Centralise the strongest skaters?
Aleksander Kogan: it is not in the interests of the FFKKR to gather the strongest in one club
On the eve of the open Test Skates of the Russian national team, RIA Novosti special correspondent Yelena Vaytsekhovskaya met with the general director of the Russian Figure Skating Federation (FFKKR) Aleksander Kogan and found out from him why Tat'yana Tarasova still doesn't have her own school, whether the federation is interested all talented children fall into Eteri Tutberidze's hands, and why those who compete in pair skating suffer most from the actions of the judges.
Chinese ambitions and Russian coaches
Q: I’ll start with a question perhaps you perhaps didn't expect: did you know that an international coaching staff is being created in China, whose task is to maximise the number of medals won by China at the 2022 Games? And a very strong Russian singles coach was invited to join these headquarters. Does such information reach the FFKKR, and if so, is it in your power to prevent the departure of specialists from the country?
A: Any country that hosts the Olympics has the task of winning as many medals as possible. China is a very ambitious country in this regard, we saw this in the 2008 Summer Games. I know for example, for some time now the Chinese have been very actively watching athletes around the world they could naturalise. Naturally, they try to attract the best coaching staff to work with them. But it seems to me that the trainers who work in our country still have more advantages.
Q: What do these include?
A: In your view, what are the advantages of working with Chinese athletes - besides money, of course?
Q: My experience in various sports suggests that coaches are very loyal to their own country and people. And if they begin to look for work in the West, this usually results from a lack of opportunity to work at home.
A: I have no information that one of the Russian coaches is deprived of this opportunity.
Q: The first name that suddenly comes to mind is Inna Goncharenko, who left CSKA more than a year ago and still has not found a place at any Moscow ice rink.
A: Of course, it is in the interests of both the FFKKR, and, above all, the Moscow Figure Skating Federation, that a coach like Goncharenko continues to work. But, as far as I know, Goncharenko herself refused coaching. And in order to help her get a job somewhere, she did not apply to the figure skating federation. A fairly large number of ice rinks are now opening in Moscow, where a high-class coach can find an application.
Q: Can the figure skating federation help this or that specialist in this regard? Is it in your power?
A: Let's start with the fact that, unfortunately, the FFKKR does not have its own sports facilities nor its own sports schools. And in my opinion, it is schools that should be primarily interested in such trainers. Just like it was at one time with Yelena Vodorezova (Buyanova), when she started working at CSKA, with Eteri Tutberidze at the Sambo-70 school. You talk about Goncharenko, but Tat'yana Anatolyevna Tarasova is also without a rink here. But we cannot bang our fist on the table and order someone to take this or that specialist.
Q: Purely from the human interest point, are you concerned about situations when the coach for some reason leaves the profession?
A: Of course.
Q: Don't you think it is some kind of absurdity when a strong Russian coach works exclusively with foreigners, as Marina Kudryavtseva does for example?
A: A person always chooses the life that is most comfortable for him. At one time, Marina, like many of our other coaches, went abroad, trained for many years in the United States, so her work with foreign athletes began a long time ago. Coaches - they, of course, are our golden resource, but do not forget that we now have a lot of young professionals who have grown already under the new system. They are in demand both in our country and abroad. Foreign athletes begin to come to them. And this already speaks of the authority of not only those specific specialists, but of the entire Russian school of figure skating. Among other things, it raises interest in figure skating, which is steadily declining in Europe.
Q: Well, in a certain sense we are raising this same problem with our own athletes, who are starting to compete for other countries. I don’t want to use the term “overproduction” being applied to living people, but, you see, there are an order of magnitude more high-profile singles in Russia than there are places in the national team.
A: In figure skating, this has always been the case. In Soviet times, the bench in pair skating or dancing was such that people who had not been in the national team for years could still win the European Championship. On the eve of the 2008 Olympics, China had several reserve teams in each sport, and you know this no less than I do. High competition ensures a high result: we can clearly see this with the group of girls who train in the Tutberidze team.
Freestyle wrestling and Russian singles
Q: Such is the competition in freestyle wrestling it has led to the fact that Russian wrestlers began to compete for many other countries, and not only for the former USSR republics. In order to be able to participate in major competitions, many are ready without hesitation to change their sports citizenship.
A: You can ask a counter question: name me at least one athlete who would not have the opportunity to compete in international competitions? Yes, it can be difficult to break into the national team, but how does this differ from let's say Japan, where there are also many good singles? Moreover, everyone has different ambitions. Someone seeks to win the Olympic Games and is ready to sacrifice anything for this, but for someone the ultimate dream is just to participate in the Grand Prix cirquit. But competition should still be as high as possible. Therefore, each request for a change of citizenship by a Russian athlete is always very carefully studied and discussed by us.
