MOSCOW (Sputnik) — One year ago her life changed forever because of the Sochi Olympic Games. Yulia Lipnitskaya is today's feature on Sportstories.
Have you ever received 40,000 friend requests on social media in a single day? Have you ever seen a crowd of hundreds of people moving towards you trying to touch you? Have you ever been pursued by paparazzi? If not, you simply cannot understand what it means to be popular, an object of passion and craving.
All that madness, which hit Lipnitskaya like a ball of fire, reached some of us with its flames, just as it has for many people who have even a distant connection to the new star.
Strangely enough, only half a year before the Sochi Olympic Games, one did not even need a ticket to meet the future idol of millions.
Flashback to August at a skating rink in Gorki, just outside Moscow, where the Russian national team is training ahead of the new season – Lipnitskaya is performing for a group of "advanced" fans, the majority of whom, for all their "advancement," do not even regard her as a candidate for the national Olympic team. Meanwhile, Lipnitskaya talks candidly with reporters, shares her plans for the season and tells them about her new programs (by the way, just try to "get in touch" with her today). There is nothing at these training sessions that even hints at the coming craze around her.
It would be wrong to say that Lipnitskaya's rise was meteoric. Even during the fiasco surrounding Russia’s figure skaters at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games, figure skating connoisseurs attended all the stages of the Russian Cup just to see a little girl from Yekaterinburg who immediately struck everyone by the phenomenal extension of her spins.
Everything changed in 2011, when Yulia debuted in the Junior Grand Prix. By that time, she had been training in Moscow for two years under Eteri Tutberidze, a coach she chose with her mother's help. Her coaching style focuses on perfecting technique and achieving a confident execution, and Lipnitskaya fit right in, also constantly worked on her artistry.
Lipnitskaya progressed as each season passed owing to her new coach. She entered the international arena as quite an accomplished figure skater.
Nevertheless, in the four years leading up to the Sochi Olympics, Lipnitskaya remained in the shadows, while Adelina Sotnikova, Yelizaveta Tuktamysheva, Alyona Leonova and even Ksenia Makarova were always sent to competitions. Lipnitskaya only began to be noticed when she started beating her older well-known rivals.
Yet even after Lipnitskaya won all the junior competitions in the 2011-12 season, including the Final Grand Prix and the World Championship, and placed second at the Russian championships, it was still a long time before Yulia began to be viewed as a candidate for the Olympic team.
On top of that, her Olympic prospects and career came within a hair's breadth of disaster. In the fall of 2012, Lipnitskaya fell during a training session and hit her head on the ice, putting the athlete out of commission for several months.
With officials not providing more detailed comments on her injury, various rumors circulated, including that Lipnitskaya had been caught in a doping scandal.
Indeed, the numerous similar stories that emerged in the figure skating world confirmed that "well-wishers" are never happier than when they can spread some rumor or other.
Lipnitskaya recovered in time for the Russian junior championships, though she did not fare very well at the competition. Nevertheless, despite her fifth-place finish, she was among the three to be sent to the World Junior Figure Skating Championships in Milan. There Yulia was the second after Yelena Radionova, despite the difficulties involved in her recovery and preparation.
And so once again in late summer, she found herself at open training sessions. Subsequently, in response to a question during an interview about her strategy at the start of the season, Yulia said, "I won't get in over my head. I will be steady, and do what I can. And there will be nothing to find fault with."
Right away, Lipnitskaya started doing what she had promised. Meanwhile, other figure skaters were having all sorts of problems: Sotnikova’s performance was inconsistent, Tuktamysheva suffered a series of losses and Leonova was unable even to start the season well. Lipnitskaya won tournament after tournament.
At the Finlandia Trophy and Skate Canada competitions, Yulia asserted herself as a possible Olympics participant.
At the Moscow’s Grand Prix Finals, Lipnitskaya performed the best among Russians, finishing in second place. Approaching the Russian qualifying championship, the general understanding was that the two places on the Olympic team should go to Lipnitskaya and Sotnikova. And that was in fact the case.
