Interview with Alex K:
https://www.inthelopodcast.com/news/2018/11/06/episode-16-bonus-transcript
On his new coaches/going back to Russian training, and how long he was training before Helsinki:
‘I think that for me, I was very happy to switch coaches because I wanted something different. I think that Peter and Darlene [Cain] are great, but unfortunately, I wanted to be somewhere else, and so for me, what was different is that I came back to the Russian way of training, the Russian technique. And I think I really like it because for me, what Olga and Alexei have done as of right now is a lot, because I started training very recently, and I say six weeks. For me, in six weeks do what I’m able of doing right now is a very, very good result, and I think not only do they kind of guide me through jumps, but they also help me guide for my adulthood, as I'm becoming an adult, and I start living on my own, and it really helped me kind of figure out how to train, how to handle myself, and really help me pace myself to be on the right path to success.’
Getting his jumps back and his goals:
‘So for me, I had to recover my jumps, I have to get them back to a consistent level, and then I had to learn the quad, so I think for me, the biggest goal, especially for this season and long-term, is learn as many quads as I can while staying injury-free, and also working on incorporating good choreography, good transitions, and stepping up my program components, and incorporating that with quads together.’
On quads:
‘So as far [for] the quads, it’s really getting close. I’ve fallen a couple of clean ones, I learned a couple of you know, I land most of them at 70%. It’s always the loop, but I don’t really practice the loop that much because of my foot, and it kind of stops me from that because I also have to practice my combos, flip, and whenever I do a quad loop, it kind of irritates my foot. Not so much pain, but my foot just can’t at the moment. It can’t handle that much of pressure. So we’re kind of working on a triple loop and kind of getting it more up in the air and preparing for the quad. As far as the quad, I’ve been very careful with that, so we’ve tried a couple of times, and it’s been very good, but you know, Alexei and Olga want to make sure that we’re staying with the plan for the injury, so I have no pain.’
On 4T:
‘That’s been kind of a discussion, which is really fun, because Alexei and Olga, they’re like - Alexei was like, “quad toe is very easy, everyone does it.” And I start doing my triple toe, and he goes, “oh you can do it, easy”, but for some reason, I am scared of the quad toe. So I tried it a couple of times, and it was very good, and I’m like, okay, I can actually do it, and he puts me on the pole harness or something like that, and now they’re clean, and then I go do it on my own, and he goes, “when you’re scared, you can’t do it,” but I’m like, I don’t know, there’s something about this jump, so maybe if I can get over that and trust myself to do it, maybe quad toe would be my new element, and nobody would think that I would do it.’
On the new scoring:
‘I think that the rules, everything, it's kind of like some people don't like it, some people like the new rules, but to me, it's very interesting because it really, really changed the sport. So now that we’re looking into this, it's much much easier to lose, and it really comes down to you cannot fall, and you cannot make mistakes ...
So you can either go safe - with the new system, you can either go safe and always be ready to beat somebody who possibly could fall, or you can try stuff and kind of catch up, and once you can do that, you'll be unbeatable. So I think that this system opens the possibilities for some of the skaters.’
), I think the criticisms were aimed more at USFS (not Jason) for choosing Jason to be on the World team when it wasn't entirely clear whether he would recover from his injury. I don't think they were all necessarily Vincent fans.
