

Oh, right. Well then I'm sorry about my misjudged reaction, as well. Don't worry about it.

... Why on earth is Eteri giving interviews about Zhenya's current health? She's no longer the coach. Will somebody please send her some flowers so she'll stop all this!

I'm not sure if TCC brings on a new coach like that, even one that exclusively works only with one athlete. The TCC team seems to take charge of the skaters once they get there. I haven't seen anything about a long-term coaching collaboration like that, but maybe they do it and it's just not been made common knowledge. Having one coach who is exclusively dedicated to only one skater seems unusual from a skating fed, too. But unusual doesn't mean impossible. I'd be very happy for Boyang if he does have a long-term plan at TCC.

We can keep our fingers crossed and hope our greedy little hearts out.

We are so greedy!

Starts from May 25 in Makuhari, goes on to Kanazawa beginning of June, a break and then Kobe, Niigata, Shizuoka. All through June except for that break. But Yuzu isn't there for a couple of shows because of... stuff... Official things, I think. (Lentils take long enough and are forgiving enough that I've never ruined them or my pans with them. But I have actually boiled eggs dry, and still have the scorch marks on that pan. And milk! Milk boiling over, and the stove scrubbing after that! I always yelp 'MILK!!' and run back into the kitchen exactly in time to see it rise and boil over.)

I am seriously in awe after reading that. Wow. Exploding mushrooms. That's amazing, it's practically a new skill. I don't think I could make mushrooms explode and you have no idea how badly I want to now! I think Yuzu would probably be fine if he has to figure things out on his own after he stops skating competitively. It'll open up a lot more room in his head for normal, usual things. He'd probably be a decent cook after a few disasters. I pretty much never cooked when I lived with my parents. Baking cakes was my only contribution. But when I moved out and got really sick and tired of takeout, I started experimenting and it turned out okay in the end. I was hopelessly incompetent with real living stuff, like where to pay bills and how, and how to get things done at a bank, and all that, but I figured it out. Yuzu is very intelligent and he's learnt how to ask for help when he needs it, so when his brain finally has room for something other than skating, he'll probably figure it out too. I have done the burning boiled eggs thing, though. Never start doing anything interesting after putting eggs on to boil unless you've got a loud timer. NEVER.

The translation seemed to indicate a short-term thing, didn't it? Mainly because his main coach wasn't changing, I guess.

I don't think we've really heard anything to contradict the original report that Boyang was doing a summer thing at TCC with his main coach. The long-term moving part was mostly wishful thinking.

Didn't he say he's doing thirty days of Yuzu or something?

Nobody declared definitively that Eteri is lying. We're all talking about what we believe, while making it clear that it's speculation. ETA: In this context, saying no judging and listen to both sides is actually a bit of a judgment because one side has revealed what they want out there about what went on between the two parties, and the other has not. There's an imbalance there. @FayIs JudgeJudyFunForever taken as username? Maybe I can change mine.

I'm not saying that Zhenya did everything perfectly, either. I do think that going to Eteri directly before sorting everything out with the fed and club and new coach would've been a mistake, judging by the Yulia situation. Maybe there was a better way to do it, but if Zhenya decided to err on the side of caution because she knew exactly how Eteri had reacted to her previous favourite students, I don't blame her at all. Zhenya did look out for Zhenya, but she didn't get into a public mudslinging match to do it. She's entitled to the former, I respect her for the latter. I actually respect her for looking out for herself, too. Nobody else was going to do it for her. The entire thing was done within an hour after she landed and got in the building, so it had obviously been in the works for a while! If everybody involved knew enough to get the formal process going, and nobody formally told Eteri, well, I find that hard to believe in a professional setup, and if it's true, there might be good reason why. The rumours have been substantiated by many people, while the assumption has been only claimed by one person. That should be weighed differently. But nobody's asking you to judge them.

Actually, the interview with Trankov (I think - one of the many interviews) said that it was clear in the team that there was friction between the two in Korea but they managed to keep it out of the press. The initial statement from Laishev said the two had been fighting and the club was trying to figure it out. (ETA: The interview is kind of immaterial, because you don't communicate friction within a team to media like that, and when you're asked a question by media, you answer it positively.) And the assumption that Evgenia did not communicate with her coach is also just that - an assumption based on Eteri's words and a few carefully selected texts from the latter part of that time period.

The more I think of this analogy, the more flawed it is. I mean, in that case, essentially after stringing her along for two years promising to put a ring on it as long as she did everything she was told, when she got hurt by doing the things she was told, she was shunted to one side and the shiny new girl got the shiny ring instead! Since it's not a (romantic) relationship, I don't think the coach did anything wrong by doing that. Her job was to get the medals, and she did.

Or she might have made it clear enough that she was out, before that, and Eteri decided that it wasn't serious because it was said during that time of friction that apparently everybody in Russian fs world knew about. A few unanswered texts apparently sent after most people you'd expect to be in the know already knew doesn't mean Evgenia gave Eteri no reason to believe it was done. Sticking with the flawed analogy of a relationship, if you tell somebody it's over and get out, and they don't believe you because you said it when you're upset and you keep getting texts from them, do you owe them replies? I don't think so. ETA: Anybody willing to be cynical about Evgenia's motivations and actions should also consider the possibility that those messages were sent after it was clear that there would be no replies, too. If the process of contract negotiation had already started with the fed and the club, then they would have a big part in deciding what Evgenia is supposed to communicate to the coach. Surely if she told her club and the club did not tell the coach that choreo and planning for that athlete is not necessary, that's a problem with the club and its structure. Actually put that way, it's very unlikely because club resources would've been wasted with that planning.

... Well now, my nightmares.

This. And also there were reports about friction between the two for over a month. And let's also put out there that Eteri T has a habit of yelling at her skaters and throwing them out, expecting them to come back with flowers, as was reportedly done to both Alina and Polina T. My take, which is only my take, is that they had a bit of a bust-up, things were said, and Eteri expected Zhenya to go back to her, possibly with those flowers, anyway because that's what she expects from her students. If you really want to take the analogy of a relationship, which I don't think is appropriate, it's like when you have a huge fight with your ex where terrible things were said and said ex moves out, but you expect them to come back because you have an ego the size of a planet. A big planet, not like mercury.

My sentiments exactly!

True, that would all be awesome. But I'd love to see intense Yuzu learning from smiling JButt, because JButt has the happiest smiling face I've ever seen.

I would love behind the scenes of Yuzu and JButt working on choreography. It would be so cool.

I have to say, I really like this off season!

Do we have anything about Jason's coaching team? It looked like he was getting more Rohene choreography, but there was some talk that he might change coach.