At the Russian championship and the European championship, both figure skaters performed almost flawlessly, exchanging victories: Sotnikova won the national tournament while Yulia took the European championship. After the European championship, Lipnitskaya breathed a sigh of relief and admitted that qualifying championships had never been so difficult.
And so the sunny Olympic days in February arrived. People flew to Sochi in droves and figure skating tickets were sold out long before the start of the competition.
A year after the events, Maxim Trankov, a two-time champion in pairs skating, a far older and more experienced skater than Lipnitskaya, admitted that if he and Tatyana Volosozhar, not Yevgeny Plyushchenko, had been the first to perform, there might have been no guarantee that they would have performed flawlessly.
By the time Lipnitskaya appeared on the ice – a day after Plyushchenko, Volosozhar and Trankov – the spectators were already "warmed up." Nevertheless, they were hardly prepared for what they saw.
In both programs, Lipnitskaya simply went out and did her job. As she promised six months before, she did not get in over her head, nor did she provide any reason for criticism.
Combined with the wonderful music, Ilya Averbukh's astute interpretation of Mark Minkov's “Don't Give Up on Love” and the theme from “Schindler's List” put Yulia right on a silver ice platter for the overstimulated audience to be sent over the edge.
Yulia seemed to have taken that victory lightly: she sincerely and spontaneously rejoiced at her results, as Plyushchenko, the future two-time champion, held her by shoulders, as if guarding and protecting her like a little child.
Unsurprisingly, everyone looked forward to the performance by the "girl in red" in the individual event. The larger part of the audience was probably unaware that there would be another Russian figure skater in Sochi who could have appeared in the team event, Sotnikova, though the federation placed its bet on the more consistent Lipnitskaya.
Presumably, Yulia did not spend all her energy in the team event, as she was focused on the individual competition. However, it was impossible to satiate the public's love for her, which was growing every day.
Lipnitskaya left for Moscow to prepare in a calmer atmosphere. Did Yulia expect that she would have to enter her home skating rink through the back door and with her hood pulled down over her head? Did she know that in the eyes of many people, she was already a winner and that they did not need anything more? Did she realize that at that very moment, Steven Spielberg, the director of “Schindler's List,” would begin writing a letter to Lipnitskaya with an expression of gratitude for her performance on the ice?
Lipnitskaya suffered a fall on a triple flip in the short program, despite not slipping in a single training session the entire season. The 10-point gap from third place in the short program meant that Lipnitskaya was hardly in the fight for individual tournament medals. For that to happen, she would have had to execute a flawless performance in the free program, while her rivals would need to slip up.
Neither was the case. After her performance, Lipnitskaya bowed to the spectators as though apologizing to them, gratefully accepting the powerful support coming from the stands. Alas, Lipnitskaya was not destined to triumph in the individual event.
After the Olympic Games, she won silver medal in the World Championship. No one knows how difficult it was for the figure skater to prepare for that tournament. Sotnikova, who won the Sochi event and compensated the spectators for their disappointment over Lipnitskaya's loss, did not go to the world tournament.
Lipnitskaya said she would have to live through it, and then the next season would be easier. We have not seen Yulia involved in countless photo sessions or commercials, and neither she nor her coach has given countless interviews. Lipnitskaya has only appeared at a party once, saying that such events were not for her.
Yulia, then 15, found it difficult to cope with “post-Olympic syndrome.” She was unable to train effectively during the summer due to problems with her shoes. She had no problem with her motivation, but simply needed a well-deserved rest.
Perhaps such a response to popularity should be attributed to the skater's young age. Perhaps the decision to compete in both team events was reckless and fatal. Sometimes an actor who has played a character role cannot get rid of an obsessive image for the rest of his career.
This season, Yulia has managed to settle on a musical composition for her new routines. From all indications, her main stumbling block is getting the "girl in red" out of her head. Only then she will be able to move on.
