It's that time of the year - coaching changes 2019/2020

[Ashley2162018]

Regarding Lee Barkell leaving TCC and what happens to Stephen , are there Canadian Skaters who are presently representing Canada training outside the country?

Because honestly Canada itself has a lot of great facilities and I see no advantage moving to the US.

Hopefully Stephen stays with Lee and who knows he might get coached by Chiddy if that is where Lee is going.

 

[wpisces]

12 hours ago, rockstaryuzu said:

I know he was with Lee Barkell for the last half of the season. And frankly, his results dropped as soon as he left Brian, (went from winning Junior GPF to bombing at Jr World's)  so I dunno if the move was such a great idea. 

 

TSL is maybe not the most reliable source ever. 

Well, one of the reasons he left Brian at first was supposedly that he bombed hard at Canada JGP, then he won JGPF with Lee after leaving Brian. His performances at Nats weren't bad either.  Though I agree he should stay with Brian for a long run, I don't think saying his results dropped as soon as he left Brian is fair, considering his outcome at Jworlds was far from a disaster like at Canada JGP when he was with Brian. and you also can't expect a 13 year- old to win JWorlds at his first Junior season when he competed with one of the most risky layout and hadn't had much experience in competing under great pressure at such major international competition like Worlds. 

[ralucutzagy]

2 hours ago, Dreamer said:

Brian has his plate full with Yuzuru and Evgenia now as primary coach..and there was Javi before the Olympics as well.

When you have worldclass athletes and champions who have trained with you for years....one cannot expect Brian to prioritize Stephen.

And he has Jun, too ... anyway, that's why Gogolev left Brian for Lee B. ... but I feel sorry for Gogolev going to Raf... I hope is not true.

[Geo1]

To continue with this OT, I have no idea about whether Stephen Gogolev has gone to Raf, but somehow it has the ring of truth to me.

 

Nathan Chen's strong suit is jumping. Stephen's strong suit is also jumping. 

 

Michal Brezina was a guaranteed splat-fest whenever he jumped before he went to Rafael Arutunian. Since going to Raf, he rarely falls and has podiumed. Something he had not done for a long time.

 

It makes sense to me if Stephen and/or his parents thought that going to Raf would make him an even stronger and more consistent jumper like Nathan.

 

And Raf is Georgian-Armenian and has coached in Russia before, if this is of any importance to Stephen's parents. 

[IULIANA]

11 minutes ago, Geo1 said:

To continue with this OT, I have no idea about whether Stephen Gogolev has gone to Raf, but somehow it has the ring of truth to me.

 

Nathan Chen's strong suit is jumping. Stephen's strong suit is also jumping. 

 

Michal Brezina was a guaranteed splat-fest whenever he jumped before he went to Rafael Arutunian. Since going to Raf, he rarely falls and has podiumed. Something he had not done for a long time.

 

It makes sense to me if Stephen and/or his parents thought that going to Raf would make him an even stronger and more consistent jumper like Nathan.

 

And Raf is Georgian-Armenian and has coached in Russia before, if this is of any importance to Stephen's parents. 

You may have a point, but also word is out that Lee Barkell is leaving TCC, and Gogo with him... so, ho knows... Sorry for maintaining the OT here, but frankly, I am so comfortable in this thread!

[Yuzu_GOAT]

58 minutes ago, Geo1 said:

To continue with this OT, I have no idea about whether Stephen Gogolev has gone to Raf, but somehow it has the ring of truth to me.

 

Nathan Chen's strong suit is jumping. Stephen's strong suit is also jumping. 

 

Michal Brezina was a guaranteed splat-fest whenever he jumped before he went to Rafael Arutunian. Since going to Raf, he rarely falls and has podiumed. Something he had not done for a long time.

 

It makes sense to me if Stephen and/or his parents thought that going to Raf would make him an even stronger and more consistent jumper like Nathan.

 

And Raf is Georgian-Armenian and has coached in Russia before, if this is of any importance to Stephen's parents. 

