Waiting for the impossible: why it's time to stop believing in Trusova's triumphant return

When discussions of a particular sports career begin in the media space, sooner or later the well-known phrase of Andrei Arshavin pops up in them: “Your expectations are your problems!”.

On the one hand, everything is like this: everyone has the right to decide for himself how to build his own life.

In sports, including.

On the other hand, I really wanted to believe that a certain commercial break in the sporting achievements of Alexandra Trusova was about to end, and the figure skater would return to the big sport.

But will he return?

Missing the finals of the Russian Grand Prix, where the silver medalist of the Beijing Games was selected thanks to the third and second places at the stages where she performed, actually means the end of the season for the athlete.

That is, even if Sasha continues training and sets up new programs by the fall, the break between performances in competitions will be almost a year for her.

And this is too long a time to return without losing the former qualities.

Which Trusova has, if we compare the current state of the skater with what it was a year ago, are largely lost.

For performances in the show, Sasha is still in great shape, but sports are a completely different story.

Does this mean that a great sports career will be over?

In my opinion, yes.

In this, by the way, there will be absolutely no tragedy.

Not the first, as they say, case, and certainly not the last.

Four years ago, they believed in the same way in the return of Medvedeva, and now Sasha is actually repeating the same path that Zhenya went after Pyeongchang.

The vice-champion of the 2018 Games then changed her coach, treated injuries for a long time, started to play in tournaments, but refused the most important start - the Russian Championship in Krasnoyarsk, citing a suddenly broken boot.

On this competitive history was finally completed.

Trusova continues to perform well on the show, but these routines don't come close to requiring the kind of self-discipline needed to put yourself into a training regimen for the long haul.

Wear and tear becomes difficult over time, and why, when less burdensome but more attractive offers continue to come?

Like, for example, the current one - to become the embodiment of Fire at the opening of the Children of Asia Games in Kemerovo, and in April to go on a monthly tour of the country as part of a big tour.

Of course, you can perform with demonstration numbers, despite the injury: such skates do not require difficult jumps from the skater, that is, the risk of aggravating their own condition is minimized.

At the same time, you need to understand that in complex coordination sports, back injuries are among the most problematic: in addition to procedures, they require daily special exercises to strengthen muscles without increasing their volume.

This is monotonous, takes a lot of time from the athlete.

And most importantly, an athlete with such injuries must hold his working weight very tightly.

Otherwise, all efforts to restore simply go down the drain.

But in order to set yourself the task of returning to the previous condition, recovering and getting in shape, you need a very powerful motivation.

It is quite obvious that Trusova no longer has such motivation.

And why torture yourself with a regimen and loads?

To come to the competition, where all the strongest single skaters of the country will gather, and take the last place there?

Perhaps the reasoning that Sasha began to be afraid of competition is erroneous.

But from the outside it looks exactly like that, and that's fine.

The longer a famous athlete does not perform, the more self-doubt he experiences.

First, the ability to endure competitive stress is reduced: the nervous system requires the same training as any other function.

Secondly, it's really scary to go out in public, realizing that you will be compared with a standard that no longer exists.

In this regard, Trusova's case is comparable to Kolyada's case.

Mikhail also decided to skip the final in St. Petersburg.

As Tatyana Mishina explained in a recent interview, Kolyada does not consider it possible for him to skate a lightweight version of the program - without quadruple jumps, although his personal mentor Alexei Mishin advised the student to try.

As a result, instead of a home start in St. Petersburg, the skater wisely chose to go on a big tour of Ilya Averbukh in 25 Russian cities, which is also nonsense to a certain extent: Evgeni Plushenko was once disqualified for a year by the International Skating Union for leaving for the show during the World Cup, which he refused for alleged medical reasons.

But Kolyada turned 28, and most of his admirers have already internally resigned themselves to the fact that the skater's best performances are in the past.

Trusova is 18, and we expected a feat from her too much.

They believed that after a number of unsuccessful attempts by her predecessors, it was Sasha who would destroy the stereotype and be able to do the impossible: after all, she succeeded so many times.

Actually, even now, on the subconscious, we continue to wait for this, driving away the thought that these expectations are only our problems.