- Joined
- Aug 20, 2019
I was not sold on Plushenko this summer after the comments he made about TT. HOWEVER every time he speaks he is proving me incorrect, and it seems that he has a very genuine interest in creating a welcoming, safe, and elite spot for skaters. Which is very exciting. His experience as a skater seems to really be a massive advantage for him, and seems to inform a lot of his decisions, which is a great advantage for him over other coaches. Also that little bit about his wife at the end :3This is the whole interview with Plushenko, very interesting. And that is weird only the transfers received loud attention!
https://russian.rt.com/sport/article/783731-plyuschenko-mishin-medvedeva?utm_referrer=https://zen.yandex.com -via google translate
"We agreed to meet with the two-time Olympic champion at Megasport immediately after the open skates, but we failed to do so. "The analysis of speeches was delayed," Plushenko apologized over the phone. And he immediately suggested: “Maybe you will come to my skating rink tomorrow? I am every day from the very morning, and for sure no one can interfere with us. " The next day, at eight in the morning, an SMS came to the phone: “I am there. I'm waiting ... "
- Three years ago we talked with you about the coaching profession, and you said that Angels Plushenko is more of a managerial story for you. And that standing at the side is not your intention. At what point did the plans change?
- At first, my partner and I did not think about any sports tasks at all. They only thought about opening an elementary school.
- That is, stir up a purely commercial story?
- Not. When a business is organized, it is calculated first of all: profit, loss ... We did nothing. They didn't even sit down at the negotiating table. The partner had a platform, I had strength and desire. The flow of people who wanted to skate with us suddenly turned out to be colossal, but my life at that time was planned for several years ahead: my own shows, contracts for performances in Japan and Europe, and I perfectly understood that I simply could not train skaters at a professional level.
Therefore, when the athletes began to come to me, I honestly told them: "There is a coaching team with whom you will work, but I will supervise this process as far as possible." Many were fine with it. Three years have passed, I delved deeper into this story ...
- And first you decided to build your own full-size ice rink?
- Two skating rinks. Now we are already completing them. I am conducting the construction on my own investments, my wife and I decided not to take partners anymore, but to build ourselves, but with the support of Moscow, namely, Sergey Semyonovich Sobyanin, and the Moscow Region Andrei Yuryevich Vorobyov, since they gave me land for rent and helped a lot ...
- Are you talking about hangar-type rollers?
We originally planned to organize construction in this area, since many of our children are already attached to schools, many families have bought or rent apartments here. A more “home” skating rink will be built in the Moscow region, compact, but with a full-fledged ice rink next to the house and the area where I live with my family. I was really worried about shooting the ice.
- Too expensive?
- This is the first thing. And, secondly, you always depend on the landlord. In addition, there are a lot of children, the school is constantly growing, so I decided to build my own. And for a year now, I began to seriously engage in coaching: I had my own groups, which were not there before, every day from morning to evening I spend at the rink.
- Is this a thrill?
- It's a very difficult job, but I like it. I was very lucky with the coaching staff. We have an excellent specialist in general physical training, a multiple world champion in rock and roll Yerem Gazazyan. Two groups are led by Alexander Volkov, Dima Mikhailov and Sergey Alekseev fit perfectly into the team. Seryozha Rozanov came recently, I think he is one of the best technicians and, as it turned out, an amazing choreographer. I staged two programs for Sasha Trusova, now I have made one of the programs for Alena Kostornaya. I invited Lena Ilinykh to my place already with the arrival of both girls. I decided that we need a dancer to work with them, and a woman. Lena is very good at skating, she feels the choreography well, understands it.
- In other words, you rely primarily on young professionals.
- Young guys are, first of all, energy. It is physically difficult to work on the ice for eight hours a day with full dedication, not every adult coach can do it.
- Sorry, I'll interrupt. You are now talking about specialists who are brilliant skates, and I heard that Sasha Trusova, for the sake of sliding classes, travels almost every day across Moscow to Balashikha to see Denis Samokhin and his wife.
- It's true. Sasha works in our school for five hours every day, this is ice, physical training, SFP, classes at the machine and on the floor with a choreographer from the Bolshoi Theater, that is, she “bomb” for seven to eight hours every day. If she considers it necessary to additionally engage in sliding, especially with a person with whom she has already worked before, I will never interfere. I ask only one thing: just don't jump, don't change your technique. Spins, glides, choreography - for God's sake.
