“Not going to last forever”
The Olympic toughness of Valiyeva’s trainer
02/19/2022, 09:38 am
Eleni Tutberidze is an exceptionally successful figure skating coach. In Beijing, her athletes win gold and silver. However, the Russian will also be remembered for the pictures she produced after the tragedy of Kamila Valiyeva.
The Beijing Winter Olympics are coming to an end. One day of competition is still to come, and the expected opulent closing ceremony with solemn words from IOC President Thomas Bach is still ahead of the sports world. Bach will certainly speak of great, perhaps the greatest games of all time. This is folklore. In the last few meters, Bach, who for months and years has been successfully avoiding the most urgent questions about autocrats, human rights violations and other annoyances that the controversial hosts of his major events bring with them, is being pushed around. Once, however, Bach, who was awarded the “Order of Honor” by Vladimir Putin after the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014, fell out of the role of the allegedly neutral functionary, who was solely concerned with the advancement of sport in the world to the point of complete self-denial feels obliged.
Bach said he was “very disturbed” about the moments after figure skater Kamila Valiyeva’s freestyle, who collapsed under the pressure of global attention about her doping complex under the eyes of the world in the freestyle and because of numerous mistakes and falls from gold rank had fallen completely out of the precious metal ranks. “When I saw how she was received by those around her, with what seemed to me like an enormous chill – it sent chills down my spine to see what was happening,” Bach reported on Friday. “Instead of comforting her, instead of helping her after what happened, you could feel how freezing the atmosphere was. Experiencing such a distance just by looking at that person’s body language is only imaginary made worse.”
“Why did you stop fighting?”
Bach’s sports diplomatic failure was triggered by Eteri Tutberidze, the trainer of 15-year-old Valiyeva. She had received her visibly dissolved protégé with harsh criticism on the edge of the ice, on which an Olympic dream had just burst. “Why did you give everything out of your hands? Why did you stop fighting? Explain that to me! After the Axel you gave it out of your hands,” Tutberidze said to Valiyeva seconds after the terrible four minutes on the ice. The images of the completely overwhelmed teenager and Eteri Tutberidze scolding her will be remembered from these games. More than most gold medals, more than spectacular falls and special hugs. Because the coldness with which the trainer met her student shook the world. No comfort, no love – just reproaches.
Now it’s not as if that wasn’t all to be expected. Because the 47-year-old enjoys a rather dubious reputation in the scene. She subordinates everything to success, even the human. A story about their methods is chilling. It was told by a former student. It is not verified. Because her training was poor, Polina Shuboderova said Tutberidze put her in a dustbin with the lid closed. Had to stay there until the end of the unit. The trainer said: Garbage belongs in the garbage.
The native of Moscow shows no mercy even with injuries. broken toes? No reason for a break. That sounds absurd. The athletes’ feet are under immense pressure when taking off or landing. For the former athlete Tutberidze, who had to switch from figure skating to ice dancing after a serious injury to her vertebrae, it doesn’t seem to matter.
“You can’t keep this up forever”
Alina Sagitova, the 2018 Olympic champion and 2019 world champion, also reports on the ice cold trainer’s methods. In the Russian “Sport Express” she said: “You just had to shut up and eat nothing! Or at least little.” Sagitova is no longer competing at the age of 19. Polina Shuboderova once said: “You can’t keep this up forever.” She went to the USA – and there people were amazed at the workload of the athlete, who sometimes had to train for up to twelve hours a day.
But the success proves Tutberidze right, at least in sporting terms. The list of top runners is long. Russian coach Alexander Schulin wrote in an open letter to Thomas Bach, the IOC President, that Tutberidze had coached six Olympic medalists and four Olympic champions since 2014. “She probably knows how and what to say to her students after her performances,” Schulin wrote. In Beijing, Tutberidze led Anna Shcherbakova to the gold medal and Alexandra Trussova (both 17) to silver. Even younger runners are already impatiently pawing their runners in the Russian capital. With even more speed, with even more quadruple jumps. Tutberidze’s “Quad Squad” has no recruitment problem.
And in Russia no recognition problem either. In response to the surprisingly sharp criticism from IOC boss Thomas Bach, who was “disturbed” by the trainer’s hardness, the Kremlin said: “He doesn’t like the hardness of our trainers, but everyone knows that in top-class sport, the trainer’s rigidity is the key to victory of his protégés,” said spokesman Dmitry Peskov. And Tutberidze stands for success, the list of Olympic, World Cup and European Championship medals her protégés are endless. Silver medalist Alexandra Trussova had returned to her former coach Tutberidze to prepare for the Olympics.
Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dimitri Chernienko had previously sharply rejected the statements. “We are deeply disappointed to see an IOC President weave his own fictional narrative on the feelings of our athletes and then publicly present them as the voice of the IOC,” Chernienko said. The head of organization for the Sochi 2014 games called Bach’s words “inappropriate and wrong”. For all athletes, the Olympic Games are the “highlight of professional sport” combined with “the hopes and dreams of an entire nation”. This is a “known pressure for the athletes, and that’s what drives them with their fighting spirit,” said Chernienko. Tutberidze himself also spoke out. She was “still at a loss about the assessment of our work by the esteemed Mr. Bach,” she commented on Instagram.