Tat'yana Tarasova: cramps on ice can end only in one thing - death
RIA Novosti visited Tat'yana Tarasova’s at her country residence and learned from the legendary coach why she continues to believe in Kseniya Stolbova, why Adelina Sotnikova and Yuliya Lipnitskaya failed where Alina Zagitova succeeded, and why the coach must bear full responsibility for each single student.
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Q: 17 years ago, having won your seventh Olympic coaching medal with Alexey Yagudin, you told me in an interview you would like to take a pairing of athletes and end your coaching path with where you once started. Now almost every day you come to Novogorsk, where Kseniya Stolbova and Andrey Novosyolov skate, to help their coach Nikolay Morozov. Why?
A: Morozov asked me, I agreed.
Q: You and him parted not in the best way back then?
A: I'm not vindictive. Kolya is a talent, a person with whom I spent more than a year side by side. I know how he does his work, I taught him this myself, and now it’s very interesting for me to observe what can come out of this. Thank God that Novosyolov received permission to perform for Russia, and further, as they say, we can only try.
Q: A year ago, when Stolbova with a new partner became a couple, I did not get the impression the leadership of the federation considers these skaters as candidates for a place in the national team.
A: I would say that there was a certain interest in the project, it was just too early to talk about some prospects for the duet. I would be more guided now by the opinion of Lyudmila Velikova, who raised Stolbova in her group.
Not so long ago, she wrote me she would very much like for Ksyusha to take pair skating in her own hands this season and become the world leader in pair skating.
Q: From your point of view, is this real?
A: Why not? We don’t have many strong couples. And Stolbova is an incredible talent. I always saw the same talent among the Chinese (two-time world champions Wenjin Xu / Tsun Han). When they slide, it is not at all visible how they are pushing, what efforts are being put into it. Some people traverse the whole ice in just two strokes. Ksenia has always had the same quality. She is all filled with internal energy, the energy of music. I adore her since childhood, from the very day that Velikova showed her to me. Kseniya had to go through a very difficult path to get to her current state. After the injury her leg simply dangled, she couldn't walk except on crutches - I saw it with my own eyes. And no one in the previous group even considered it necessary to give the Olympic champion the opportunity to recover, go for treatment to Germany or somewhere else.
Q: Kseniya told me that her leg was healed primarily thanks to your help.
A: I don’t think that I did something out of the ordinary. This, in my understanding, is a common thing. If you have money, help someone who needs help. I saw how Kseniya first came out on the ice in America. I saw how she began to ride on one leg and was unable to perform a bracket turn or rocker. She couldn’t do anything. Then, little by little, the restoration of elements began, landing her jumps on that leg. It really was a colossal journey. And if the guys show a result this season, I personally will consider this a great victory for Russian sports.
Sometimes fun, sometimes tough
Q: For a long time I’ve been trying to understand how, for a very long time, you led all who came to you to become Olympic Champions, why this does not work for your colleagues? After all, the same Mikhail Kolyada in his motoric talent and plasticity is no less gifted than Alexey Yagudin was.
A: Yagudin always had a very valuable merit: he loved competitions. He began to compete with everyone in turn the day before the start of competitions, in training. He worshipped this state, sought for this competitive edge. And he never gave up jumping.
Q: Can this be taught?
A: Can. But you need to learn this from childhood, as Eteri Tutberidze teaches her athletes. In training she never allows you to leave the jump or throw it only halfway. This develops a certain skill. I like, for example, how Sasha Samarin works in this regard. He also really does not like to throw jumps away.
Q: But the very same Ilya Kulik, when he came to you from Viktor Kudryavtsev, non-stop threw “butterflies” (popped jumps) in training. How did you bring him around?
A: I did this from the very first day of our working together. At first, Ilya constantly kept repeating to me that he did not see any problem at all whether he was jumping “butterflies” or not. I constantly explained that any athlete should first of all work with his head. If a person ceases to control what he is doing in training, this means that his head switches off. And if you don’t acknowledge the problem, don’t want to fix it, there’s no reason for us to keep working together, because no matter what, nothing will work. You can talk a lot about this, but only with a certain attitude of the student towards you. If he absolutely trusts you, he will do as you tell him, he will follow you. And then you will succeed. If you know how to do it.
For example, for a very long time I wanted Vali Chebotaryova (coach of Mikhail Kolyada and Stanislava Konstantinova) to have great success. But for this you need to work not with those with whom you are comfortable, but to contact people who are professionally stronger than you. You need to look for such people, learn from them. As I myself studied under Leonid Moiseyevich Raitsin. If it were not for him and his in-depth knowledge of speed-power training, I could never have prepared Kulik to win the Olympics.
