On August 21, the Russian figure skating federation officially released information on how the country's strongest figure skaters will be distributed among the stages of the Russian Cup. The document on duty in its essence actually looks sensational: it does not contain the name of the Olympic champion and world champion Alina Zagitova. In fact, this means that Alina will not have the right to compete in the Russian championship and be selected for subsequent starts. In other words, one of the most titled skaters in the country in recent times will miss another season.
Does this mean the end of your career? It seems that yes. Even if Zagitova decides to take part in some minor tournament (provided that these tournaments take place), two years without major competitions is a period that makes it almost impossible to return to the top level, especially in the realities of the current women's single skating.
This is especially true in a situation when it comes to an athlete who has managed to win all the top titles and does not have a new and sufficiently serious goal to strive for. The plot with a return in this case is only good for drama series with a happy ending. And in real life, an attempt to enter the same river means that a person must consciously return himself to the training hell of exorbitant loads necessary in order to become even a little stronger and better. If that fails, there is no point in returning.
Prolonged indefinitely promises to return appeared in figure skating not today. At one time, the champion of the Games in Sochi Adelina Sotnikova parted with great sports in the same way, and if you list all the departures and returns of Evgeni Plushenko, a separate material can be devoted to this.
It is generally accepted that such promises are just a technological trick that allows an athlete to remain in the national team and receive scholarships and grants without participating in competitions. When in early December 2019 Zagitova announced that she would not continue the season, but would take a break, there was a lot of talk that the skater was acting very recklessly, in the sense that her self-removal from the big ice would certainly greatly upset Japanese advertisers (in this the country treats Russian figure skaters with particular interest). After all, serious contracts with champions, as a rule, imply that the people chosen by the persons of a particular company continue to remain in the profession, and not extras. Perhaps for this very reason Zagitova almost immediately rushed to publicly announce that the pause she had taken in her performances was temporary and that she was not going to stop training.
But even then it was clear: Alina, most likely, would not be able to compete with the younger students of her own coach. This means that he will invariably begin to feel his own inconsistency at every training session and is unlikely to achieve a special attitude towards himself from the coaching staff. This would contradict the main principle of the school, which has been repeatedly voiced by the Khrustalny skaters: as soon as you step off the podium, you are nothing. Titles in such a situation can only exacerbate the psychological pressure many times over.
One of the sports officials close to figure skating, commenting on the absence of Zagitova in the Russian Cup grid, said that he does not overly approve of situations when the athlete himself already understands that he does not want and will not perform, but for various reasons continues to convince others that that does not think about retirement. And he added: they say, everyone understands that Alina is no longer able to compete with the current generation of singles, but if someone dares to say this out loud, she will only achieve another wave of hate on the Internet. Therefore, he himself, in fact, would like to remain anonymous.
There is certainly some truth to this point of view. But is it so easy to chop off sports life with one blow? Sometimes this is simply not possible. Especially in figure skating, where children start skating at 3.5 years old, become professionals at 12 years old, and they have no other life in principle. It always takes time to get used to the idea that it's time to stop, because you lose not just your job, but the meaning of life. It seems that Alina needed this year in order to finally understand: her brilliant, albeit rather dramatic, career has already reached the finish line, where a new and completely different life looms behind the ribbon. Entering a rather serious university can also be regarded as an indirect recognition of this fact?
It's just that, even understanding all this, I don't want to believe in the end of my career. You can still wait, still hope that Zagitova will rush into battle and her career will turn with renewed vigor, it is no coincidence that the president of the FFKKR, Alexander Gorshkov, hastened to reassure the fans: they say, Alina will definitely perform in open skates, and then she herself will decide on future performances. We should definitely not give advice to an athlete who has brought so many positive emotions and beauty to the world.