The world’s strongest jumpers among figure skaters unexpectedly changed their coach. What awaits them at Nina Moser’s

The completed season 2023/24 showed that in pairs skating there are now two main schools within the country. First of all, this is, naturally, St. Petersburg, where the honor of the northern capital is defended by skaters from the group Tamara Moskvina. Recently, Permians have gotten as close as possible to its athletes under the leadership of Pavel Slyusarenko. Young duets are actively progressing, honing the complexity and ease of elements and developing stability.

The Moscow team’s pair skating looks a little weaker than other types. In fact, the only top pair capable of fighting for medals in the main tournaments are only Natalya Khabibullina And Ilya Knyazhuk. Year after year, the guys added and improved their positions at the Russian level, and now they unexpectedly decided to change the coaching staff and left Sergei Dobroskokov.

“Firstly, we want to thank our coaching staff for five years of working together. This season went well for us, we rate it seven out of ten, since at the main competitions we were not quite able to show ourselves as we can be. We once went to a training camp held by Nina Mikhailovna Moser, we liked her team’s approach to work.”,” the TASS partner commented on the decision.

The choice of a new mentor, at first glance, is very surprising. Yes, Moser has a triumph in Sochi 2014 to her credit in the form of Tatiana Volosozhar/Maxim Trankova And Ksenia Stolbova/Fedora Klimovabut after that cycle the coach’s results dropped noticeably. Evgenia Tarasova And Vladimir Morozov for all their skill, they never reached the title of world champions, although they had more than one chance.

I don’t want to talk about the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang at all: this is an absolute failure not only in the moral preparation of the athletes, but also in the “packaging” of the couple vying for gold. After the Korean failure, Nina Mikhailovna completely left the number one team of the national team without mentoring, and the guys had to turn to Trankov, who was inexperienced in coaching. Later, Moser finally began to help Maxim.

“I’m not interested in old projects. I went a certain way with them, I am grateful to them for realizing my ideas, but I believe that at the right moment we all need to diverge and look for new ways of becoming.”– this is exactly how the coach spoke about her former students.

After a while, Nina Mikhailovna again plunged into figure skating – this time in the role of general director of the Moscow federation. Under her leadership, for example, the children’s “Battle of the Schools” was implemented. An interesting story for those who are still younger than juniors. Of course, there were also coaching tasks, but without much success.

“This is also a certain challenge for me. It’s no secret that not long ago I didn’t plan to seriously return to coaching. But everything came together here – both their desire to work and the attitude of our team of coaches. We are ready to get involved in this process, we are ready to invite leading Russian specialists to work with Natasha and Ilya”Moser told TASS.

Technically, Khabibullina and Knyazhuk are very well prepared. They have the most difficult jumps (triple lutz and loop), which helped them get closer to the top, confident lifts and all other paired elements.

The key point is instability. Both main competitions of the past season – the Russian Championship and the Spartakiad of the Strongest – ended for Natalia and Ilya without medals due to ridiculous mistakes, there is no other way to call it. Moreover, the guys broke the todes twice in the season; none of the other couples could “boast” of such a thing.

Moser can help Khabibullina and Knyazhuk hone the elements to the maximum – for example, bring the twist to the fourth level of difficulty. Plus judicial authority. At the country level, Nina Mikhailovna has much more achievements and administrative resources than Dobroskokov. If it is still unrealistic for Muscovites to fight against Mishina/Gallyamov and Boykova/Kozlovsky, all other things being equal, then the Perm duets can and should fight back by all means until they get too far ahead.

If she is truly interested in working with these skaters, Moser will certainly put everything into the collaboration. She has a very clear understanding of “ideality” in pair skating; she is critical of choreography and other subtleties within programs. Right now Khabibullina and Knyazhuk are the strongest in the country in terms of technique thanks to their jumps. If you improve the twist to a stable fourth level of difficulty and establish stability at crucial moments, they will be able to push even the current leaders.

❤️ Even more about figure skating in our Telegram, subscribe!