For Russian top-tier figure skaters, and above all for those who competed at the Beijing Olympics, and these are Anna Shcherbakova, Alexandra Trusova and Kamila Valieva, the coming season seems to be a period of licking the wounds.
It makes no sense for any of the listed athletes to announce their retirement; they retain all scholarships and grants for at least a year.
In addition, in a situation of suspension from all major starts, the season to a certain extent loses its significance for the leaders.
But in order to continue a full-fledged career in adulthood, you need to be completely healthy - this is an axiom.
The champion of the Olympic Games 2022 was the first to take radical measures.
Shcherbakov was operated on in Germany for a torn posterior horn of the meniscus.
The procedure was successful, but the recovery period can be up to four months.
The country's leading sports surgeon, Professor Sergei Arkhipov, in a conversation with RT, emphasized that although this is an unpleasant injury, it does not carry a serious risk for the sports future.
“Unlike damage to the lateral menisci, where there are virtually no blood vessels, the large horn is sutured and healed.
The scarring period is six weeks, but there is a nuance.
In order for the scar tissue to turn into tendon and hold the load, the recovery period before entering the ice and resuming training should be three to four months, ”the doctor explained.
Shcherbakova was much more fortunate than Alena Kostornaya, who also needs an operation.
Surgery for a rupture of the acetabular lip of the hip joint could have been performed by the European champion in the first half of July, but the FMBA clinic serving athletes of the Russian national teams did not have the necessary consumables.
Then it turned out that one of Alena's tests required a 10-day quarantine, and the date of the operation was moved to the second half of August.
Now, according to Elena Buyanova, in whose group Alena has been skating since this season, quarantine terms in the FMBA system have become tougher, and the opportunity to go to the hospital is postponed for another three weeks, or even a month.
Probably, it would be possible to involve the Figure Skating Federation in solving this issue, as was done in relation to the Olympic champion, and find an alternative to “home” treatment, but, most likely, this option is not very real: all Kostornaya’s titles are already two years old.
Privileges may well have gone with them in the past.
Whether Shcherbakova will be able to return to the competitive mode after missing the season is an open question.
First, does she need it?
And secondly, there is a factor that Buyanova very clearly formulated a few years ago.
“You know how it happens: you walked, walked, walked towards the goal, reached it and gave yourself a weakness.
It seems to be nonsense: you will take a step back at the right moment and again you will be in your former life.
And this is not so at all, ”the expert noted.
Weakness in this context can be considered many things: abandoning the usual training regimen and, as a result, loads, switching to a completely different life, in which athletes very quickly acquire additional interests, and, finally, big money and tempting commercial offers.
It’s a paradox, but it’s not Shcherbakova who now looks like the record holder for everything listed above, but Trusova, who lost to her in Beijing.
From a purely sporting point of view, Sasha, with her outstanding physique and five quadruples, has the most realistic chances to stay another four years and finally win that “damned” gold medal that eluded her in February.
The award, of course, is a powerful incentive, but the paradox is that it can be more difficult for Trusova to integrate into the post-Olympic reality than for all the other rivals combined.
The point here is not that Sasha became the number one media person after the Games.
There is also a purely sporting reason: after a wonderful free skate at the Olympic Games and five mundane quads, any decrease in the number will be perceived as a step back - this is how human psychology works.
Some kind of qualitative leap is capable of saving the situation: in the formulation of programs, interpretation, complexity of composition.
This is a grandiose work, which Trusova obviously did not do after the Olympics.
Yes, she liberated herself internally, finally feeling the love of the people, which replaced the constant accusations of amateur performances, but, returning to her usual training, the figure skater, by definition, will look weaker than she was.
And perhaps weaker than anyone else.
With such athletes, as the practice of past years shows, they don’t stand on ceremony in Khrustalny,
Again, the question remains open: does Sasha herself want to continue her career?
Is she ready to again drive herself into the rigid framework of a completely draconian discipline, having no guarantee that the country will be able to return to international sports in the next season or two?
And most importantly, will health allow you to reach a level that will not look secondary?
After all, the ankle injury, which seriously bothered the skater before the Olympic Games, was never completely healed.
As practice shows, relapses in such cases occur quite often.
The most dramatic figure of the Olympic season is, of course, Valieva.
If Camila, after two absolutely amazing performances in Beijing, won an individual tournament, the Games would turn into a drama for someone else, and she herself would become a heroine, a legend and a person who has every reason to determine her own destiny.
While others are doing it.
All the current complimentary remarks in the direction of the figure skater that she is an Olympic champion even without a personal victory, this is a somewhat premature and rather insidious game: the highest title, until the final verdict, seems to be hanging on a thread that can break at any moment.
And Camila herself will not be at all to blame for this.
That is why I really want her to stay.
To skate until the next Olympics and skate great.
She has everything for this.
But the current Valieva is also a big quest for her own coach Eteri Tutberidze.
Camila has grown up over the last season and matured a lot after all she's been through at the Games.
It seems to me that it will no longer be possible to drive her into the standard framework of the principles of absolute obedience and uncomplaining obedience accepted at school.
She will have to be reckoned with.
In other words, it is on this material that Tutberidze will have to prove that she knows how to work for a long time with adult accomplished athletes.
This is the most difficult task.
It is impossible to refuse Valieva, no matter how much she has grown and lost her previous skills, if this suddenly happens in the offseason.
In this case, in the view of many people, the blame for everything that happened to the girl will fall on the shoulders of the mentor, if only because Valieva is a minor, and, therefore, a figure skater who is extremely dependent on adult decisions.
I am sure that Tutberidze understands all this much better than anyone else: as far as the profession is concerned, she does not miss the slightest nuance.
And this is actually capable of adding a completely new meaning to Russian women's skating.
For a coach, this is certainly a challenge: she will have to find motivation (including for herself) in conditions where any kind of motivation, whether you are an athlete or a coach, flies to hell.
She needs to be ready for another reputational blow from the anti-doping structures if the proceedings in the Valieva case do not end the way we all would like.
She finally has a daughter studying in America, visiting whom, as well as arranging her fate, has become much more problematic than before.
In addition, it is not at all a fact that, even after returning to the big ice, domestic single skaters will continue to enjoy the same favor from the judges that has been observed over previous years - public opinion has changed too much since the Games.
But it's all the more interesting to watch how things unfold.
In the end, five years ago, Eteri uttered a wonderful phrase in an interview: “I always tell athletes: each of you has different pencils.
And you need to draw with the colors that you have.”
Well, then - it's time to remember Bulat Okudzhava:
"You draw, you draw, you will be counted..."