I feel that Stephen going to Raf is probably the best move for him.

[rockstaryuzu]

10 hours ago, wpisces said:

Well, one of the reasons he left Brian at first was supposedly that he bombed hard at Canada JGP, then he won JGPF with Lee after leaving Brian. His performances at Nats weren't bad either.  Though I agree he should stay with Brian for a long run, I don't think saying his results dropped as soon as he left Brian is fair, considering his outcome at Jworlds was far from a disaster like at Canada JGP when he was with Brian. and you also can't expect a 13 year- old to win JWorlds at his first Junior season when he competed with one of the most risky layout and hadn't had much experience in competing under great pressure at such major international competition like Worlds. 

He was 10th in the SP at Jr. Worlds and fell on multiple jumps. And then 3rd in the FS..if you compare to JGPF, where he dominated with perfect form the whole way through, yes it's a drop. Of course no one's going to be perfect all the time, but it's hard not to notice sudden changes in performance either. 

[rockstaryuzu]

11 hours ago, Dreamer said:

Brian has his plate full with Yuzuru and Evgenia now as primary coach..and there was Javi before the Olympics as well.

When you have worldclass athletes and champions who have trained with you for years....one cannot expect Brian to prioritize Stephen.

But at the same time, juggling skaters is something Brian has tons of experience with. I suppose it all depends on whether a skater is happy with that or not.

[rockstaryuzu]

8 hours ago, IULIANA said:

You may have a point, but also word is out that Lee Barkell is leaving TCC, and Gogo with him... so, ho knows... Sorry for maintaining the OT here, but frankly, I am so comfortable in this thread!

If Lee is going to the Granite, then it would be easy for Stephen to follow him, it's right in the same city. 

 

@Ashley2162018: If I'm not mistaken, right now there aren't any prominent Canadian skaters training outside of Canada, but it's not unheard of. Tessa and Scott were with Zoueva in Detroit for ages, and Chiddy as well (although in his case, I think it proved disastrous in the end.) 

 

There are so many good coaches and clubs here though, and training outside the country is expensive. I can't see it happening unless someone has lots of funding available. 

[makebelieveup]

9 hours ago, Geo1 said:

To continue with this OT, I have no idea about whether Stephen Gogolev has gone to Raf, but somehow it has the ring of truth to me.

 

Nathan Chen's strong suit is jumping. Stephen's strong suit is also jumping. 

 

Michal Brezina was a guaranteed splat-fest whenever he jumped before he went to Rafael Arutunian. Since going to Raf, he rarely falls and has podiumed. Something he had not done for a long time.

 

It makes sense to me if Stephen and/or his parents thought that going to Raf would make him an even stronger and more consistent jumper like Nathan.

 

And Raf is Georgian-Armenian and has coached in Russia before, if this is of any importance to Stephen's parents. 

not to mention Stephen and Nathan have similar styles that even their costumes and music choices

[wpisces]

4 hours ago, rockstaryuzu said:

He was 10th in the SP at Jr. Worlds and fell on multiple jumps. And then 3rd in the FS..if you compare to JGPF, where he dominated with perfect form the whole way through, yes it's a drop. Of course no one's going to be perfect all the time, but it's hard not to notice sudden changes in performance either. 

With a clean SP, and ONLY 1 point away from 1st place. In FS, his jumps, stsq, and spins got shaky after he took a very hard fall on 3A which took him a while to stand up and continue. 

Compared to Richmond, he did way better at JGPF,  should we say Lee is better for him than Brian ?  Absolutely no. 

And sorry I don't see " sudden changes" which you said. The change from his first JGF to the second was more "shocking" to me.  

As you said, we can't expect him to do amazingly all the times and besides that every skaters have pattern. What if it's his pattern to pick around GPF and Nats time?  It's too soon to conclude it is a drop and the drop is because of having left Brian. 

[rockstaryuzu]

9 minutes ago, wpisces said:

With a clean SP, and ONLY 1 point away from 1st place. In FS, his jumps, stsq, and spins got shaky after he took a very hard fall on 3A which took him a while to stand up and continue. 

