This column follows the biggest event of the current ski season. Yes, yes, I’m talking about the massive collapse with Spartakiad injuries of Laura’s students.
What happened was not an accident, it was a big systemic problem. The column format allows me to explain in detail why this happens. Think about it as an athlete, a relatively new junior skier.
The “Laura” slope is really difficult: it was built for the Olympic Games by the best architects of world ski racing, but it was built for/for the best racers in the world. This is one of the reasons why many skiers don’t like training there in summer/fall – roller ski slopes (the same as the main ski slopes) require maximum concentration and are not forgiving of mistakes techniques.
I continue to argue that it is wrong to organize competitions on the slopes of Sochi for anyone other than the leaders of national skiers and biathletes.
Children, adolescents and amateur skiers (and the local Ski Track of Russia is also organized there) should not be exposed to even minimal risks. All the talk according to which “in our time, we fall and we get up again, it doesn’t matter” seems totally unacceptable to me. Before, you didn’t wear seat belts in cars and smoked in restaurants/planes – and all of that was allowed, but now it’s not. You can feel this way you want, but in our time the concepts of “safety” and “health” have a different meaning. And it’s protected by law.
On the other hand (every question has an “on the other hand,” right?), the girls who ran this race on “Laura” really didn’t do any miracles when it came to technology. skiing, let’s put it that way. I carefully studied the video recordings of the incident and came to the conclusion that some of them had not sufficiently worked on their descent technique. Again, is it their fault? No, it’s mostly the coaches’ fault.
It’s easier for me to say it with my own example.
At 15, you still don’t understand much. Not because she’s stupid – she just doesn’t have enough information or comparison material. And at the age of 15, I did not really understand why and why my coach Dmitry Borodin so stubbornly sent me to the hill and then climbed with me. Over and over, showing element by element how to ski downhill. First it’s just safe, then it’s safe and fast. Finally, it’s safe, fast and effective (so the muscles don’t get clogged). For this alone, I mentally thanked Dmitri Vladimirovich a thousand times. No one is safe from falling while skiing or rollerblading – and I fall several times a season, sometimes painfully. But without false modesty, only two girls in our team now know how to technically ski downhill: Natalya Terentyeva and me.
Once again: Kamchatka, volcanoes and alpine skiing have nothing to do with it – this is the wisdom of a coach who decided in advance that it is better to spend about 30 hours on perfecting his downhill technique rather than developing aerobic training.
The problem is that it is scalable training that gives relatively quick results. The technique of passing descents did not bring me much benefit in juniors – it only affects me now, on the most difficult routes, competing with the best. And coaches around the world expect results from their players before the age of 17-18.
There is a very important event in the lives of teenage athletes: the Youth Olympic Games. They take place every four years for athletes aged 15 to 18. The Olympic village, the opening and closing ceremonies, everything is like adults. For me personally, this is the biggest disappointment of my junior career. I really wanted to go, but I had no luck: in 2016 I was still too young, and in 2020, on the contrary, I was too old, I was already 19 years old. In general, an unrealized dream.
But now, in 2024, I look at the results of the Youth Olympic Games, and these are the thoughts that come to mind.
In Lausanne (2020 – approximately), the Swiss Siri Wigger worked miracles – two gold medals and one silver in three races. I remember when I saw her later that season at the World Junior Championships in Germany, I looked at her with apprehension and respect. There, in Oberwiesenthal, 17-year-old Siri was also much better than me – two bronzes. But a year later, at the same junior championship in Finland, I had already beaten her “on one leg”. Since then, Siri’s results, let’s say, haven’t improved and she’s skipping the current season altogether.
Of all the stars of the YOG in Lausanne, only the immense Swede Edwin Anger is visible. Well, ok, maybe the time for my generation hasn’t come yet? I looked at the names of the winners of the YOG 2016 in Lillehammer. Apart from Johanna Hägström, I don’t see anyone among the relative leaders in the World Cup – and they should be at the peak of their careers.
The thought can’t help but come: why rush into a career in endurance sports? It seems that the richest ski federation in the world, the Norwegian federation, has come to the same conclusion. This year there were no Norwegian skiers at the next Youth Olympic Games in South Korea – they were not sent (by the way, there were biathletes).
How many times have I heard the same sentence addressed to this or that young skier: “They pushed too hard in the juniors!” Maximum training volumes with relatively poor technique and a bunch of other issues like poor nutrition. Once again, it is wrong to say “forced”. Who forced him? Only coaches? Everyone knows very well that we have many young skiers who increase their training volumes themselves, in addition to training in the third or fourth pulse zone when the coach told them to train in the second. If these athletes read me now: this path leads to the podium among juniors, and then… failure, there are no reserves in the body.
I was lucky: none of my coaches – neither in Kamchatka, nor Artemy Gelmanov in the junior team, nor Yegor Sorin in the main team – was in a hurry and are not in a hurry. Three years ago, I could only race more or less five speed skates at the world level. Now I think there is a chance at other distances. Maybe try to imagine a remuneration system for coaches, according to which the results of their work are evaluated not by the number of junior medals today, but by their success in 5-7 years?
Source : MatchTV
I am Sandra Jackson, a journalist and content creator with extensive experience in the news industry. I have been working in the news media for over five years. During this time, I have worked as an author and editor at various outlets producing high-quality content that attracts readers from different demographics.
