Total dominance on ice: how Eteri Tutberidze’s students conquer pedestals

Biography

Eteri Tutberidze is a person as mysterious as she is brilliant. About the coach’s personal life, we know exactly as much as she tells herself. There is no need to talk about her outstanding successes in her youth as a figure skater. But Tutberidze’s coaching school was nicknamed “a corporation of monsters” in a good way.

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Eteri Tutberidze and her students
Every year she puts 3-4 athletes on the ice who set incredible records and easily break these same achievements. Getting to Eteri is the dream of hundreds of girls and boys who are passionate about figure skating, and their parents. She does not refuse anyone, only a few withstand her methods of work. But then, from those who did not give up, truly ice stars grow.

Childhood and youth

Eteri Georgievna Tutberidze was born on February 24, 1974 in Moscow and became the fifth child in a large Georgian family: the coach has a brother and three sisters. As Eteri said in an interview, the father hoped that there would be another boy, but was not at all upset by the birth of his fourth daughter.

The Tutberidzes lived not far from the Church of St. Matrona, at the Abelmanovskaya outpost. The parents were not wealthy people, but they made every effort to ensure that the children did not need anything. The father of the future figure skater took on any job just to provide for his family, but the youngest daughter still often had to wear boy’s clothes for her brother (she had too much of an age difference with her sisters).

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Eteri Tutberidze's
mother believed that girls needed knowledge of foreign languages and mastery of a musical instrument at a professional level. The Eteri sisters went to German and English special schools, attended drawing classes, and learned to read and write music. And the athlete herself also received a musical education, graduating from the Ippolitov-Ivanov school in piano.

The youngest Tutberidze first saw graceful figure skaters gracefully skating on the ice, looking like little snowflakes, at the age of 4.5. This sight opened up by chance when the girl and her mother went to the Young Pioneers stadium to take her brother to football. Eteri began to passionately convince her mother to take her to the skating rink, and although she was adamant at first, the little girl managed to get into the group of coach Evgenia Zelikova.

Childhood and adolescence

Eteri is the fifth child in a large, friendly Georgian family (she has three sisters and a brother). The girl spent her childhood in the historical district of Moscow, not far from the Church of the Blessed Matrona.

Eteri Tutberidze with her mother and sisters

Eteri's parents were simple people: his father worked as a foundry worker at a factory, his mother was an engineer. Despite the difficult financial situation in the family, they tried not to deny their children anything and give them a good education. My father worked two shifts, and as soon as the family got a car, he worked as a taxi driver at night. But the girls studied music and foreign languages, and my brother was fond of sports.

One day, Eteri and her mother came to her brother’s stadium and saw the skaters there for the first time. It seemed to the little girl that these were not children at all, but little elves hovering above the earth, and she herself wanted to become like them. This is how four-year-old Eteri took to the ice for the first time.

Eteri Tutberidze as a child on the ice

Her first coach was Evgenia Zelikova, who immediately appreciated the baby’s physical abilities and her iron character. A few years later, out of thirty children, only five remained in the group, including Eteri. Eduard Pliner, Zelikova’s husband, took them in and began to train them into future champions.

Eteri Tutberidze's height is 172 cm

Tutberidze showed great promise, her achievements included a double Axel, triple Salchow and triple toe loop, but a serious injury prevented her further sports career. During an unsuccessful jump, the young athlete received a crack in her spine, which was not immediately detected, the rehabilitation period was delayed, and she was far behind the rest of the guys in technique.

Eteri had no intention of leaving the sport, and switched from singles to pair skating. Tatyana Tarasova, Elena Tchaikovskaya and other famous trainers trained with her, but they were never able to make her a champion.

Figure skating

Initially, 30 children trained in the group prepared by Evgenia Zelikova. But time passed, and only five of them remained - athletes who showed great promise. Eduard Georgievich Pliner, Zelikova’s husband, took gifted students under his wing. He turned out to be a very taciturn and strict coach, but the students respected their mentor very much.

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Eteri Tutberidze and Renat Laishev
Eteri said that he could explain a complex element in a few words in a way that others could not with dozens of sentences. And the wards of such coaches failed more than once, they fell into despair due to failed attempts to achieve what they wanted. And Eduard Georgievich came up, whispered, turned his shoulder, straightened his back with his hand - and even the most difficult element became obvious and doable.