Compared to Richmond, he did way better at JGPF,  should we say Lee is better for him than Brian ?  Absolutely no. 

As you said, we can't expect him to do amazingly all the times and besides that every skaters have pattern. What if it's his parttern to pick around GPF and Nats time?  It's too soon to conclude it is a drop and the drop is because of having left Brian. 

Perhaps. But it's not far-fetched to consider that the stress of changing coaches mid-season will have an effect, either. 

[Songster01]

I have to agree that we can't make a strong statement about how well Stephen did under the Lee and Brian combo (we can't forget they were his co-coaches before) vs. Lee as sole head coach.  Lee is (or was if rumor is true) Stephen's only sole coach since sometime after his second JGP event.  He had two successful outings at 2 very important events (JGPF and CNats) and struggled at a third (JWorlds).  Definitely not enough time to make a definitive statement either way, but also tbh encouraging.  Add this to Lee being a co-coach from some years, you can see that it is no cut and dried situation.

 

I had been hoping this wasn't a huge split and that perhaps once things settled in a season or so SG's parents might go back to a collab at least, but I doubt that the parents who took their much younger child from Russia to Canada would be afraid of a move to the US.  They may have liked Nathan's season and got the same message the singles skaters seemed to be getting from judges esp in the late season: landing certain jumps at least decently will give you a PCS and GOE bonus.  Doesn't matter if your SS and performance skills are that close to the real leaders in that area or not (see Lilbet and Vincent).  Raf admitted as much to the Russian media that he knew he could get the judges' approval even with Nathan dropping choreography and lesser SS/TR proficiency.  So he wants his students to medal more than he wants them to become complete skaters (as we see from his skaters).  Not that he's against it ofc; he seems to think N at least can get there eventually.

 

As for great coaches in the GTA, Lee seems to have the last few years favored working with mostly juniors.  It may be he found over time he worked best with younger skaters.  This does not make him a better or worse coach than one who works with seniors mostly, as both are important stages in a skater's career!  Having a mediocre or worse junior or lower-level coach may cost a skater years to catch up (see Javi's career and imagine where he might have been had he gone to Brian and Tracy years before).  I had been getting the vibe that he was happy to handle primarily juniors (though definitely I could be wrong, this is nothing but a hunch by someone who doesn't know these ppl or work at the rinks alongside them).  Perhaps and more importantly in this case, the only coach recently who had turned out very top senior men who were very successful at their goals, other than Brian and Tracy, is Raf.  Patrick Chan moved around alot and struggled after his break, and Russian men and Boyang struggled alot this year.  Even Shoma struggled much more this season. If SG's parent's were worried about inconsistency, then perhaps the past couple seasons Raf has had with N has made them think he could help their son, though ofc he's still in early puberty days and alot could happen.  I may disagree with Raf and wouldn't want to send esp a female skater to him ever, but at least like Brian he isn't going to push S to the detriment of his future career quad-wise.  I do agree that unless they get better ppl SG's SS, posture, performance skills may stagnate or worse.  

 

Last, I'm def no fan of TSL for multiple reasons, but they do still seem to have Doug Haw as an insider to feed them information.  He seems to be their pair of ears and eyes at TCC.  At least for things like coaching changes re: TCC they have been right on for the past year, even for less newsworthy ones like Joseph Phan audition and moving to Brian last summer.  Regardless in this case I hope the rumor is wrong.  But honestly I'd be more surprised if they were, considering it is TCC-related coaching news.

[SparkleSalad]

It's official? 

 

 

 

 

 

[wpisces]

https://mobile.twitter.com/ifsmagazine/status/1126856401681301505?s=19

 

It's confirmed now that Stephen Gogolev would move to California to train under Raf. It seems he and his parents are quite clear that they want a coach who can spend more time with Gogolev and bring better results and they put their faith in Raf. 

 

Lee is leaving TCC as well. So we likely get a coaching change from Galemen soon ?