He will now coach skaters at The Rink in Lakewood where my Ducks (Ice Hockey team) trains as well. Great to see a fellow Armenian reach great heights. USA will have a great shot at the gold!
Shame on USSF, that they can't provide a place for coaches like Rafael. I bet he would even be happy just with one rink for couple of professional groups, top coaches in Russia, like Tutberidze share rinks as well.
I Think he has no idea how difficult it is in other places at all. We coached in USA for 16 years and it is a paradise for figure skating compare to Europe!!!! Europe has no chance to compete with others because we have no conditions at all........So enjoy and appreciate :) It is much, much worst everywhere else besides Russia, USA, Japan and Canada :)
Yeah and perhaps doesn't also think about the economics of the rink. He might have 1/2 a dozen skaters at most. The rink he used to teach at (East-West The Kwan's rink) has hundreds of low-level skaters. You can't let a few customers dominate the entire ice surface. It wasn't a full sized rink and there were other rinks in the LA area that cater to high-level skaters like Toyota. It's not the other skater's fault Raf was skating at the wrong type of facility. Of course, now he has made the move to a more appropriate place.
I've never heard any European skaters who would get up at 4:am and skate at 5:00, and go to school and then skate again after school. Day in, day out for 10 years at least with the same passion like some American, Russian and Japanese skaters.
I'm a little confused, maybe something is getting lost in translation with English being his second language or maybe it's just me whose getting lost, but what is he saying there at the end? That he may retire soon? I believe I heard him say he'll be coaching for maybe 7 more years but then he starts describing how much he's sacrificing and he makes it sound like not only is it too much to ask him if he'll even be around for the next winter games but even about just next season...
He said it like hypothetically speaking, first he said "maybe I coach for another 7 years", then he said, but "maybe I do not want to coach for another 7 years", in which case it would be nice to have his own place where he could train a new generation of coaches. And given he already sacrificed so much for this sport he believes he deserves some recognition for it, at least in the sense of having his own place on the ice where he can do his job. He was just being realistic and evaluating all options, not telling he would retire any soon.
i've always wondered why US Skating doesn't have an olympic training facility for skaters, like they do in gymnastics. if they did, they could appoint a national coach to oversee the top skaters.
twizzler I believe there is an Olympic training center for figure skating in Colorado Springs. The Colorado Springs center is one of the US Olympic committee's 3 main training centers (the other 2 being in California and New York) and is the major campus of the three, with USOC having its headquarters at the site. There are many more USOC training sites spread across the country but the Colorado, New York and California sites are the main centers. Beginning something like 10 years ago the US figure skating federation began mandating all skaters assigned to events in the international Grand Prix series to attend the skating facilities at the Olympic training center in Colorado Springs for a week long (give or take) required "champs camp." The initial few years of this camp focused on informing skaters of US figure skating policies and procedures, giving seminars on how international selection was made for instance. The camp also had a stated goal of helping US skaters develop strategies to develop their personal and performance goals leading into the next winter Olympic Games. Within a few years the camp became more focused on athlete performance to help prepare US skaters for the upcoming season (and the next winter games). Under this new performance based camp design skaters perform their routines for the upcoming season where technical specialists offer critiques and suggestions for areas of improvement. Additionally skaters have access to strength and conditioning experts, sports psychologists, nutritionists, ISU judges and others all with the aim of helping all US skaters competing internationally that year to perform at their full potential. Skaters attend with their primary or secondary coach. This camp design is modeled off of programs that occur in many of the US's top international skating competitors, including in Canada. While US figure skating has this training center and "champs camp", you're right in that it's not to the same level that exists with US gymnastics and there really isn't any team head as exists in US gymnastics (at least no head with the same level of power). This may be largely because of the team nature of Olympic gymnastics where there's a direct goal to put together a team that will lead to a team gold medal (above individual medals). Figure skating is a more individual sport, where US figure skating makes selections for the Olympic bid based on who can place best in their individual discipline. Maybe this will start to change now that there's a team event that's been added to Olympic figure skating, but the team event is still somewhat of an afterthought, there's no real strategy involved in selecting a team, the top US skaters in each discipline make the team end of story really (whereas in gymnastics, there's strategizing about ensuring we have a well rounded team, where there are at least 2 gymnasts capable of consistently scoring high on each gymnastics apparatus, so we may take one gymnast who specializes in one gymnastics event and is not good in all the other events but is able to fill a gap for us where other gymnasts are weaker, etc).
"If they don't judge my skaters correctly, what do I do, hire mafia to kill them?"
Rafael, why are you so great :)
Antonio Thunder hunter
Love Rafael and his honesty !!!!
Rafael is a brilliant coach.
Rafael is a brilliant coach!
