Athletistic / Figure skating. The Olympic champion of the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City (USA), Russian figure skater Alexei Yagudin, commented on the growing exodus of Russians to teams from other countries. According to him, this should not have a negative impact on Russian sport.

“In Russia, like in hockey, in figure skating, there is a long reserve bank, we have a large number of talented young people. When a person moves from one coach to another or changes sports citizenship, there is no point in commenting on this. until you see the final result. If a person moved to another country and something worked out for him, then we can say that, unfortunately, it was a loss for our country.

But you should always keep in mind that this is not theater or cinema, where you can act until your gray hairs turn gray. The professional life of an athlete is short, so everyone is free to decide what to do and how to act. At the moment, I see no reason to say that Russian figure skating has lost something,” Yagudin was quoted as saying by TASS.

In 2024, several talented figure skaters from Russia changed their sports citizenship. Sofya Samodelkina received permission to compete for Kazakhstan, Daniil Grishin will now represent France, Sofia Titova and the Karina Akopova/Nikita Rakhmanin duo became members of the Armenian national team, the Ekaterina Geinisch/Dmitry Chigiryov duo went to Uzbekistan, Heinrich Hartung and Ulyana Tashkinova moved to Germany. Alisa Ovsyankina and Annabel Morozov also received recognition from the Russian Figure Skating Federation.

Since March 2022, Russian figure skaters have been deprived of the opportunity to participate in competitions under the auspices of the International Skating Union (ISU).



Athletistic