What do you think about the advancing technical level of figure skating?
It’s very stressful… I think it’s natural for the sport to progress and that we have so many difficult elements in the programs. Of course, I worry about the health of people’s bodies, but in any profession when the level is raised so high, whether it’s nuclear power and doing a shutdown at your plant faster than anybody else in the world, or winning the Olympic title, you have to do more, try harder than anyone else. And if Yuzuru Hanyu is winning by a hundred points and doing three quads – then you also should try to do three quads. I’ve always said that this system is not beautiful, it’s not figure skating, but it’s what we have to work with.
Speaking of Yuzuru, you worked with him, you designed his Olympic winning costume. How was he, how was this experience?
He is wonderful. Japanese culture and people are very different from what I’m used to, and for every rhinestone, for every color, he needed people to sign off, and everyone had to be sure that it was perfect, it was good and it was lucky. In general he is such a nice guy and I’m very honoured that he remembers me.
How could he not?
I don’t know, I mean everyone skates and competes, and, of course, you have people that you love, like I love Zhenya [Plushenko], and you respect them and you can never forget them. But I never think of myself like that. And at the Grand Prix Final this year, when he said that when he was young he wanted to skate like Zhenya or me – I turned bright red and I was so happy. He is a very good guy and definitely his head is very level.
Are you planning to work with him more in the future?
It’s up to him. I don’t have a plan right now, but anyone who wants to work with me can call me. But also right now it’s kind of a conflict because I have a work on TV, I talk about skaters on television, and if I work with them, of course, I’ll feel better to talk about my students versus somebody else. And it’s just not how I want to commentate. I want to be without prejudice.
Do you have any favorite skaters among current skaters?
Right now I, of course, love Yuzuru. He raises the level of men’s skating, which I think is wonderful. Evgenia Medvedeva in the ladies. There have been so many great Russian ladies, and she, I think, is very special. In pairs – Stolbova/Klimov, and in dance I still love Cappellini/Lanotte.