Great coach
He will now coach skaters at The Rink in Lakewood where my Ducks (Ice Hockey team) trains as well. Great to see a fellow Armenian reach great heights. USA will have a great shot at the gold!
Shame on USSF, that they can't provide a place for coaches like Rafael.
I bet he would even be happy just with one rink for couple of professional groups, top coaches in Russia, like Tutberidze share rinks as well.
holyshit nathan chen, won the bronze, with a broken hand, what a god like kurt angle with a broken neck
I Think he has no idea how difficult it is in other places at all. We coached in USA for 16 years and it is a paradise for figure skating compare to Europe!!!! Europe has no chance to compete with others because we have no conditions at all........So enjoy and appreciate :) It is much, much worst everywhere else besides Russia, USA, Japan and Canada :)
Yeah and perhaps doesn't also think about the economics of the rink. He might have 1/2 a dozen skaters at most. The rink he used to teach at (East-West The Kwan's rink) has hundreds of low-level skaters. You can't let a few customers dominate the entire ice surface. It wasn't a full sized rink and there were other rinks in the LA area that cater to high-level skaters like Toyota. It's not the other skater's fault Raf was skating at the wrong type of facility. Of course, now he has made the move to a more appropriate place.
I've never heard any European skaters who would get up at 4:am and skate at 5:00, and go to school and then skate again after school. Day in, day out for 10 years at least with the same passion like some American, Russian and Japanese skaters.
Good gue, such a strong personalistycznej but a bery human 😍
Молодец АРУТЮНЯН знает несколько языков.
I'm a little confused, maybe something is getting lost in translation with English being his second language or maybe it's just me whose getting lost, but what is he saying there at the end? That he may retire soon? I believe I heard him say he'll be coaching for maybe 7 more years but then he starts describing how much he's sacrificing and he makes it sound like not only is it too much to ask him if he'll even be around for the next winter games but even about just next season...
He said it like hypothetically speaking, first he said "maybe I coach for another 7 years", then he said, but "maybe I do not want to coach for another 7 years", in which case it would be nice to have his own place where he could train a new generation of coaches. And given he already sacrificed so much for this sport he believes he deserves some recognition for it, at least in the sense of having his own place on the ice where he can do his job. He was just being realistic and evaluating all options, not telling he would retire any soon.
i've always wondered why US Skating doesn't have an olympic training facility for skaters, like they do in gymnastics. if they did, they could appoint a national coach to oversee the top skaters.
twizzler I believe there is an Olympic training center for figure skating in Colorado Springs. The Colorado Springs center is one of the US Olympic committee's 3 main training centers (the other 2 being in California and New York) and is the major campus of the three, with USOC having its headquarters at the site. There are many more USOC training sites spread across the country but the Colorado, New York and California sites are the main centers.
Beginning something like 10 years ago the US figure skating federation began mandating all skaters assigned to events in the international Grand Prix series to attend the skating facilities at the Olympic training center in Colorado Springs for a week long (give or take) required "champs camp." The initial few years of this camp focused on informing skaters of US figure skating policies and procedures, giving seminars on how international selection was made for instance. The camp also had a stated goal of helping US skaters develop strategies to develop their personal and performance goals leading into the next winter Olympic Games. Within a few years the camp became more focused on athlete performance to help prepare US skaters for the upcoming season (and the next winter games). Under this new performance based camp design skaters perform their routines for the upcoming season where technical specialists offer critiques and suggestions for areas of improvement. Additionally skaters have access to strength and conditioning experts, sports psychologists, nutritionists, ISU judges and others all with the aim of helping all US skaters competing internationally that year to perform at their full potential. Skaters attend with their primary or secondary coach. This camp design is modeled off of programs that occur in many of the US's top international skating competitors, including in Canada.
While US figure skating has this training center and "champs camp", you're right in that it's not to the same level that exists with US gymnastics and there really isn't any team head as exists in US gymnastics (at least no head with the same level of power). This may be largely because of the team nature of Olympic gymnastics where there's a direct goal to put together a team that will lead to a team gold medal (above individual medals). Figure skating is a more individual sport, where US figure skating makes selections for the Olympic bid based on who can place best in their individual discipline. Maybe this will start to change now that there's a team event that's been added to Olympic figure skating, but the team event is still somewhat of an afterthought, there's no real strategy involved in selecting a team, the top US skaters in each discipline make the team end of story really (whereas in gymnastics, there's strategizing about ensuring we have a well rounded team, where there are at least 2 gymnasts capable of consistently scoring high on each gymnastics apparatus, so we may take one gymnast who specializes in one gymnastics event and is not good in all the other events but is able to fill a gap for us where other gymnasts are weaker, etc).