“Without Russian athletes, no one wants to skate” – Italian figure skater Righini

Russian and Italian figure skater Ivan Righini spoke about the situation of modern figure skating, which forced him to become a coach.

Righini is a two-time Russian junior champion, four-time Italian champion and now a coach at the Florent Amodio Academy in France.

– I would like to elevate figure skating a bit, because there are fewer and fewer skaters every year. Our sport is mega-complex and not a damn developed thing. At first, Russian athletes were beating everyone, so everyone wanted to finish, and now nobody wants to skate without Russian athletes. Let’s take a look at the latest World Cup in the pair sports category. 14 pairs of participants – when did this happen? Always came 30, always selected by qualifying. And now it’s not even worth wondering if you will be selected arbitrarily.

Figure skating is losing its popularity. The ISU is not funded as much as it could be, so people don’t know how to do big competitions. And now that the Russians have stopped coming and the popularity has generally fallen to zero, the hype has started to die down. And for it to appear, you need to create work that will manifest over the years. European figure skating needs to be lifted – it became interesting for me, because in general not everything is so good in figure skating, – Rigini told the championship.

Righini is a two-time Russian junior champion, four-time Italian champion and now a coach at the Florent Amodio Academy in France.

A source:

Championship