An outstanding champion rarely belongs to himself.
It is not so easy to come to terms with this: living when your every step and every word is accompanied by tens of thousands of comments on the Internet is an ordeal even for an adult.
But this is the reality: the more fans a particular media personality has, the more acutely a person feels that he must meet a huge number of other people's requirements, constantly justify someone's hopes and perform actions that seem right to absolutely outsiders.
Alina Zagitova did not live up to expectations.
At least, it was this idea that began to show through in the vast majority of publications and comments after the Olympic champion refused to participate in the first sports event of the season - open skates.
Let's still try to figure out who and what let the girl down, whom almost the whole world idolized a year ago?
Could Zagitova completely lose motivation and simply not want to continue training?
Certainly.
For two years of performances, Alina collected all the titles that exist in her sport, and the last and, it seems, the most valuable medal for the skater herself - the gold of the world championship, won in 2019 in the Japanese Saitama, was given to her at the cost of incredible effort on herself.
To understand this, it is enough to recall Alina's story about the receipts that she gave to the coaching staff and the federation and which she spoke about on the air of Channel One in mid-December, officially announcing the suspension of her career.
“I even wrote myself a receipt that I promise to go to the competitions, to the World Championships: I pledge to skate well and do everything in my power to compete in this competition.
Somewhere the federation even has it.
Then I wrote a receipt that I would perform at the Japan Open and two stages of the Grand Prix.
I did it.
Since I wrote, I have kept my promise.
Since I did not write for the Grand Prix Final, I did not have such motivation.
I am not ready to write the next receipt yet.
Because everything I write, I do, ”said the athlete.
In that interview, spontaneously organized, not too well prepared, and to which the athlete was thrown, like a loophole, Alina, probably for the only time in her entire career, said exactly what she thinks and feels.
“At the beginning of the season, athletes always have a difficult moment when they need to collect all the elements, the program is very difficult.
When I am in Novogorsk, there are very difficult moments.
And these walls reminded me of bad training.
Bad training means falls, pain, new shoes, and calluses from them, and when you make two jumps in the program and are already exhausted.
Of course, it's difficult, you still don't understand how your season will turn out, and you have to go to the start completely ready ... "
A month and a half after her career was suspended, Zagitova got into a media scandal, refusing to communicate with fans on a show in Dobrograd - at least this was reported in the media.
The journalists wrote that the skater violated the contract, behaved in a completely inappropriate manner, in a word, developed the situation as best they could, in full accordance with the existing trends.
Soon after that incident, we met with Zagitova in Zurich, where the Olympic champion was to perform in the famous Art on Ice show for two weeks.
The athlete was accompanied on that trip by her own grandmother, who told how deeply Alina was touched by the public assessment of her behavior in Dobrograd.
As it turned out, there Zagitova actually only meekly obeyed the orders of her coaching staff.
“We are simple people.
They will tell you to go to the journalists - let's go, they will tell you not to talk to anyone - don't talk, ”the interlocutor explained.
Those daily observations of Alina in Zurich were enough for me to understand that she is the most fertile material for any manager: disciplined, executive, with a very high sense of responsibility for the result (it does not matter if it is about her own work or work in a team), impeccable upbringing and an innate sense of style.
Another question is that constant existence in a dense cocoon of someone else's care does not contribute to the athlete's ability to make independent decisions.
It becomes all the more terrible to think that one day you will have to end your career and go out into another life.
I think that is why Alina is now clinging to the idea to such an extent that she will definitely return to the ice as an active athlete.
If she is deceiving anyone in this, so herself.
And it certainly does not pursue the task of staying in the national team's cage in order to continue to receive a salary.
Rather, this may be interested in those for whom the most titled figure skater in the world with numerous contracts and fees continues to be the goose that lays the golden eggs, even actually ending her career.
But the paradox: even in this status, Zagitova continues to remain a hostage of other people's decisions.
Personally, for example, I would like to know what guided those who stated that the Olympic champion would definitely take part in open skating, and after them, possibly, in the Russian Cup.
The fact that Alina is not in the right shape to demonstrate full-fledged programs with all the jumps can be seen with the naked eye even from those few videos and photographs that are leaked onto the Internet.
Perhaps the statement about participation was made by the FFKKR only in order to maximize the interest of the public in the event, to force them to buy tickets.
But if so, what claims can there be against the skater herself?
And why does it happen at all that it is to her that the arrows are transferred for any reason?
On the whole, the story is sad, although not new.
Athletes of such a scale as Zagitova are not just a golden fund of sports, but a self-sufficient brand that requires increased attention and reverent treatment, especially in terms of media support.
So that a stellar career does not end with the subsequent process of overthrowing an idol and Internet dancing on his bones.
Alas, this is exactly what happened at one time with Yulia Lipnitskaya, and then with Evgenia Medvedeva, who decided to break out of her usual life.
Now, obviously, this will begin to happen with Alina ...
But if you think about it, there is no guarantee that, having destroyed one beautiful fairy tale, we will automatically receive another in return.
In addition, Zagitova, in a sense, is the last of the Mohicans.
The point here is not that younger girls lack talent, this is just the reality: with the total, as is commonly believed, superiority of Russian singles over the rest of the world, all of them were simply unlucky - the season interrupted due to the pandemic deprived the athletes of the chance to fight for the world crown ...
But only this title, in addition to the highest Olympic title, truly distinguishes the athlete from the general row.
Now everything is going to the point that the next season will turn out for the current "adult" generation as crumpled as the previous one.
And it is all the more pointless to make predictions about what will happen after, when exactly the world of figure skating will receive a star equal in scale to Zagitova, and whether he will receive it at all.
Alina, by the way, chose not such an easy way, having agreed to participate in the Ice Age project as a host.
Throughout her sports career, she never learned to communicate with the world through words - she admitted in an interview that she has great difficulties with this.
“I'm terribly shy about giving interviews!
Terrible!
Do you know when you are asked a question, and your heart is pounding, your face is red, and you cannot say anything except “yes” and “no”?
I want to conquer this fear.
And I want to learn how to express my thoughts correctly and beautifully, ”the Olympic champion said in particular, commenting on her choice.
She now has to study in a rather ruthless live broadcast format, and it seems to me that she deserves to be supported in a purely human way.
And they didn’t make me feel once again that I didn’t justify someone’s hopes.