However, professional sports are constantly associated with injuries. At first, it was about minor injuries and lack of stability in jumping, but soon Eteri received a crack in her vertebra. In an attempt to cure her daughter, Tutberidze’s mother took her to all kinds of doctors and bought numerous medications. The teenager was constantly injected with calcium. Eteri got back on her feet, but the treatment method had a side effect - the girl grew by 22 cm in 3 months.

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Daniil Gleikhengauz and Eteri Tutberidze
The figure skater came to the realization that she could not achieve success in single skating, and her considerable height of 170 cm also became an obstacle to this. Eteri didn’t want to give up the sport and therefore decided to skate in pairs. Tutberidze's coaches were Lidia Kabanova, Elena Tchaikovskaya, Natalya Linichuk, Gennady Akkerman, Tatyana Tarasova. The girl performed together with Vyacheslav Chichekin, Alexey Kilyakov and other partners.

However, the athlete’s adult skating could not be called enchanting. I had to leave Elena Tchaikovskaya when she decided to end her coaching career, sending her main student, Vladimir Kotin, out of professional sports. Natalya Linichuk trained more than a dozen pairs, and there was simply not enough time to work through the elements in detail with each student. Tatyana Tarasova gave all her attention to the couple Marina Klimova - Sergei Ponomarenko, who were to compete at the Olympic Games.

During her career, Eteri won only a few medals at the stages of the Soviet Union Cup. Disappointed with yet another mentor, the girl realized that she needed to change something in her life. And then, very opportunely, an offer came up to go on tour to America, which the skater gladly accepted.

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Eteri Tutberidze
At first, life in the States was not at all as cloudless as we would like for Tutberidze and the rest of the Russian ice ballet troupe. When the athletes arrived in Oklahoma, it turned out that some of the guys had invalid passports. Only Muscovites were allowed into the country, and the rest of the lucky ones who passed through had to wait for a month.

There was a catastrophic lack of money, and when the troupe was finally assembled, it turned out that the contract had been terminated due to failure to fulfill a number of conditions. For some time, the skaters lived in the building of a Christian volunteer organization, on the floor for the homeless. The house was damaged as a result of a terrorist attack in April 1995, and the artists dispersed to the families of local residents. The fire service worker who sheltered Eteri and his partner Nikolai Apter helped the guys find a new job in the United States.

Work in the USA

At first, life in the States was not at all as cloudless as we would like for Tutberidze and the rest of the Russian ice ballet troupe. When the athletes arrived in Oklahoma, it turned out that some of the guys had invalid passports. Only Muscovites were allowed into the States, and the rest of the lucky ones who passed through had to wait for a month.

Eteri Tutberidze as part of the ice ballet

There was a catastrophic lack of money, and when the troupe was finally assembled, it turned out that the contract had been terminated due to failure to fulfill several conditions. For some time, the skaters lived in the YMCA building, on the floor for the homeless.

Oklahoma terrorist attack

Soon, the first of a chain of bloody terrorist attacks occurred in the United States: extremists blew up a house that stood opposite the YMCA building. Instead, a pile of rubble and mangled human bodies rose, and a roar and screams of genuine horror were heard. The artists were taken to their families by local residents, and the fire service worker who sheltered Eteri and the girl’s skating partner, Nikolai Apter, also helped the guys find new jobs in the United States.

Coaching career

For 4 years, the skaters tirelessly took to the ice, but then they realized that they wanted to do something calmer. This is how Nikolai and Eteri began their coaching careers in San Antonio. The business was going quite well, but the girl missed her homeland. One day, Eteri made the final decision to move to Moscow. Over time, the former athlete managed to get a job in Zelenograd, and later in the capital at the Serebryany skating rink.

Many of Tutberidze’s students came to her at a young age and became practically family. To this day, parents of children who have shown an interest in figure skating are eager to find out where Eteri trains in order to send their children to her.

Eteri Tutberidze and Evgenia Medvedeva

Tutberidze’s coaching biography turned out to be much more successful and brighter than the figure skater’s performances. Now the name of Eteri Georgievna is a brand. Even fan pages created on Instagram and other social networks are often dedicated not to individual students, but to entire groups.

Among those trained by the honored coach of Russia are two-time Russian, world and European champion, two-time Olympic silver medalist Evgenia Medvedeva, European Championship medalist Sergei Voronov, Olympic champions Yulia Lipnitskaya and Alina Zagitova. Under the leadership of Tutberidze, Anna Shcherbakova, the first performer of two quadruple lutzes in the program, grew up, Alexandra Trusova was the first in the world to master the 4-3 cascade, Polina Tsurskaya won gold at the Youth Olympics. Alexey Erokhov won the World Junior Championships for the first time since 2004.

