What happened?

It became known the day before that Ali­na had stopped com­mu­ni­cat­ing. It was report­ed that Gor­bache­va dis­ap­peared on the evening of August 28 after train­ing: she was last seen at the Chkalov Are­na at about 19:00, then traces of the girl were lost.

Through­out the day on Tues­day, a search was con­duct­ed for the fig­ure skater, who unex­pect­ed­ly showed up in the cin­e­ma of one of the shop­ping cen­ters in Moscow. The cap­i­tal’s pros­e­cu­tor’s office report­ed that Ali­na’s life and health were not in dan­ger, and no ille­gal actions were tak­en against her. Sub­se­quent­ly, Gor­bachev was brought in for ques­tion­ing to under­stand the rea­sons for the inci­dent.

Chose the street

An RT source in law enforce­ment agen­cies report­ed details of the con­ver­sa­tion with the girl. It turned out that after her dis­ap­pear­ance, Ali­na spent the night on the stairs in the entrance of one of the res­i­den­tial build­ings next to the train­ing are­na. She spent the entire next day out­side — walk­ing in the park and shop­ping near Voloko­lam­sk High­way.

It is alleged that the skater knew about the search oper­a­tion — she saw news on social net­works that they were look­ing for her. Tired dur­ing the walk, Gor­bache­va went to the cin­e­ma to sleep dur­ing the show. That’s where the police found her.

Versions

Var­i­ous ver­sions of why Ali­na might have dis­ap­peared appeared in the media — from mur­der to per­son­al prob­lems. If the first sce­nario was quick­ly aban­doned, the sec­ond one still remains rel­e­vant.

It is known that since the age of 9, Gor­bache­va has lived with her men­tor Sofia Fed­chenko — this deci­sion was made to make it more con­ve­nient for Ali­na to get to train­ing. Some pub­li­ca­tions wrote that the girl had a quar­rel with her coach short­ly before her dis­ap­pear­ance and she even want­ed to leave the team. Fedchenko’s col­leagues famil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion denied the exis­tence of a con­flict, and today, August 30, Ali­na Gor­bache­va her­self made a refu­ta­tion.

The girl asked the pub­lic for for­give­ness for “mak­ing every­one ner­vous and wor­ried.” She not­ed that she is at home “with her beloved coach and moth­er.” “Don’t wor­ry, my action has noth­ing to do with fig­ure skat­ing and Sofia Ana­tolyev­na. I will train with my team and delight you with new per­for­mances! We are fine”,” the ath­lete wrote on social net­works.

Reaction

What hap­pened to the girl did not go unno­ticed by promi­nent rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the sports indus­try. Hon­ored Coach of the USSR Tatyana Taraso­va spoke out about Alina’s dis­ap­pear­ance and pub­licly con­demned the skater. In a con­ver­sa­tion with the Sport24 por­tal, she stat­ed that Gorbacheva’s act sug­gests that “the new gen­er­a­tion doesn’t care about every­thing and every­one.” “They were look­ing for the per­son, they thought that she was not alive. And she sits in the cin­e­ma and watch­es a film. You need to ask her about this trick. Didn’t she know that all of Moscow was look­ing for her?!” — Taraso­va won­dered.

There were also those who spoke out in defense of Gor­bache­va. Thus, Russ­ian ice danc­ing cham­pi­on Eliza­ve­ta Khu­daiberdie­va urged not to blame Ali­na for what hap­pened. The fig­ure skater, who along with vol­un­teers joined the search for the girl, asked the pub­lic to aban­don the hate and show under­stand­ing towards the ath­lete. “Believe me: an ath­lete, when there is no sup­port and under­stand­ing near­by, no friends with whom to share, who is accus­tomed to rely­ing only on him­self, begins to solve prob­lems on his own. And that some­times leads to what hap­pened.“she said.

Who is guilty?

There is no spe­cif­ic answer to the ques­tion of why Ali­na decid­ed to escape. At the same time, the media call her dis­ap­pear­ance a “cry of lone­li­ness.”

Appar­ent­ly, the sit­u­a­tion in Gorbacheva’s fam­i­ly can­not be called smooth: she does not com­mu­ni­cate very often with her moth­er, although she lives in Moscow, the girl’s father is far away — in Krasnodar. The grand­moth­er even believes that coach Fed­chenko stole her grand­daugh­ter from her and for­bade her to com­mu­ni­cate with the fam­i­ly for three years.

It is pos­si­ble that the stress of what was hap­pen­ing and the tough sched­ule of prepa­ra­tion for the com­pe­ti­tion could real­ly affect the morale of the teenag­er. Sofia Fed­chenko also spoke about what the girl has to fight with. Accord­ing to the men­tor, the ath­lete found her­self sep­a­rat­ed from her fam­i­ly, and although the coach her­self tries to behave as gen­tly as pos­si­ble with her at home, it is still very dif­fi­cult for the girl. “Espe­cial­ly tak­ing into account puber­ty, when feel­ings become more intense, and some things are per­ceived as very offen­sive, although you don’t even put that into them.”,” Baza quotes Sophia as say­ing.

We can only hope that the prob­lems will be resolved, and that what hap­pened will not affect the fig­ure skater’s career in any way — Tatyana Taraso­va has already announced this pos­si­bil­i­ty.