Q: One of the latest precedents is Anastasiya Shabotova, who will compete for Ukraine from this season onwards. What guides the FFKKR, releasing an athlete who owns a triple Axel and quadruple jump to another country?
A: At that moment, when this athlete received a release, she did not possess either one or the other element. In any case, she did not show these at the competitions in which she participated in last season. Many athletes constantly say they do quadruples jump in training, but in fact this is not true.
Q: Is the federation able to make the transition of an athlete impossible?
A: In this regard, everything is described in great detail in the rules of the International Skating Union.
Q: Yes, but more recently there was this situation when the French Federation of Figure Skating did not release Andrey Novoselov for more than a year. From which I conclude that it is still possible to complicate the process regulated by the rules.
A: Any transition is primarily a matter of negotiation, coordination of many issues between two or even three federations. For example, my opportunity to get a release for Novoselov initially aroused great doubts. And the process really took almost a year.
Q: In the circles of Russian coaches working in women's single skating, the common opinion is that the FFKKR first of all sends talented girls to the Tutberidze group. Will you comment on this?
A: To be honest, I never heard one of the employees of the Federation advised parents where to send their children. Parents decide such matters themselves. Although at one time I made an agreement with Yelena Vodorezova to look at Denis Ten. In the same way, I advised the parents of Polina Tsurskaya, when she was riding in Omsk, to try to get to see Eteri. No one turned to me personally for more advice. After all, there’s another thing here: each trainer has a certain physical time limit for working with children. It is impossible to simultaneously work with twenty athletes of sufficiently high qualification. It just doesn't happen that way.
Q: But how does Tutberidze work like this?
A: She has a rather strict division into subgroups with which the other coaches work. Do not forget that there are certain quotas for performance in competitions. For example, only a limited number of skaters can apply for the Championships of Moscow. If there is an overabundance of strong athletes in the school, this means that applying for all of them at the same time becomes simply impossible. Therefore, if we talk about the interests of the FFKKR, we are only interested in the fact that strong athletes should be distributed evenly, and not collected within the framework of one club.
Q: FFKKR has the opportunity to financially support talented children from other cities in coming to Moscow?
A: Yes, and we are doing this, collectively deciding to whom and in what amount to allocate financial assistance.
Q: I know the work of foreign specialists working with Russian athletes is paid for by their National Olympic Committee's.
A: This does not apply to all sports and not to all specialists.
Q: That is, when an athlete expresses a desire to go abroad and train there on an continuous basis, as Yevgeniya Medvyedeva is doing now, is this a purely sponsorship story?
A: Mostly, yes.
Q: And how do you personally feel about the fact that Russian athletes are leaving for foreign specialists?
A: I have a double attitude to this. In some cases, it is good, in some not. But I’m not ready to say that there are specialists to whom we, without hesitation, will release any of our sportsmen, because these specialists are certainly better than ours. I think that every trainer, whether Western or Russian, is always a new experience. But how this new experience will be implemented by a particular athlete is impossible to predict.
About judges and authorities
Q: Today in figure skating becoming a judge or a technical specialist isn't a problem after having received the training and passed the corresponding examinations. Accordingly, people appear amongst the judges who were not figure skaters themselves, who are not very versed in music, and who have no idea of classical ballet or modern choreography. Does this not cause dissonance?
A: This question is really relevant. In our federation, it somehow happened that those who've skated themselves and perfectly understand, relatively speaking, that it is impossible to step across the movement while standing on one skate became judges nevertheless. We have developed a special education system for judges, and all those who are on the main list are highly educated people in terms of music and art.
After all, the problem you’ve touched on has another side, when judges are people who, to one degree or another, have finished with the sport, and then received a professional musical education, they have a completely different understanding of the interpretation of music, its character, musical accents, even when the skater interprets on the ice a well-known classic. So, from the point of view of these experts, it often turns out that in figure skating everything is generally bad.
Or take pair skating, which is most other countries is far from developed. Judges from these countries attend training seminars, watch competitions on TV or in video recordings, but it’s very difficult to judge pair skating if you only see it alive once a year, or even less frequent - there are too many nuances. The ISU rules stipulate that in order to continue to remain on the list of international referees, a person must judge at least one tournament in three years. Therefore, very often we have a situation in which people appear in refereeing teams who only see real pair skating every three years. Naturally, they are not able to perceive and appreciate a lot of things - only experience gained allows this to be done.
Q: And after all, you cannot submit a protest to the work of such specialists.
A: Alas, it is like it is. A protest can be submitted only for one thing: a mathematical error in calculating the results. In all other cases, protests are simply not accepted.
Q: Are you satisfied with the representation of Russia in the ISU?
A: Of course not. I would like to see a representative of our country in each of the technical committees. From our country, at the moment, Aleksander Lakernik is ISU vice president, Ul'yana Chirkova is a member of the synchronized skating tech committee, and Fyodor Klimov is included as a representative of athletes in the singles and pair skating tech team. We will fight to regain our representation in the dance tech committee.