Q: It seems to me that, in comparison with the current coaches, you were always in a somewhat privileged position: you were visited by athletes who initially understood that they needed you much more than you need them.
A: It was only like that later. At first, my skaters were those expelled from other groups of the Young Pioneers Stadium for lack of prospect. Ira Moiseyeva / Andrey Minenkov, Tanya Voityuk / Slava Zhigalin, Natasha Bestem'yanova with Andrei Bukin. Later, when the first results appeared, others began to ask for me. Marina Klimova and Sergey Ponomarenko however, when they came to me before the Games in Albertville, I honestly told them that I really did not like our first two training sessions. And when Marina continues to tell me how to work with her, I will not come anymore.
Q: Most of the current coaches, it seems to me, at heart are very afraid of losing a student, especially if he has already achieved some significant results. How to keep an athlete if he begins to think about changing coaches?
A: The solution here is the same - to continuously improve your coaching level. There is no other way. A coach is a person who should develop an athlete, he should be interested in him all the time. I must be more knowledgeable, be able to explain why I take this or that music for the program, where it was conceived, what was the idea behind it. Our sport is continuous creativity. Yes, there is a lot of technical work, but it is silly to carry it out in each training session, it will get tired very quickly. The athlete, of course, must know his weekly plan, but the construction of each lesson, the tone of the training should be different. Sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it’s tough, but it’s always interesting. Perhaps I was lucky in this regard, but no one ever snapped. Not even the boys.
Q: Actually, I remember how, at one of Kulik’s training sessions in Marlborough, you threw a stopwatch after him, smashing it on the ice.
A: Wow, but I don’t remember that anymore. When the training ends, I like to suddenly offer athletes something else to do. But in the case of Kulik, when I turned away for a second at the end of training, he had vanished off the ice. He was very tired then. Just dropped down in the locker room. But there was never such a thing that he would not listen to me while we worked together.
Five quarters Kamila Valiyeva
Q: Your student, Ilya Kulik, was the first to win the Olympics with a quad jump. Alexei Yagudin in 2002 jumped two quadruples. In Pyeongchang, Nathan Chen did six such jumps. You don't feel that in comparison with modern times, the previous men's skating was somehow completely insignificant in terms of complexity?
A: At that time we were pioneers. After all, it doesn’t happen that today you only do triple jumps, and from tomorrow on all the quads. Yagudin and I tried a quadruple flip, there is even an American video of this jump. There simply wasn’t this necessity - to learn another jump. Two triple Axels, one in the cascade and two quadruples, one in the cascade, this was the maximum that allowed you to win. In terms of complexity each new generation adds something of its own. Now, from childhood on, complex elements are wound up. When was it that children at those very young ages even jumped all the triples?
Q: Is it good or bad?
A: I think this is good.
Q: But what about the endless talk of how very dangerous it is to overload a child?
A: The paradox is that for children, multi-turn jumps are not a load, but a kind of game. They are light. If you are trained with the proper technique there is no difference in twisting two turns, three, or four. Take Lisa Tuktamysheva. She learned her triple Axel in her childhood. Then for some time she lost this jump, then she found it again, successfully jumping it. But it is impossible to find back what you never learned.
Q: By the way, it seems to me somewhat illogical that the girls in the group of Alexei Mishin (which has no equal in the world) do not master the quadruple jumps, but they do in the group of Tutberidze where in many ways it seems like touch-and-go.
A: Eteri feels with strength and confidence in herself that she is on the right track. And besides, she has a very good selection and a very strong coaching staff. Parents from all over the country take their children to her group, as they once brought Yuliya Lipnitskaya - in this regard, in Moscow it is still somewhat easier than in Sankt Peterburg. And these children have a different threshold. I myself saw at recent skates how Kamila Valiyeva went out and delivered a quad Toeloop in her free program with the height of a quintuple. At such a height it allows her to add another turn to the jump. It really was something. Firstly, I was shocked by the child’s ability to jump like that. Secondly, I see behind this a properly delivered systematic approach. Any system, even if it is somewhere imperfect, still gives a result.
Q: Now they talk a lot about the fact that Alina Zagitova, who doesn't have a triple Axel or a quadruple jump in her arsenal, can fall into the position of a person for whom it will become problematic to get into the national team, competing with athletes of her own group.
A: I don't think so. Because Alina's level of skill, skating, interpretation of programs will not allow (the judges) to go low on the second assessment (GOE scores).
Q: The same, probably, can be said about Yevgeniya Medvyedeva? Indeed, in terms of skating, she doesn't loose to Zagitova?
A: Does not lose. I don’t know if she will learn the Lutz-Rittberger, but this is not too fundamental: she does a Salchow-Rittberger, and does it very well. It’s a pity that she didn’t jump this at the Olympics.
