MOSCOW — The coaching team surrounding
Kamila Valieva has come under fierce scrutiny after the 15-year-old Russian
figure skater was engulfed by a doping controversy at the
Beijing Olympics —
and none more so than Eteri Tutberidze.
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After it was confirmed Friday that Valieva had
failed a drugs test and could be kicked out of the Games, the hashtag “shame on
Tutberidze” began trending on Twitter in Russia.
Russia’s anti-doping agency RUSADA said that “an
investigation has been initiated into the athlete’s staff”.
It did not name the 47-year-old Tutberidze and there
is no suggestion of wrongdoing on her behalf, but it brings renewed focus on
the notoriously strict methods of a coach who has trained up a team of
brilliant young skaters tasked with winning gold in Beijing.
Valieva and her 17-year-old teammates Alexandra
Trusova and Anna Shcherbakova, who are also Tutberidze’s proteges, had been
expected to dominate the women’s singles — one of the Games’ most prestigious
and scrutinized events.
Breaking her silence on the Valieva doping affair,
Tutberidze told Russian television: “I am absolutely sure that Kamila is
innocent and clean.”
Tutberidze has been dubbed
Russia’s “Snow Queen” for
her icy demeanor and no-nonsense coaching style.
She was thrust into the spotlight during Russia’s
home 2014 Sochi Games, where her then-15-year-old star Yulia Lipnitskaya
mesmerized with a “Schindler’s List” routine and took home gold in the team
event too.
Tutberidze has since become one of the most
sought-after coaches in the world.
A striking figure with blonde curls and piercing
brown eyes, she is a household name in Russia, where supremacy in the sport is
a point of national pride.
But her rise to fame has been coupled with
controversy over her methods after several students abruptly left her team.
“I prefer to tell my athletes the truth because they
will hear flattery from others,” Tutberidze told Channel One in an unusually
candid interview in December, sitting with her puppy Michelle on her lap.
Dashed American dream
Born into a family of five
in
Moscow, Tutberidze aspired to become a singles skater but a serious injury
forced her to pursue ice dancing instead.
In the early 1990s she left the Soviet Union for the
US, but promises of an ice dancing job there fell through.
Stranded without work, she and her troupe struggled
to make ends meet.
They lived at a YMCA in Oklahoma City, where
Tutberidze said she narrowly escaped the 1995 terrorist bombing that killed 168
people.
She eventually found work as a skating coach, but
missed home.
Returning to a changed Moscow, she encountered
“failure after failure” searching for work until she found a job with an ice
circus, training amateurs.
She then returned
to coaching and in 2008 joined the Khrustalny ice rink in Moscow, where she
continues working today.
The rest is skating history.
After Lipnitskaya’s success at Sochi, another of her
skaters, Evgenia Medvedeva, took both the European and World titles in 2016 and
2017.
The following year, two of Tutberidze’s students
dominated the
Pyeongchang Olympics women’s singles event.
Alina Zagitova took gold and Medvedeva, in a bitter
loss, was left with silver.
Also under Tutberidze’s guidance, Trusova —
nicknamed “the Russian rocket” — became the first female skater to land a quad
Lutz and quad toe loop in competition — technically challenging jumps that
require four full rotations.
Just before they all headed to Beijing, Valieva,
Trusova, and Shcherbakova won all three medals at the Russian championships and
the European championships.
But Tutberidze’s success has been tainted by
behind-the-scenes scandals, with several athletes walking out on her.
Lipnitskaya left the team in 2015 and eventually
retired, while Medvedeva announced in 2018 she would move to Toronto and train
with Canada’s Brian Orser.
Tutberidze’s methods “work but as you get older,
with every year it’s harder to put up with it”, Medvedeva said in a YouTube
interview in August 2021.
She said she had never received any praise for
winning and that she had experienced “cruelty”.
Then in 2020 Trusova and another promising student,
Alena Kostornaia, announced they were leaving to train under Tutberidze’s
rival, four-time Olympic medalist
Evgeni Plushenko.
The decisions appeared to be motivated by internal
rivalries between Plushenko and Tutberidze.
“Will we change anything in our training system? No.
We are doing everything correctly,” Tutberidze wrote on Instagram at the time
of the departures.
Perhaps Russia’s most famous coach, Tatiana
Tarasova, said it was “ridiculous to even talk about a rivalry” between the
two.
“Eteri is an outstanding coach,” Tarasova said,
describing Plushenko as just a “beginner”.
Retired Russian ice dancer
Ekaterina Bobrova said
Tutberidze “can humiliate a person, but she does it, in her opinion, with good
intentions”.
And ultimately, Trusova, Kostornaia and Medvedeva
all returned to her.
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