- Do you think Trusova's jumping technique is optimal, or are you just afraid that if you start changing something, everything will fall apart?
- I heard something similar a year ago from your former coach Alexei Mishin.
- I started just by purchasing Mishin simulators for my school. We did a lot this year with them: we rotated, worked with weights, with rubbers, had a very good summer camp in Kislovodsk, and I see that there is a result. And about sliding, Trusova really understands that in this regard, a lot of work still needs to be done. At the same time, Sasha does not need to be forced to train. I sometimes even stop her.
- When Trusova came to you, many believed that she would return to Volkov's group, with whom she worked for many years.
- No, this option was not considered. Taking this opportunity, I would like to dot the i again, although I have already spoken about it. Nobody lured Sasha Trusova away. It is important for me to say this, because many people really think that there were some lengthy backstage negotiations between us. It's just that two years ago, when Sasha's dad called me for the first time, I honestly said that I had a small platform where it was impossible to work seriously, and therefore I myself had not fully decided whether I would want to engage in coaching.
The time has come, the parents got in touch again, and we decided to train together. What exactly happened in the former group, I do not know, I did not delve into it. As for Alena Kostornaya, she exhaustively explained everything herself in her interview. My reasoning is simple: if a person wants to skate, and I have the opportunity to train him, why not?To be honest, I don’t understand the scandals on the topic: how can one get away from Tutberidze to Plushenko? And how did Trusova leave Volkov for Tutberidze? Or others? There have always been a huge number of loud transitions in figure skating.
- Figure skating, for all its popularity, is a rather narrow circle of people, a family. How uncomfortable is the situation for you when the majority of this family condemns you rather than supports you?
- I have other information on this matter. I talked a lot with the leaders of the figure skating federation, with the coaches, and I know that a huge number of my colleagues have come across the fact that athletes are taken away from them not by the most, shall we say, honest methods, including intimidation. It turned out that people come to me on their own. Perhaps someone really gets the impression that I will soon get tired of coaching, or I somehow do not treat it that way, but here I can only prove the opposite by doing. For this, I repeat, I build my bases, create comfortable conditions for athletes, find sponors, and I myself sponsor many. Why do all this if you are not serious about your work?
- I have a feeling that you are now trying very hard to give your athletes everything that you were once deprived of yourself.
- You are right. Yes, I really skated for a long time, but why did I have so many different operations? Because there was no recovery. No massage, no sauna, no pools, no stretches, no workouts right. Skated - ran home. As a professional athlete, you perfectly understand: after training, you need to huddle, stretch, do physiotherapy, drive lymph somewhere, restore muscles with massage. Only then can we seriously talk about sports longevity.
- Is it necessary to talk about it, taking into account how short the age of leaders in the same women's skating becomes?
- Personally, I really want my athletes to skate as long as possible. So that they are not a flash, a one-off story: they jumped, won something and disappeared.
- Then, I suppose, you should be very close to Evgenia Medvedeva's intentions to grab any chance to prolong her life in sports.
- In the situation in which Zhenya finds herself now, one can only sympathize with her. It has been very difficult for her to train in the last months. Whether you are an Olympic champion, a world champion, a coach is always needed. Someone should look at you from the outside, notice mistakes, guide, and most importantly, the skater constantly needs support.
- So you don't believe in Evan Lysacek's version?
- Not anymore. Look how many girls are already sitting on the bench in stock, and by the Olympics there will be even more. They jump triple axels, skate beautifully, rotate, have charisma, choreography, and fairly stable quads. Therefore, with triple jumps, I'm afraid you won't go far. Especially when there are difficulties in technology.
- Trusova during the open skates made three quadruple jumps in a free program. Is this the optimal limit, or are you planning to complicate technical content?
- We expect to add a triple axel instead of a double one, and besides that we also have a quadruple salchow planned, Sasha does it perfectly.
- Having suggested to Coward the theme of “Romeo and Juliet”, what image did you want to embody on the ice?
- Collective. Fate, love, suffering, passion, bad luck ... To be honest, during the open skates, far from everything that we planned and rolled out was done. Technically, of course, the same lutz could be safely driven out, but I'm not worried about that, I'm talking about the choreography. Of course, I read the comments from the series "nothing new: run, jump, run, jump." But you go and do quadruple jumps somehow differently. It's impossible.
- That is why, I believe, it was common for you and Mishin to get rid of any movements that seemed superfluous, to make the choreography extremely laconic when rolling out programs. And now, for the same Kostornaya, you invite Shae-Lynn Bourne - the most complex figure skating choreographer. What for?