Q: She, as far as we know, wanted to.
A: Yes, I know that too. But she obeyed what was prescribed to her. Of course, on a sore leg, this would be a risk, perhaps unjustified. Plus, her spine was still very out of order, speaking between us. Such nonsense, right?
Now I see that Medvyedeva has become even better at sliding. I saw how she works with Brian Orser, how she worked alone when she came back to Moscow. But with those unguided performances in demonstration and exhibitions it is necessary to quit, in my opinion. I know that Zhenya stages these numbers for herself by herself, and that’s no good. Each exhibition number should open something new in you. After all, it should contain some surprises: a concept, new elements, new approaches, new choreography.
The Unwashed Pan
Q: When in 2017 Yuliya Lipnitskaya was hospitalised with anorexia, and before that Yuliya Antipova was hospitalized with the same condition, there was a lot of talk about who should be responsible for the health of a minor child, for what happens to him in in sports - a coach or his parents. What do you think about this?
A: I always thought that I myself was responsible for everything. How else? If, for example, I took a boy, took him to America and carry out my training there, then who should be responsible for this boy? He gets sick, lights a cigarette, got into trouble with the police, or some other story? Of course, I have to be there. Especially around the time when the children begin not only to mature, but also to assert themselves, many literally do not hear the coach. I have to take them by the scruff of their necks and shake them, as I shook someone else’s athlete in my time, who assured everyone around me that she was not getting better, because she had such a constitution. I told her quite openly: "You're lying, so you will be treated. Because otherwise you will die. All your cramps in the rink can end only in one thing - death."
Before the Salt Lake City Olympics, I had a girl in America who the German figure skating federation asked me to help - to stage her programs. This girl was already being treated for anorexia, and came to me seemingly having no problems. I worked a lot then, almost never came home, so I cooked food at night. Lyosha Yagudin was losing weight at that time, and one night I cooked mushroom soup for him, since this was not high-caloric, and left it to cool on the stove. Lyosha said that after training he ate this soup. He came to the next workout angry as a dog. It turned out that this German girl, while we were not at home, ate the whole pan, stuffed half a loaf of bread into herself, while Lyosha remained hungry. He was most outraged then that the girl ate the soup, but did not wash the pan.
Q: How did it end?
A: I spoke with this athlete, and it was tough. I called to Germany - to the federation, warned them that the problem had not gone away. But we, as coaches, must be responsible for such things. If only because children spend much more time with us than with their parents. When the coach tells the athlete: “Lose weight!”, He must him teach how. And not just glue his lips together.
Q: When an athlete becomes Olympic Champion, does this make the coach responsible for his future fate?
A: Of course.
Q: And you didn’t get the feeling that after Yuliya Lipnitskaya made a splash in Sochi in the team tournament and when Adelina Sotnikova won, their coaches were not ready for this responsibility at that moment, giving the athletes the opportunity to make decisions over their own future? At least that is exactly how Yelena Buyanova explained Adeline’s departure from amateur sports.
A: In my opinion, Adeline did not have to be send away. She was never able to stay afloat by herself, she simply did not have time to learn this for herself. I can be mistaken, but it seems to me that initially Lena prepared her athlete not for just one four-year period and not for just one victory. Right after those Games, everything that was going on around Sotnikova was a bit like general madness. It seems to me that the same thing happened around Yuliya Lipnitskaya. When an athlete achieves great success, a large number of advisors who immediately know how and what to improve form around him. This process must be controlled, but the coach, as a rule, no longer has any strength for this. Concluding, I believe, neither Buyanova nor Tutberidze had a clear future work plan laid out so as not to let the situation go out of hand. Unfortunately, you always begin to understand such things too late.
Q: It turns out that it is impossible to foresee those things in principle? After all, the same Ilya Kulik left you the day after he won the Nagano Olympics.
A: That is why, already having such experience, I said to Lyosha Yagudin after his victory in Salt Lake City: “You stay, meet with sponsors, with journalists, and I will leave for home. But you have to decide for yourself, we’ll go with you to the World Championships or not. I don’t see anybody equal to you, but that’s only my opinion. But regardless of any further decision, you must understand that what you have already done, no one will ever take away from you."
Of course, I understood that after those Games Zhenya Plyushchenko would not go to any World Championships. And even if he went, he would not have won against Yagudin. Because the game after those Olympics has already gone one goal further.
Q: And did Yagudin decide to go to Nagano?
A: Yes. He called me from America: "Tat'yana Anatolyevna, come, I can’t wait any longer, I want to go to the World Championships." I flew in the next day. Lyosha met me at the airport. He'd bought a new car, spending all his money on it: a sports Mercedes. He plunged me into it, somehow squeezed the suitcase in. He opened the top, despite the fact that it was winter, and we drove off into a new life. With music, at high speed.
