Btw, if anyone has a translation of the interview, that would be great
Here you are.
OE: Polina Kostiukovich and Aleksei Briukhanov, the guys have won their second Russian Cup event in a row. Perhaps they themselves didn’t expect such things to happen. I am very happy for you. That is a great job, because your team is new and such a good beginning. How would you comment it yourselves?
PK: Yes, we didn’t expect it either, but we aimed for it. Working hard during the quarantine, we already understood what we want, what for we are doing it. And our duo was set up for wins.
OE: Lyosha, what would you add?
PK: I have said everything.
AB: Yes, Polina said everything. I totally agree to it. And concerning the routine, we are glad with our skate. We even improved the result comparing to previous competitions. But we still have a lot of things to work on.
OE: On what (to work)?
PK: I can say about the short programme. Emotionally I liked the first skate more. I don’t know why, but it went somehow more or less calm. And in the free programme we somehow a bit got exhausted. But we will work on it and evolve ourselves to the next competitions. And I think it will be Junior Nationals for us.
OE: For your free you have a bright piece of music, but however it is a classical one, Musorgsky. And how to do it all? First, your team is new and you have to adjust to each other. Second, you have to execute all the elements. And third, you have to perform a various music of three different parts. It is a rather complicated task for pairs skating.
PK: Yes. This music was offered to us by Nikolai Matveyevich (Velikov). We had been thinking about the free programme for a long time, have been resisting. Frankly speaking, I didn’t like the piece of music at first, totally, up to crying, I didn’t want it to be choreographed, I didn’t want to skate to it. But the clock was striking and we had to have a free programme choreographed, and to run it through. We had the routine made during one training day. It is, as we were told, a record in our training group. We are the only ones who got the free ready for the couple of trainings.
First, I had a plan in my had that after getting it ready I will ask to change the music. But later it became my piece of cake when we began to think about the costumes, added arms and adding of arms created an image. Because at first I didn’t understand which image we will perform. Because there are three different pieces and it is called...”Pictures at an exhibition”. I had no idea what is it about. It seemed to me that it is something like a Humpy-Horsey from a tale, but it is not like that and so it…
OE: Began to sparkle.
PK: Yes, it began to sparkle with new colours and I like it very much now.
OE: Guys, now you are going to be back to St. Petersburg and it will be work, work for Junior Nationals, or some competitions as well, maybe school-level ones?
AB: Maybe it will be some St. Petesrburg Cup stage or St. Petersburg Cup Final. Maybe in December, at the beginning of December. And we have to enhance our layout.
PK: We will work on jumps, a thousand percent, on a twist levels, on exits from the elements, on transitions, on speed, because it is easier to skate a routine in a training than in a competition. And in a competition you have to show the best of yourself. So far it doesn’t work well, but we are working on it.
OE: You know, you are so different. I am interviewing you and see that you are so different in character, in temper, in appearance. But the most important thing is that you found mutual understanding not only on ice, but off-ice as well, as I understand. You can make agreements, solve difficult goals and I wish you to achieve your common goal, to succeed in everything, and everything to be better and better from competition to competition.
PK, AB: Thank you.
