“I’m very sad to think that there seems to be a rift between the family and Rafael Arutyunyan – otherwise, I think, the coach would have been sitting in the kiss-and-cry with Ilia.” Journalist Elena Vaitsekhovskaya
Journalist Elena Vaytsekhovskaya reflected on Ilia Malinin’s World Championship win, expressing both happiness for his success and concern over his visible struggles and apparent rift with coach Rafael Arutyunyan.
original source: Telegram
Russian Journalist Elena Vaytsekhovskaya commented on American figure skater Ilia Malinin’s victory at the World Championships in Prague. Here’s a translation.
“I’m very happy for Ilia Malinin – ending the season as the tragic loser could have been an unbearable ordeal for him, and I certainly wouldn’t want an athlete I like to go into a break with that feeling.
But a few thoughts.
If Yuma Kagiyama hadn’t caught someone else’s edge in the short program and missed an element, Malinin might have ended up second. And in the free skate, Ilia was skating with unimaginable effort.
When someone skates in a way that those efforts are visible, when he’s dragging the program along as best he can, rather than as intended, in my outsider’s view, there can’t be any 10s in the second mark. Especially not so many. Why artificially elevate a guy to a place from which it could be very painful to fall?
And on a personal level, I’m very sad to think that there seems to be a rift between the family and Rafael Arutyunyan – otherwise, I think, the coach would have been sitting in the kiss-and-cry with Ilia,” Vaytsekhovskaya wrote.
Related topics: Ilia Malinin, Rafael Arutyunyan, world championship
Their business I’m just interested in what his mother has to say she’s great.
Yuma would not have won even if he had not faltered in the short program. This was not a close competition. If Illia had felt threatened, he could have thrown in another quad.