Q: Was it realistic to return to amateur sports after hip replacement surgery? Or did you just play along with this Yagudin so that he would recover faster?
A: At first, the issue of the operation was not an issue at all. He was constantly treated, went to Canada, where a special fluid was injected directly into the joint, which enveloped all those sharp corners that appeared inside the joint and caused pain when moving. We began to prepare for the season, staged the program. But at the very first competitions his leg began to “fail”.
After the operation, I didn’t think that we would return, but Lyoshka really wanted this, he was just torn to the ice. When he started jumping, almost every day my good friend, professor Sergey Arkhipov called me and said: “Tan, are you nuts or something? What are you doing? Do you understand that if the joint pops out, nothing more can be done about it?"
Q: Was it possible to stop Yagudin?
A: No. He cannot be stopped even now. He is a maximalist, he never spared himself. This overcoming strikes me even now.
And all this is about love
Q: Once I talked with Stefan Lambiel who, working with a famous Russian athlete, complained that in his head firmly sits once and for all this fixed algorithm, primarily aimed at performing jumps. And no matter what steps he takes, in a week everything will return to its previous format.
A: We have many coaches who argue this way: first you learn to jump, and when you do everything technically correct, I will start to develop you. And it is always necessary to develop, therefore the Japanese begin early enough to attract top directors from all over the world to work with their athletes. Because if you don't do this in time, in each program the athlete will return to what he was used to. In the same way, you must necessarily come up with something of your own. Something that sets you apart from others. But this is not so simple, because each step needs to be carefully selected. You can make a hook on one beat of the music, a twizzl in another. All these elements need to be separately looked at as to what is more suitable for this music, now, or on the next measure, or the n-th measure thereafter. Just as it was with Mao Assada. On her sequences the audience always stood up. But did the audience not just get up by itself?
Q: By the way, do you know that Rafael Harutyunyan worked with the first Chinese couple all summer in America?
A: Well done, what can I say. For how many years I have been saying the same thing: we need to gather all our junior couples, at least for a couple of months, and ask the country's leading single skating coaches to work with them, not forgetting of course to thank them for this.
Q: In order to tidy up the jumps?
A: Of course. Jumping is always a weak point. Moreover, now they are all so complicated. This also applies to adult couples. It seems to me that this is a very important point. There are quite a few specialists who know how to work, know how to create leading exercises, how many of these need to be done, how and what to work on in the gym, how to “raise” a jump, and so on. All of this must be used. For this, it seems to me, the Chinese couple went to train with Rafik.
Q: What would you like to see performed by Russian skaters in the new season?
A: I desire to see the programs of Sasha Zhulin for Viktoriya Sinitsyna and Nikita Katsalapov. In the same way I want to see Sasha Stepanova and Vanya Bukin, whom I love very much. It is very interesting what Marina Zuyeva did with Yevgeniya Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov. I consider her an outstanding coach because I remember how Marina worked with Katya Gordeyeva and Sergey Grinkov, with Sasha Fadeyev, with many other athletes. Marina is a very professional person. And very strong. She is able to reach out to any person without ever raising her voice. Knows how to do it. Not to mention the staging of programs.
Q: Shortly before meeting you, I talked with Irina Zhuk and Aleksander Svinin about the fact that in modern dances the staging generally comes to the forefront.
A: It has always been in the foreground at all times. Just few people know about it. And the technical means are already being selected for a specific task.
Q: It turns out that in the last season Sinitsyna and Katsalapov won against Stepanova and Bukin only due to a more striking staging? The programs were luxurious.
A: Luxurious, that's true. Vanya and Sasha were also good last season. The staging is really a very delicate matter. In this sense, Katsalapov and Sinitsyna were more penetrating last season. I at one time invited Dima Bryantsev, (may he rest in peace), who served as the main choreographer at the Stanislavskiy Theater and created all the television work for Yekaterina Maximova and Vladimir Vasil'yev.
I wanted my athletes to feel some other hands working with them, so that not only me was engaged in their choreographic development. And still, I helped them with every step. Offered several pairs different options for each measure, so that Dima had plenty to choose from. But I can’t imagine how I would give my work in free dance, where I understand what's needed to win, how to win, to someone else.
It is necessary to invent a lot, put an idea into the program, and of course - give it it's soul. Because when everything is already invented, this soul should tell us a love story. Absolutely everything that exists in the world is about love.
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Source:
https://rsport.ria.ru/20190823/1557806759.html
Don't wanna jinx it, but I hope they're keeping it for that reason.
