Yana Pulls Out Of GP Moscow

Yana Kudryavtseva has decided not to compete at the Grand Prix event scheduled for Feb 19-22. Her coaches cite her ankle injury, stating she's not fully healed and things need to be taken slowly if she's ever to return to her normal level. I agree with their assessment; Yana rested all of December but they tried to push her from 0 to 100 too quickly, having her train nine hours a day with no breaks in January. You could see in her podium training at Russian Junior Nationals that she could not concentrate or execute her skills cleanly, and sometimes she couldn't do the skills at all. There's no need to treat her like she is falling behind Rita and Sasha; as the three time World champion she will surely remain Russia's number 1 girl so long as the coaches don't get anxious and overdo it in training for the first half of the season. Get well, Yana!

2012 Olympic group champion, Anastasia Nazarenko, is also injured but will be back to training in a few weeks.