The R-sport agency, citing a well-informed source, said that the eighteen-year-old Trusova decided to leave because of Tutberidze’s too harsh training methods. “She was no longer satisfied with the demanding training regime in Tutberidze’s group. She thought it was aggravating her injury,” said an anonymous source.
Trusova dominated the junior world championships in 2018 and 2019, but she is still waiting for the big senior gold. She has three bronze medals from the European and World Championships and finished second to her training colleague Anna Shcherbakov at the Olympics, even though she jumped five quadruple jumps in the freestyle. Before the medal ceremony, she was mixed with anger and disappointment. She cursed and cried, pushed away the members of the implementation team, including coach Tutberidze. She screamed that she hated figure skating and would never skate again. She stepped onto the podium for second place with smudged makeup and no sign of joy.
She didn’t finish figure skating, but she left the coach. She did it for the second time. In 2020, she tried to train with Yevgeni Plushenko, but returned after a year. Her current departure was sudden and unexpected, said Alexei Zheleznyakov, who works with Tutberidze as a choreographer. “For me it was like a bolt from the blue. I can’t see into Alexandra’s head and I don’t understand what is happening to her. Maybe she did it because of crazy teenage love. She has a lover there,” he told the Sport-Express website.
Photo: @_m2x2_, Twitter
Russian figure skater Yelizaveta Nugumanova.Photo: @_m2x2_, Twitter
According to him, Trusova tends to look for faults in others, instead of looking for them in herself. He also considers the timing strange, because the new season is already starting. “The coaches prepared programs for her, worked on them, put their soul into them. Daniil Gleichengauz looked for the right music for her and then stayed up late into the night to edit it. And Alexandra throws her braid and leaves. That’s ungrateful,” he got angry.
He recalled that the engagement with Plushenko was unsuccessful for Trusova. “I thought that the first transfer taught Alexander something, but it turned out not,” he added.
Trusova, like all other Russian figure skaters, is only preparing for competitions on the domestic scene. The international federation ISU banned Russian representatives from all international competitions after Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February, and there are no signs of that changing anytime soon.
