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World Junior Champion 2020 figure skater Andrei Mozalev confirmed the transition from St. Petersburg coach Kirill Davydenko to Eteri Tutberidze. Sports is sorting out another transfer in Russian figure skating.
As a rule, people decide to change coaches when something goes wrong. This is exactly the case with Mozalev. In March 2020, he triumphantly completed his junior career. At the World Championships in Tallinn, Davydenko’s student won gold, ahead of his main competitor, the Japanese Yuma Kagiyama. Over the past four years, Kagiyama has become one of the leaders of world figure skating, and Mozalev has failed to reach the top positions even in Russia.
The Olympic season remains the pinnacle in terms of sporting achievements for Andrey. At the national championship in St. Petersburg, he became a bronze medalist, behind Mark Kondratyuk and Mikhail Kolyada. Only at the European Championships did Mozalev stop one step away from the podium, losing to Evgeniy Semenenko. When forming the Olympic team, the leadership of the Russian Figure Skating Federation gave preference to the student of Alexei Mishin. Although Mozalev also went to Beijing when Kolyada’s coronavirus test turned out to be positive. At the Olympics, Andrei took only 19th place, and after that his career began to decline.
Mozalev learned several quadruple jumps, but if at competitions he got a flip, then problems arose with the sheepskin coat. If this jump was successful, then the Salchow failed. Andrey's programs (all this time he worked with the group's directors — Igor Koshcheev and Denis Lunin) were memorable. Together with his coach, the skater embarked on a bold experiment: he made a mini-series out of the short and free programs. You can't call this know-how. Once upon a time, the dance duet Nelly Zhiganshina/Alexander Gazhi from Germany brilliantly embodied a similar idea of Rostislav Sinitsyn. This season, the two-time European champion Frenchman Adam Xiao Him Fa is already doing this.
So Mozalev decided to put all the pieces of one puzzle into two programs with deep meaning. Only, while working on the image, Andrey loses something in technique. The brilliant idea of the directors turned into another failure. Before the Russian Championships in Chelyabinsk, Mozalev changed his short program, but this did not bring success. Salchow with an under-rotation, falling from a quadruple toe loop in a cascade and only 12th place after the first day of competition. In the free program, the St. Petersburg skater improved things a little, but again failed to cope with the declared content of three quadruple jumps.
The final ninth place is not the result that the skater, who defeated Kagiyama himself just four years ago, was counting on. Little consolation can be the fact that in the final protocol at the 2024 Russian Championship, Mozalev was placed behind the winner of the 2022 Olympics in the team, Kondratyuk. At first, Andrei tried to comment on failures with humor. They say that there is not enough girl to give motivation. After the New Year I decided to “reboot”. The farewell to the St. Petersburg alma mater turned out to be unceremonial. There was no traditional bouquet for the former coach.
Today there are few options for transfer for a skater of this class. Neither Alexey Mishin nor Evgeny Rukavitsyn wanted to see him in groups. The competition there is already off the charts. The only option left was to move to Moscow, but Svetlana Sokolovskaya’s students are not doing well this season. Eteri Tutberidze took over as the St. Petersburg figure skater.
This is a very interesting option. An athlete who has already mastered complex content comes to the coach, whose fame was brought by the young figure skaters who performed quadruple jumps. Of course, we can note the successful experience of Eteri Georgievna working with Maurice Kvitelashvili, who under her leadership won bronze at the European Championships. Even earlier, the most successful season under the leadership of Tutberidze was spent by Sergei Voronov, who replaced many coaches. And now in the group there is a participant of the European Championship 2024 Nika Egadze, who took 5th place at the Russian Championship in Chelyabinsk Daniil Samsonov and the rising star Arseny Fedotov.
But all the skaters, except Voronov, trained in «Khrustalny» from a young age. Their jumping techniques were taught under the watchful eye of master Sergei Dudakov. Will they retrain Mozalev or use the foundation laid by Davydenko? It will be interesting to see the productions of Daniil Gleikhengauz. After all, until now Andrei worked with directors who knew everything about him.
br>The transfer, which will be officially formalized in the spring, has already been commented on by numerous experts. Almost everyone agreed that with successful performances at the main competitions of the season, Mozalev would not change anything. Whether this will benefit him is impossible to predict. Most often, those who look for reasons for failure in a coach achieve nothing. Although it happens that a skater finds his mentor. We can only hope that for Mozalev, Tutberidze will become such. . Salt Lake City Olympic champion Alexey Yagudin received a similar experience when he left Mishin for Tatyana Tarasova. This is perhaps the most striking example in the history of Russian figure skating.
The author’s opinion may not coincide with the position of the editors
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