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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm happy for the kid from Kazakhstan though! [/quote]

Me too! He was so shocked - he had no expectation of winning gold! [/quote]

Same!  It reminded me a little of Lillehammer, when the favored veterans all stumbled (Browning, Boitano, and Petrenko) and Alexei Urmanov pulled off a stunning upset.  The planets had to align just right.[/quote]

And Alexei Urmanov is Mikhail Shaidorov‘s coach.  He trains with him in Sochi. [/quote]

Not a political post, but as someone who loves figure skating, the Russian influence on the sport was everywhere at the 2026 men's Olympic event, even with the ban. So many in men's singles had Russian roots or training:

Mikhail Shaidorov (Kazakhstan – 1st) – Trainsin Russia with Alexei Urmanov in Sochi and speaks Russian.

Stephen Gogolev (Canada – 5th) – Has dual Canadian and Russian citizenship, started skating in Russia as a kid before moving to Canada.

Petr Gumennik (Russia – 6th) – Russian competing as a neutral athlete.

Ilia Malinin (USA – 8th) – His parents Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov were Olympic figure skaters from Uzbekistan/former Soviet Union.

Andrew Torgashev (USA – 12th) – Parents were Russian figure skaters who toured with ice shows before settling in the US.

Maxim Naumov (USA – 20th) – His parents Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova were the 1994 World Champions in pairs for Russia.

Vladimir Samoylov (Poland – competed) – Born in Moscow, trained in the Russian system before switching to Poland.

I know many of these skaters have left Russia or represent other countries, but the technical foundation and coaching tradition of Russian figure skating still clearly influences the sport.

Also, even if Adeliia Petrosian lands a quad and triple axel in the women's event, will she podium, or will the judges give her a low enough component score to keep her out of the top 3? Her actual skating is much more entertaining than Kaori Sakamoto (I think she's so boring, personally, and prefer the other Japanese women to her). [/quote]

Yeah, there was a sizeable diaspora of coaches and skaters-turned-pro in the years after the Soviet Union broke up.  Most of them ended up in the US where there was more money to be made going on tour, better training facilities, and better opportunities to coach.

Figure skating enjoyed a surge in popularity in the mid-90s after the Olympics and all publicity around Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding, so there was a growing and ready-made audience for all the shows and lessons.  I started taking lessons as an adult and competed for a bit :D  Usova & Zhulin and Stekolnikova & Kazarlyga all taught at my rink, and Ilya Kulik trained nearby.

And then many of the expat Russian skaters from that original mid-90s influx stayed and had kids, who are old enough to compete for the US now.  It’s fun to see familiar names coming around again.

Personally, I love the Russian style.  It’s so balletic and lyrical, and the artistic side often gets neglected these days in the rush for quads.  The ballet influence provides a good technical foundation for the jumps and spins.[/quote]

It's the balletic foundation, yes, but the true bedrock of the Russian style is superior blade control built through hours and hours of drilling the most basic of maneuvers until the sweet spot of generating enough speed without friction is achieved.  Oleg Vassiliev said they would start practice working on nothing but crossovers (basic steps to get around the ice) for 90 minutes, nothing but crossovers until they are perfected to the point of being able to cross the entire rink in a two or three pushes.  Ice dancers would spend an hour working on nothing but a single turn until that turn makes a perfect line on the ice and the skater is perfectly centered over the blade.  Recall the famous "quiet blades" of Gordeeva and Grinkov who could generate awe-inspiring speed around the ice making barely any sound at all - because they were riding on that sweet spot of the blade that met no friction of the ice.

This training foundation, sadly, will never be replicated.  One, because no one has patience any longer to drill the basics before moving to the showy stuff.  And two, because it was sustained by the system that had no concern whatsoever about paying for ice time. [/quote]

And three, the demise of compulsory figures.  Yes, they were boring to do and boring to watch, but years of doing them created edge mastery.[/quote]

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