Q: Lakernik was nominated as vice president already at a fairly advanced age. Does this mean that there are no younger specialists of his class in our country?
A: I would say there are no specialists of his class and with such high international authority, not only in our country, but also elsewhere in the world. Alexander Rafailovich, I add, is the only representative of Russia in the position of vice president for the entire 125-year history of ISU.
Q: By the way, how do you feel about the prospect of an innovation that is now being actively discussed - the introduction of technical and artistic programs?
A: It seems to me that if such an innovation is implemented, figure skating will lose its attractiveness to a large extent. Interest in our sport is fueled primarily by complex or unique elements. At one time, Dick Button (Olympic champion in 1948 and 1952) held world championships among professionals, where skaters were just instructed to perform a technical and artistic program. But the interest in such a format on the part of television quickly faded away. People want to see this struggle on the verge of human capabilities, passions. Not to mention that the appearance of artistic programs will lead figure skating even further from the concept of objectivity. Therefore, I would like to still have the opportunity to properly discuss all the arguments, weigh the possible consequences, and then make such global decisions. But this, as you know, is my personal opinion.
About academies and the principle of education
Q: In Russia, an extremely high number of top-class performing skaters has now been collected. Is it possible to organise some shows for this group of top athletes domestically, as the Japanese do at home?
A: In the system that has been developed in Russian figure skating, there are quite a lot of professional show projects which are implemented by Il'ya Averbukh, Tat'yana Navka, Yevgeniy Plyushchenko. They organise a lot of various events in which those who in fact have already completed their careers are involved.
Q: Yes, but all these shows are focused primarily on theatrical performances. The Japanese version, if I understand correctly, makes it possible for active athletes to begin showing their programs in public during the summer.
A: You are mistaken. In none of the Japanese tours do skaters perform their competitive programs - they perform exclusively using the numbers that were staged specifically for a particular show. This is stated in the contracts. To show competitive programs in public, we have Test Skates that do not exist in Japan. The Americans also have such skating events, but they are not held in the autumn, but at the beginning of summer, when people only start staging programs and, naturally, are interested in hearing as many comments as possible.
Q: Americans generally tend to start the competition season earlier.
A: Personally, I think it makes no sense for us to do this in our own country. If a season starts early, it usually ends early. It becomes difficult to bring the athlete to the main starts in a state of maximum readiness. If we talk about these shows as an opportunity to make money, we already held a similar event immediately after the Games in Pyeongchang ("Pride of the Nation"). We plan to hold demonstrations of the national team at the end of this season after the 2020 World Championships. If we find interest in shows of this kind from the part of television, we can talk about making them regular. Why not?
Q: Over the past few years, it has become very popular among Russian skaters to organise their own schools, academies, to conduct all kinds of training camps, seminars, and field trainings on a commercial basis. Why don't the federations pick up this business for themselves? Practice shows that this is really beneficial.
A: I will express, perhaps, this seditious thought, but, in my opinion, before opening their academies, it would be nice to first get a coaching education. Without this education, it’s kind of wild to start by creating your own school and start organising turnkey figure skating training for everyone. I know that in the Krasnodarskiy Kray over the summer there isn't a single free minute available at the rinks - all the ice is rented out to all kinds of training camps. From which I conclude that this is really a profitable business. Just if you follow this path, it will probably come to what they are coming to in many foreign countries, where people work for a living, but not in order to prepare athletes for high results.
Q: That is, from FFKKR's point of view, it is unprofitable to create these kind of business projects, implement them on your own and receive price reductions?
A: The point here is not the profit. But the fact that the task of the FFKKR is still somewhat different. It consists first of all, in helping athletes and coaches achieve the highest possible results and maximise the reach of those who are interested in figure skating as a sport. Too many demonstrations will inevitably begin to disrupt the work schedule. And this will be detrimental to the result. Working for your own wallet and for results are often mutually exclusive things.
Q: You have been a businessman for many years. How comparable is that with what you are doing now?
A: These are two different things. When you work in business, especially if you are at the head of a company, you work exclusively for yourself. Work in the FFKKR is, first of all, work aimed not at one’s own interests, but at the development of figure skating in the country. When more money appears, this means we can send more children to some kind of international competition, or more such things.
Q: In other words, when you left the world of business for sports, did you hurt your own wallet?
A: When I accepted the offer to join the organising committee of the 2014 Games in Sochi, it was just very interesting for me to try to realise myself in a project that, most likely, will never happen again in my life. After all, whatever one may say, figure skating is my life's work. Although many years ago my brother told me: "Stop doing this nonsense, we are losing money because of you!"
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Source:
https://rsport.ria.ru/20190906/1558310124.html