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Daniil Gleikhengauz, Alina Zagitova, Eteri Tutberidze, Elisabeth Tursynbaeva and Sergey Dudakov
The young men in Tutberidze’s group are rather an exception. She gives preference to girls, since it is easier to establish mutual understanding with them, they are dutiful, and boys “want to feel that they are loved, to be pitied,” and defiantly demand attention. But the word “pity” is not in the coach’s arsenal.

Eteri is often reproached for her tough approach to children. Psychologists are frightened by the fact that a child is instilled with the desire to be ideal, while being dominated by outside opinions. And as an adult, such a person does not realize his own importance as a person. According to Alexander Volkov, Tutberidze’s colleague and first teacher Alexandra Trusova, little girls live

“under enormous pressure and do everything she says. But when they become 15-16 years old, everything disappears.”

The coach herself does not hesitate to say that her players are the “material” from which the “product” is made. No other method that brings results has yet been invented, and the public thinks according to the principle “winners are not judged,” concluded the Sport24 portal.

Yulia Lipnitskaya at the Olympics in Sochi

Eteri received her first close attention from the sports press after the resounding success of her pupil Yulia Lipnitskaya. At the 2014 Games, the girl became the youngest single figure skater to receive the title of Olympic champion. In the same year, she won the European Championship, becoming the youngest winner of this competition in the history of figure skating.

At the end of 2020, Lipnitskaya left Tutberidze and moved to coach Alexei Urmanov. After this, rumors appeared accompanying the collapse of the famous tandem. The press talked about Yulia’s conflict with her coach and about the girl’s health problems. Experts analyzed the athlete’s diet, recognizing it as incorrect and provoking both physical and psychological diseases. A little later, Yulia’s mother announced her daughter’s retirement from sports.

However, one star was quickly replaced by other gifted athletes. Evgenia Medvedeva collected a scattering of awards at tournaments at all levels and became a trendsetter in ice fashion.

Alina Zagitova at the Olympics in Korea

In Korea, the talent of Alina Zagitova, champion in individual competitions, shone with all its facets. The figure skater also set a new world record for the amount of points earned in the short program. A year before the triumph, the girl became the winner of the Grand Prix final and the world champion among juniors.

In May 2020, it became known that Evgenia Medvedeva was ending her 11-year collaboration with Eteri. Thanking the coach, the athlete stated that this decision was due to the desire to “use new opportunities and other methods of the training process and continue to represent Russia at the highest level.” Canadian Brian Orser became Zhenya’s new mentor.

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Eteri Tutberidze and Vladimir Pozner
According to Tutberidze, Medvedeva did not dare to personally announce her decision. She learned about the departure of her best figure skater from the news; she did not answer Evgenia’s calls and SMS.

In a conversation with Vladimir Pozner in his author’s program on Channel One, Eteri said that she may be too demanding, but if you lower the bar, you risk falling out of the picture. And no one will take past merits into account. And Yulia and Evgenia, after their past great victories, relaxed a little.

Total dominance on ice: how Eteri Tutberidze’s students conquer pedestals

RIA Novosti sports columnist Andrei Simonenko provides five proofs that the athletes from her group, who conquer not only pedestals, but also the imagination, clearly did not waste time in the off-season, and also reports where fans can see this for themselves in the near future.

The incredible story of Eteri Tutberidze: surviving a terrorist attack and raising champions>>

Alexandra Trusova and her records

Some of what is happening in women's figure skating in modern times could be imagined, but not what Alexandra Trusova is doing. The two-time world champion among juniors already demonstrated at the pre-season test skates that she was ready for the transition to adult figure skating, performing three jumps with four rotations in the free program for the first time. All that remained was to wait for the 15-year-old figure skater to do the same in competitions.

Alexandra Trusova

We didn't have to wait long. At the Ondrej Nepela Memorial in Bratislava, Trusova not only won her first senior tournament, but also broke two world records for the sum of points - in the free program, where she again did three quadruples, and in the sum of two programs.

Hardly anyone doubts that the third record would have been broken, but this did not happen due to a nuance in the rules prohibiting quadruples in the women’s short program.

Eteri Tutberidze's ward became an international master of sports

No, this is not the machinations of the world behind the scenes - it’s just that the rules were written at a time when girls did not dream of quadruple jumps. Yes, Japanese Miki Ando in the early period of her career tried to do a four-revolution Salchow, but mostly she didn’t twist it enough and fell, so she soon abandoned these attempts. The rest considered it lucky to do the “3-3” cascade.

