Alena Kostornaia: “Eteri Tutberidze is a result-oriented coach who use any methods to achieve them, because it’s a conveyor. When one breaks, the next one comes.”
Alena Kostornaia about about working with Eteri Tutberidze.
source: RSport
In March 2021, the figure skater returned to Tutberidze’s group after a season spent at Evgeni Plushenko’s Academy. At the end of winter in 2022, Kostornaia left Tutberidze’s group again.
Alena Kostornaia: In the season when I came back after training with Evgeni Plushenko, we had a lot of conversations with Eteri Georgievna (Tutberidze). She had a dialogue with me, which at first surprised me. Overall, yes, perhaps Eteri Georgievna knows me better than anyone else. We talked a lot on different topics, I won’t go into specifics. I was surprised because it didn’t happen before.
But it was only during the off-season, during the competitive season, everything abruptly stopped, haha. I understand that there are competitions, there are 15 people in the group and you can’t talk to everyone. Because of this, contact was slightly lost, and everything became disjointed.
Eteri Tutberidze is a result-oriented coach using any methods to achieve them, because it’s a conveyor. When one breaks, the next one comes. I’m not saying that this is bad. They have their methods of work, everyone does. Some coaches work with one athlete from 15 to 30 years old, while others work from 15 to 18.
But as practice shows, after the age of 19, it’s not really about sports. Everyone has a different age range of work.
Eteri Georgievna Tutberidze is called the Snow Queen. I remember when she came out on the ice, she looked around in such a way that it was scary. In the first two years at the “Khrystalny” rink, when she appeared, I used to skate close to the boards, afraid to do something wrong. Her strict gaze, posture, and I just thought, “Help!”
Related topics: Alena Kostornaia, Eteri Tutberidze
Kostornaia isn’t saying anything that previous students haven’t said already. Medvedeva & Scherbakova have made similar comments in interviews. However they were not so direct.