Rafael arutunian biography

Personal life.
Rafael is a champion figure skating coach.
Rafael Arutyunyan is an Armenian-American figure skating coach.

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Comings, goings and questions as coach Rafael Arutunian looks to next season

LAKEWOOD, Calif. -- In an upstairs locker room at Lakewood ICE, a skating facility with three rinks 21 miles south of Los Angeles, each dressing stall has a plate above it with the name of a figure skater or coach who regularly trains or teaches there.

On a recent afternoon early in what passes for the (brief) off-season in figure skating, odds and ends of clothing lay in the dressing stalls assigned to Team USA members Nathan Chen, Ashley Wagner, Adam Rippon and Mariah Bell. Michal Březina of the Czech Republic and Romain Ponsart of France have their fair share of personal belongings in the locker room as well, as do their coaches, Rafael Arutunian and Nadia Kanaeva.

Which of those skaters will be using the stalls next season remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: there definitely will be some new ones working with the only person who has coached U.S. singles skaters to World Championships medals since 2009 - Chen's gold last month and Wagner's silver in 2016.

Japan's Marin Honda, 16, the 20

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Making World Championships put Andrew Torgashev ahead of his skating game plan

The idea of covering figure skating is something of a contradiction in terms.

Oxymoronic, if you will, like covering all individual sports, in which athletes compete infrequently, train all over the world, and the media rarely sees them in practice. A far cry from my experiences covering pro football, baseball and hockey, when I saw the athletes nearly every day. The latter is what a journalist thinks of as covering a sport.

I wrote about Nathan Chen’s figure skating career for seven years, beginning with the 2016 U.S. Championships, which would be one of his many history-making performances.

I saw him only at competitions, when the chances to have insightful conversations are minimal.

Even though Chen was gracious enough to do several one-on-one telephone interviews with me, they were generally brief – even if he always spoke so fast you could get 20-minutes-worth of answers in a 15-minute call.

So I never had any misconceptions about really knowing Chen or his family or what he (and th

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Instructors & Private Lessons

Contact:seanrabbitt@ymail.com / ten80figureskating@yahoo.com

Number of Years Teaching:

16 years coaching

PSA Ratings / Rankings:
Registered Free Skate

Skating / Competitive Background:
- Member of Team USA
Skate Canada Autumn Classic International Bronze Medalist
- 14-time US National Competitor - 4 top 10 finishes (2019 8th place finish)
- 4-time Pacific Coast Sectional Senior Men’s Champion (2016-2019)

Students Achievements:

- Coach to national and international medalists, skaters representing Team USA and Team China.

- 2023 & 2024 US Championships Junior Women's Silver Medalist

- 2024 Chinese Winter Games Junior Men's Bronze Medalist

- 2024 US Championships Senior Women's Competitor

- 2024 Chinese Junior National Championships 5th place

- 2021, 2022, 2024 National Development Team Skaters

- 2015-Preset Pacific Coast Sectional Competitors

- Choreographer to national and international skaters from US, Japan, China, Philippines, Mexico, Canada, Korea.

Professional Accomplishments:
Coached many seminars around the US