As for Trusova, she did not rest on her laurels and a couple of weeks after Nepela, at a tournament in Japan, she performed a free program with four quadruple jumps. One, however, turned out to be a minus, but this is completely unimportant compared to the scale of the pioneering activity of the Russian figure skater. A popular joke these days: shouldn’t Trusov be entered into men’s tournaments? Considering that not a single Russian singles skater has ever performed a free program with four quadruple jumps, there really is some humor in this sentence.

Where to watch: Skate Canada tournaments (Kelowna, October 25 - 27) and Rostelecom Cup (Moscow, November 15 - 17).

Alina Zagitova and her basketball

Everyone remembers how difficult the last season was for Olympic champion Alina Zagitova. For every athlete, great success is followed by a period of devastation, physical and mental, and the winner of the Pyeongchang Games also had to overcome the difficulties associated with growing up.

“I began to ride and train more consciously,” said then 16-year-old Alina during her first post-Olympic Grand Prix stage last season in Helsinki, but at the same time admitted that unnecessary thoughts began to interfere with her. “I started thinking about how to do this, something like that. The body remembers everything, but the head gets in the way a little,” the Olympic champion complained.

One can only imagine what experiences Zagitova’s coaching staff went through during that period. Needless to say, it was a matter of honor for Tutberidze to bring the young skater into adult skating without loss. Moreover, it was clear that the Olympic champion had not forgotten how to jump - she demonstrated this over and over again in training sessions. But at competitions, the skater’s nerves often failed her.

The author of these lines once witnessed a small exercise to gain pre-race calm that Zagitova performed: just before going on the ice, she threw one wad of paper after another into the trash bin. This kind of “basketball”, or rather, all the work of the figure skater and her coaches as a whole eventually bore fruit - Alina arrived at the main start of the season, the World Championships, in stunning shape and won a convincing victory.

Russian Alina Zagitova during demonstration performances at the World Figure Skating Championships in Saitama

Zagitova started this season calmly and confidently, as if she was putting one three-pointer on target after another. Yes, the matured Alina does not perform quadruple jumps, and no one, not even the most insightful specialist, can say whether she will perform them in the future. But, looking at Zagitova’s skating, the last thing you think about is quads. Elegance, grace, charm - this is what Alina strongly imbues her technical content with, which, by the way, is far from weak even in comparison with yesterday’s juniors. And I really don’t want to jinx it, but Zagitova has not yet made a single mistake in performing this content in any public speech. It would continue like this.

Where to watch: French Grand Prix (Grenoble, November 1 - 3) and NHK Trophy (Sapporo, November 22 - 24).

Anna Shcherbakova and her quadruple lutz

The Russian Championship in Saransk, held at the end of December last year, is still remembered as a triumph for the young students of Eteri Tutberidze. Actually, not in vain: he presented, among other things, the most intense and beautiful fight, which ended in the victory of Anna Shcherbakova over Alexandra Trusova with an advantage of only seven hundredths of a point.

Anna Shcherbakova at the Russian Figure Skating Championships in Saransk

And this season, Shcherbakova is also not far behind Trusova and, like Alexandra, has gone down in history. It was she who became the first figure skater to perform a four-turn lutz in adult competitions - the most difficult jump that exists and has ever been performed. This happened at the Lombardy Trophy tournament in Bergamo, and needless to say, Anna won there.

I don’t want to make any guesses, anything can happen, but so far the beginning of the season hints that three miracle girls who have moved on to adult skating and a matured miracle girl have every chance of ending up in the same company not only in training with Tutberidze, but also in the Grand Final. at in Turin. And these competitions can eclipse both Saransk 2019 and everything that came before.

Where to watch: Skate America (Las Vegas, October 18-20), China Cup (Chongqing, November 8-10).

Alena Kostornaya and her triple axel

“All the skaters in our group are tasked with learning the triple Axel over the summer,” Daniil Gleikhengauz, a member of the coaching staff of Eteri Tutberidze’s group, told RIA Novosti in March. The reason for the importance of this task is clear: if quadruples in the women’s short program are prohibited by the rules, then triple axels are very much allowed. Which, in fact, has been used by the 2020 world champion Elizaveta Tuktamysheva for several years now.