- Because Alena is not jumping quadruple jumps yet and is able to perfectly roll out this choreography. She has unique choreographic capabilities, which is why I wanted Burn to work with Kostornaya. She immediately responded, by the way.
- Now women's single skating has become such that dialogue has to be conducted not so much with athletes as with their parents, who often become active participants in the training process. Is this involvement a disaster or a happiness?
- Trouble. 90% of parents try, as they think, to do better for their child, but, unfortunately, sometimes it only turns out worse. They begin to manage children, give prompts during and after training, go somewhere to skate, hire some additional specialists, and most importantly, they are constantly not enough. Little ice, few halls, little choreography. When I was seven years old, I trained in Volgograd three times a week. Now seven-year-olds skate two workouts a day. That is, 14 times a week! Plus, they take additional ice. And then we ask: why are there so many injuries? At 11, 12, 13 years old, a child has pain in his knees, Achilles, his back, his head, or something else. In such cases, I explain to my parents: you cannot eat a hodgepodge, wash it down with kefir or milk, put sausages in the compote and hope that you will feel good.
- Do your skaters' parents attend training?
- I periodically conduct open lessons, but this is not a system. In the older groups, I allow parents to be present at the training, but if I suddenly notice that at least someone starts showing the child where he should go and how to jump, I immediately remove people from the rink.
- Do you allow yourself to shout at the charges on the ice?
- Shout, yes, I can, but I will never raise my hand to the child. I will never allow myself to humiliate an athlete or somehow offend him. I do not accept mat at all. Children should not be swearing or calling names. When new specialists come to my school, the first thing we do is discuss all this with them.
- Why can you expel a student from training?
- For laziness, failure to comply with my requirements, unwillingness to correct technical errors. By the way, it is not necessary to expel. It is enough to put the child on a bench so that he watches others ride. And if you still start to praise these others ... I kick them out for the "butterflies", that is, when the skater seems to go to a jump, but in fact has already decided not to jump for himself.
- Speaking of "butterflies" ... Many drew attention during the open skates to the changes that happened to Mikhail Kolyada after he fell into the hands of Alexei Mishin.
- When Misha started having difficulties with jumping, we talked about this with the leaders of the FFKKR and I already said that it would be good to send Kolyada to Mishin for consultation, and together with the coach. For this, it was not necessary to draw up any transitions, to come up with something. Mishin has a system, exercises, tactics, methods. Now we, in fact, see the result: in the jumps of Kolyada, a clear axis, correct inclination, competent exits, competent speed, which can be increased a little more and will be generally super, appeared. As soon as the jumps stopped taking too much energy, the lines became visible, the choreography is perceived differently.
- Would you yourself agree to send your athletes for a consultation with Mishin?
- Alexey Nikolaevich and I already have an agreement on this matter.
- What is the idea of such cooperation for you?
- First of all, this is communication. For example, during the skates I got the impression that no one really talked with the same girls before. This was evident from the way people try to distance themselves from everything: they tune in themselves, warm up somewhere, run. Mishin and I communicated constantly. During warm-ups, at competitions, on the rink, outside. Alexey Nikolaevich is a top-class teacher. He was always aware of what was happening with me, I could consult with him about everything in general: about girls, about clubs, about cars, about apartments, about business - about everything.
- Not everyone is so lucky with the coach.
- I was insanely lucky, yes. And I want to convey to both current and future athletes that communication is the most important component. Adrenaline comes out, how else can you extinguish it? Only by switching attention. You can't beat jumps on the same warm-up for all six minutes: boom-boom-boom ... If we are talking about the opportunity to have a long professional life, the skater must clearly understand: catching up with someone and winning against him is far from the most difficult thing in sports. The most difficult thing is to defend the won positions. If an athlete is alone, he will never cope with this task, no parents will help with this. Only a team that leads you every day, guides you, that is next to you in difficult times, and that you trust, can help. And who knows thoroughly in what way to lead you to success.
- If suddenly a situation arises in which either Trusova or Kostornaya will come to you and say: "Evgeny Viktorovich, thanks for everything, but we are leaving" - will this greatly upset you?
- It will upset, of course, because a lot of time has been spent, a lot of work has been done, energy has been invested. But you know, I can handle it. We just recently discussed this topic at home with my wife, and I said: "Jan, the main thing is that we have been married for 11 years and continue to be together." Everything else is such nonsense ...
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