Alexei Mishin once said a sacramental phrase: “You should never strive to artificially get rid of veterans.
They must be eaten alive by those who overtake them from behind. "
The specialist voiced such a view of reality at a time when the main part of his life was devoted to working with the Olympic champion of Turin and vice-champion of Vancouver Yevgeny Plushenko, and from all sides there were more and more phrases about young skaters who needed to give way to the national team.
Being "eaten alive" is a scary thing.
This is what athletes who have already achieved certain heights and are at a crossroads are most afraid of, choosing to stay in the sport for another season / Olympic cycle, or leave without risking being publicly defeated.
Exactly in this position after the Olympics in Pyeongchang, Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov, a couple who have been promised all the gold in the world since 2014.
But the skaters were desperately unlucky.
All that they have managed to win over the past six years is the Grand Prix final and two gold medals of the European Championships.
At the world championships, the couple got into the prize-winners three times, and at the Games in South Korea they took the most offensive of possible places - fourth, and it was clear that even their own coach Nina Moser did not really need them - at some point she simply left the arena, transferring the charges to his former student Maxim Trankov.
At the 2020 European Championships in Graz, Austria, the skaters lost again - they remained second.
Then I asked their new mentor Marina Zueva if she was worried that Evgenia and Vladimir were losing for the fourth start in a row to very young (in comparison with their own age) Alexandra Boykova and Dmitry Kozlovsky.
The specialist admitted that she does not see this as a big problem.
“I know for sure: if Vova and Zhenya skate well, their result can be very high.
That's all.
Of course, the guys' mistakes upset me, it would be foolish to deny it.
But it is better to let these troubles happen now than at the moment when nothing can be fixed.
The main work has been done for us, and I hope you can see it.
The image of the couple changed, she found a face, went, rolled up.
Moreover, I clearly note the improvements from start to start, ”Zueva answered.
Her plans were to bring Eugene and Vladimir to the World Championship as accurately as possible (read - to take revenge for all previous defeats), but a pandemic happened.
And instead of going to Zueva in the USA in the summer and being puzzled by the staging of new programs, Tarasova and Morozov were forced to settle in Moscow.
And after some time it became known that the partner had had a coronavirus.
It is worth noting that this attack caught not only Vladimir - the partners of both pairs of Tamara Moskvina, Dmitry Kozlovsky and Alexander Gallyamov, were ill with the coronavirus, albeit asymptomatic.
Simply, unlike the veterans, they could say to themselves in Kazan approximately what Dmitry said after his speech: “This stage was a prologue to the next one.
An absolutely ordinary start that brings us to the top competitions ”.
Think about it - the tournament really does not oblige anyone to anything.
Tarasov and Morozov - including.
But against the background of the general progress in pair skating, which is already obvious, it is they, and not others, who must now do everything possible not to become someone else's prey.
The one that Mishin spoke about.
Constantly proving that you are at least as good as your rivals is hard and sometimes seems unfair, but this is how any not-too-judgmental-objective sport works: when giving a second mark, referees often evaluate not what they see on the ice, but their inner impression, which made up of little things in the course of all previous performances of the season.
Secondary and meaningless - including.
The perception of certain programs is always pure taste, but personally I was sorely lacking next to a couple of Marina Zueva: her always recognizable hand and close attention to nuances.
More than a year ago, Marina talked about the concept of a new short program "Bolero" and the purely visual effect that the audience should have when they see Morozov's fiery hair.
It is unlikely that she then had in mind the image of the overgrown bearded hermit "a la Fyodor Konyukhov", in which Morozov appeared before the public in Kazan.
Say nonsense?
Maybe.
But just such trifles are firmly rooted in the heads, and the slovenliness of the appearance often pulls the sloppiness in the elements.
The victory in Kazan by Mishina and Gallyamov, the athletes who joined the Moskvina group in mid-March, turned out to be quite indicative in the sense that the result does not depend on the coach and not on competition.
And, first of all, from the athletes themselves and their ability to take and assimilate the maximum of what is offered in the work.
If we evaluate the couples from the standpoint of the progress that happened in the offseason, Nastya and Alexander confidently become the head of the peloton, and do not sit on the heels of the main stars of Tamara Moskvina's school, European champions Boykova and Kozlovsky, as it would seem in an imaginary scenario.
Wasn't the coach afraid, giving consent to the transition under her wing of opponents equivalent to the leaders?
Probably not.
The basic principle has always been built on a very tough sparring since the very times when Elena Valova and Oleg Vasiliev, her first Olympic champions, rode with Moskvina.
Couple Natalia Mishkutenok and Artur Dmitriev made a crazy competition Elena Bechke and Denis Petrov, and when Artur paired up with Oksana Kazakova, Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze breathed in their backs.
That is, Moskvina has never been a mentor who is seriously concerned about the fine mental organization of the couples who train with her.
Of course, Mishina and Gallyamov are in the most comfortable position: in addition to winning the junior world championship and the junior Grand Prix final, they have not yet won any significant titles.
Last season, the couple failed to qualify for the national team - they took fourth place in the Russian championship, losing about 20 points to the champions (Boykova and Kozlovsky).
That is, the fiercest competition with the strongest pair of the continent is a blessing for them, not a test.
By the way, already now we can say that the difference in class between the two pairs is completely leveled.
In other words, at the national championship in December we will face a fierce struggle for the top three of four duets - the winners of the last European championship Daria Pavlyuchenko and Denis Khodykin, who won the stages of the Russian Cup in Moscow and Sochi, will be added to those who played in Kazan.
Will Tarasova and Morozov withstand such an onslaught?
I wish they could resist.
After all, whatever one may say, it is now the most difficult for them.
Like tightrope walkers who can be knocked out of the clip by any wrong step.
It would be nice to understand this now.