Figure skating. Finlandia trophy. Women. Short program

Well, Alena Kostornaya did the best job with this summer task. This skater is the only one of the trio, which fans often call “TSCHK” (Trusova - Shcherbakova - Kostornaya), who does not do four-turn jumps. But she has the recognition of the judges for the second, component assessment, and now also significant reinforcement in the form of a three-and-a-half-turn axel. Kostornaya demonstrated her confident command of it already at official training sessions on the eve of the first start of the season - the Finlandia Trophy tournament.

In the short program in Finland, Alena did not perform a triple axel, but she was still ahead of Tuktamysheva, who made this jump clean, by almost five points. But in the free program Kostornaya promises to go for maximum difficulty. If the young skater in the future adds quadruple Axels to the triple Axel, then... However, let’s not anticipate events.

Where to watch: Finlandia Trophy tournament (Espoo, October 11 - 13), French Grand Prix (Grenoble, November 1 - 3), NHK Trophy (Sapporo, November 22 - 24).

Kamila Valieva and her Picasso

There are many stars and asterisks in Eteri Tutberidze’s group. It is almost impossible to list all their achievements in one text. In addition to the above, it is necessary to mention Daniil Samsonov’s reaching the final of the Junior Grand Prix - the one who can refute the thesis of Eteri Georgievna herself that she is worse at working with boys. And the success of very little Sofia Akatieva, who does triple axels and quadruple jumps at 12 years old.

Kamila Valieva

But with all the variety of choices, I especially want to mention Kamila Valieva. Tutberidze herself named the composition “Girl on a Ball” performed by this particular figure skater as her favorite program of last season. Valieva appears in it in the image of the heroine of the painting of the same name by Pablo Picasso and does it so impressively that even the granddaughter of the famous artist Diana admired it and invited the 13-year-old athlete to visit her.

Predictions regarding such early juniors are a thankless task, the example of so many athletes is proof of this. Nevertheless, Valieva has everything to literally in a couple of years outshine those skaters who are making history now. An innate sense of music, plasticity, choreography - and from the beginning of this season, a quadruple jump. So far there is only one sheepskin coat (more precisely, in the free program - two), but if others are added, Kamila will have no equal.

Where to watch: Junior Grand Prix Final (Turin, December 5 - 8).

Personal life

Eteri's family life is shrouded in mystery and a little spiced with gossip. Tutberidze has a daughter, Diana, born in 2003. The coach claims that the girl’s father is her husband, a certain Mr. Davis, who did not want to move to Russia with her. In professional circles it is believed that the father of Tutberidze’s daughter is Sergei Buyanov, the husband of Elena Vodorezova. Be that as it may, the girl followed in her mother’s footsteps and successfully competes among juniors.

Eteri said that her daughter was not entirely healthy. Diana Davis, due to the fault of doctors, suffers from hearing loss, which developed while taking antibiotics, and tries to live a full life. She attends her mother’s training, but on the ice the relationship is purely professional.

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Eteri Tutberidze and her daughter Diana Davis
Figure skating fans learned from Tutberidze’s Instagram that the students’ sporting achievements somewhat smoothed over her personal tragedy. Eteri’s parents did not see their daughter’s triumph: her father died before the Olympics in Sochi, the coach went to Pyeongchang, realizing that her mother was terminally ill.

Tutberidze did not talk about this before the tournament, only in March 2019 she posted a photo of her family and friends on her account and added that she had “turned over this page of life” and was moving to new heights. By the way, the page of the champions' mentor is designed in a business style - there are images of his wards and colleagues, videos from training in which the younger generation easily performs quadruple jumps. Eteri is in no hurry to flaunt herself, for example, in a swimsuit.

Eteri Tutberidze now

Eteri Tutberidze’s students continue to please the coach with new high results. At the European Championships 2020, Alina Zagitova won silver, losing only to Sofya Samodurova, the figure skater had the same medal in the Grand Prix final.

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Eteri Tutberidze and her team in 2020
The entire podium of the World Championship, one might say, was occupied by Tutberidze’s students, past and present: the victory went to Zagitova, 2nd and 3rd places to Elizabeth Tursynbaeva and Evgenia Medvedeva. Alena Kostornaya won the junior Grand Prix, for the second time in a row she received bronze at the Russian championship and silver at the national junior championship. Alexandra Trusova and Anna Shcherbakova are performing consistently.

These and other young stars, as well as recognized masters of figure skating, will take part in Eteri Tutberidze’s ice show called “Champions on Ice.” Articles have already appeared in the press that the coach is looking towards the entertainment industry and, perhaps, will soon compete with Ilya Averbukh and Tatyana Navka, whose performances attract tens of thousands of spectators.