Volosozhar & Trankov Expecting a Baby, and Further Not-Yet-Retired Olympic Champion News

Reigning Olympic champions will become parents next year; ladies champion Adelina Sotnikova may skate on competitive ice and reality TV ice in the same season.

Last month when they didn’t show for the Russian test skates, their coach confirmed 2014 Olympic pairs champions Tatiana Volosozhar & Maxim Trankov would not be competing this season. What nobody realized just then was there was a reason for that besides them just not wanting to compete anymore. Rumors started to surface more recently, and now the skaters have confirmed it in a new interview: Volosozhar is pregnant.

The two skaters, who married in August of last year, announced that she is now four months in, and due in February. More surprisingly, they also declared that they still want to participate in next year’s Olympics, if possible. It has generally been thought they wouldn’t have the motivation, and Trankov even admits as much. But now they speak of this as giving them new inspiration. Volosozhar hasn’t even left the ice yet, though she is training reduced hours. She apparently has also been asking advice from other elite female athletes who came back after giving birth. They may even be looking at the precedent of 2008 World ice dance champions Isabelle Delobel & Olivier Schoenfelder. This French team competed at the 2010 Olympics less than half a year after she gave birth. They were actually not fully back in shape for it, but of course Volosozhar will have a full year to recover.

While she is off the ice, Trankov will keep himself in form, participating in Ice Age (Ледникового периода), a skating-with-celebrities show that is very popular in Russia. The entire cast for their upcoming fall season, in fact, was announced earlier this week. One of the reasons fans though this pregnancy announcement might be about to happen was because Trankov was in it and Volosozhar wasn’t. But his wasn’t the most intriguing name in the cast even then…

Adelina Sotnikova to take another reality TV break?

BEIJING, CHINA – JULY 15: Sochi Winter Olympics champion Adelina Sotnikova of Russia performs during the 2016 ‘Amazing on Ice’ at Capital Indoor Stadium on July 15, 2016 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

2014 Olympic ladies champion Adelina Sotnikova is no stranger to reality contests. In 2015, while she was taking the entire post-Olympic season off due to injury, she competed on the Russian version of Dancing with the Stars, coming in second.  (Her partner was the internationally known Gleb Shevchenko.) She may do it again as a professional partner on Ice Age. Her name appeared on the initial cast list. At the same time, word was she would still compete at Russian Nationals. The series finishes airing in December, so this was theoretically possible. But losing the training time would be very difficult indeed. In a ladies field Sotnikova drowned in last year, it might easily be fatal.

Days later, her name disappeared from both the Ice Age website and the website of the Russian TV channel that airs it. But today, Alexander Gorshkov, the president of the Figure Skating Federation of Russia (FFKKR), spoke of Sotnikova participating in it. If he hadn’t, it might have seemed likely the FFKKR had forced her to withdraw. She cannot participate in any skating shows without their approval, or she would forfeit her Olympic eligibility. The Russian federation is known for interfering with their skaters’ choices and dictating to them. Gorshkov, in fact, also spoke of Sotnikova working with the federation on her training schedule. Rumor claims that Sotnikova kept her coach Elena Buyonova in the dark about it. But it doesn’t look like she kept the FFKKR in the dark.

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Nonetheless, we are left uncertain what is going on. Ice Age premieres in October, so we will certainly find out whether she’s in that. But even then, the way Gorshkov talks about it makes it sound like Sotnikova won’t participate in the competitive season at all. That would further decrease her chances of getting back to the Olympics.