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As country slumps, Russian skaters just get better
She is warming up for the Winter Olympics -- the games of, say, 2010.
Her name is Svetlana and she is 8 years old.
Russia, sad, bedraggled Russia, is counting on her -- and thousands more like her -- to maintain its dominance in at least one realm of human endeavor: figure skating.
Russia makes few things these days that can compete on the world market. Vodka, caviar, Kalashnikov rifles, nuclear power plants, jet fighters, booster rockets -- the list gets pretty thin after that.
But Russians still know how to make gold-medal figure skaters better than anyone else in the world. Lately, while everything else in the country has been falling apart, Russian skaters have just kept getting better.
At the Nagano Olympics last year, Russians took the gold in the men's, pairs and ice dance competition, failing to win a edal only in the U.S.-dominated women's event.
At the World Figure Skating Championships in Minneapolis, the Russians did it again, taking the gold in all but the women's event, and winning the silver and bronze in that.
Now Russian women, a perennial weak point in the country's skating program, appear to be catching up to the men.
At the European Championships held this year in the Czech Republic, the Russians took first place in every event, and all three top spots in the men's and women's individual competitions. And they did it with some of their best skaters cooling their skates at home.
"If everyone from Russia had been allowed to compete, we would have taken the top five or six places in a row," said Raphael Arutunian, a prominent Russian coach whose best skater, Alexander Abt, skipped the European championships because of knee surgery.
The Russians' spectacular performance in Prague was a welcome tonic to a country that has become accustomed to nothing but bad news. The economy may be in shambles, the president ill and the army weak, but Russians can still skate circles around most of the rest of the world.
"Remember, not everything is lost," journalist Boris Minayev wrote in the popular Ogonyok magazine. "We still have this world of these sliding gods. It's real, it's ours, and in this world we're unbeatable. Remember, and smile."
The secret of Russia's figure skating success can be seen every day in rinks around the country, in places such as the Spartak Ice Palace, where young Svetlana skates in a class of about two dozen 8-year-olds.
These classes are the legacy -- in many ways unchanged -- of the vaunted Soviet sports machine, which created a brilliant and sometimes brutal system for culling and training the nation's best athletes.
In other sports, the system has retrenched or collapsed. In skating, thanks in large measure to the efforts of Valentin Piseev, president of the Russian Figure Skating Federation, the system is mostly intact.
Children from the age of 3 or 4 can attend daily skating classes; by the time they reach school age, they might spend half their day at the rink, five days a week. The best move up the ladder to better and better coaches.
In Soviet times, the training was free. Now there's a fee: At Spartak, it runs about $4 a month.
The system remains large and well-honed, and the Russians have hung onto many of the best Soviet coaches. It is a daunting thought to Jimmy Disbrow, president of the U.S. Figure Skating Association, who will try to challenge the Russians at the 2002 Olympics.
"Through many years, they've had a good plan, a good design," Disbrow said. "The Russians certainly have a number of good skaters in place right now. That will be the challenge for everybody else in 2002."
The Russians have good reason to be confident.
The current men's national champion, Yevgeny Plushchenko, is only 16 years old. The women's national champion, 26-year-old Maria Butyrskaya, has stiff competition from 17-year-old Julia Soldatov and 16-year-old Viktoria Volchkova. And there are plenty of other strong young skaters waiting in the wings.
But Piseev worries about the future -- and he has good reasons for this, too.
While youth skating programs remain strong in Moscow and St. Petersburg, there are signs of trouble elsewhere. Piseev estimates that 20 percent of the country's ice rinks have closed because of economic problems.
Moreover, by his count, Russia has about only 80 enclosed ice rinks -- just slightly more than the city of Minneapolis, which has 70. And most Russian rinks are rudimentary by international standards, lacking up-to-date gyms and other training equipment.
For that reason, many top Russian athletes and coaches have chosen to train in the West, mainly in the United States. If that trend continues, some warn, it could be the end of Russian skating dominance.
"There's only one way to compete with us," Arutunian said. "All the coaches should be bought out and moved to the United States and Canada. And then Russian figure skating will die. And that's what is going on."
The renowned Russian coach Tatiana Tarasova now works in New Jersey. Tamara Moskvina, who coaches world pairs champions Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, now works in the United States and also coaches an American pair, Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman. Other top Russian coaches work exclusively with foreign skaters.
Arutunian, too, is considering a move to the United States. If he goes, his skaters go with him.
"You know," said Abt, a 22-year-old who is considered a potential Olympic medalist, "in the United States we'd have good ice rinks, good conditions, good everything. And so we're probably going, because in the United States we'd have more possibilities."
Marina Druzik, who coaches young skaters at the Spartak rink, is among many who worry about the talent drain. As things stand now, young skaters learn from older, better skaters, and young coaches learn from people such as Arutunian, who drops in on Druzik's classes from time to time.
"It's a problem for Russia, and I don't know how to solve it," she said.
For now, though, she believes the future is bright for young skaters such as Svetlana, one of her pupils.
A few minutes earlier, the girl had been gliding about the rink on one skate, her other leg stretched horizontally behind her. Bringing day-glo pink mittens to her mouth, she began to blow kisses to her thousands of adoring -- and still quite imaginary -- fans.
"Sveta!" Druzik yelled to her across the crowded rink. "I don't recognize you today! Your jumps are awful!"
Caught short for just a second, the girl lost a bit of attitude, took a deep breath and went back to the hard work of practice. Her fans could wait.