Interview with Sergey Davydov from CSKA Moscow, trainer of Viktoriya Vasil'yeva, Sof'ya Samodelkina and many others:
CSKA coach Davydov - about the attitude of parents to the quadruple jumps: “They understand: if you feel sorry for yourself, someone else will do it”
part 1:
https://www.sport-express.ru/figure...h-sebya-zhalet-sdelaet-kto-to-drugoy-1605904/
"Women's and children's skating are different sports." The opinion of trainers who teach quadruple jumps
part 2:
https://www.sport-express.ru/figure...ernye-rasskazyvaet-trener-rossiyanok-1605798/
Here is my take at this interview:
"Women's and children's skating are different sports." The opinion of trainers who teach jumping of quads
Among the young quadsters - not only pupils of Eteri Tutberidze. SE talked about child prodigies with Sergey Davydov and Aleksandra Kravtsova from CSKA
Sergey Davydov and Aleksandra Kravtsova - tandem of young coaches from CSKA, young students which, along with the wards of Eteri Tutberidze amaze with the possession of complex elements.
11-year-old Yelizaveta Berestovskaya is already performing the quad Toeloop, 12 year old Sof'ya Samodelkina is master over a triple Axel, jumping it not only solo, but also in cascades with
triple Toeloop and Salchow. And 12 year old Maksim Belyavskiy even landed a jump with five revolutions in training at the end of April of this year, though with insurance.
There are also successes with older students - 16 year old Anna Tarusina twice last season became the silver medalist in stages of the junior "Grand Prix" series, but couldn't qualify to the final
But 15-year-old Viktoriya Vasil'yeva in February this year became Bronze medalist of the Russian Cup Final, finding herself on the podium in the company of Yelizaveta Tuktamysheva and Yevgeniya Medvedeva.
And in the autumn, the skater was able to reach the final of the junior "Grand Prix" series. Giving congratulations on this interim success by experts answered modestly - silence, they say, means we are doing everything right, although we admitted that we dream of the gold in the World Championships and the Olympic Games for our students.
We met with Sergey and Aleksandra, we met at CSKA's rink during the day break between trainings, although the ice arena continued to seething life. Young athletes walked with suitcases to the locker rooms and back, or did homework at the buffet - training on a serious level, it's simply impossible otherwise.
- At the junior stage of the Grand Prix in Chelyabinsk, Sergey and Viktoriya Vasil'yeva exchanged fist butts, after which she skated a perfect routine. In your tandem, he is the main motivator?
SD: Both in turn, at a particular moment it's better for someone to cheer up Aleksandra, and sometimes - me. In general, when everything goes according to plan, special strictness is not needed, but this separation that a woman is softer, a man is harder, we don't have.
- Do you often have to raise your voices at your pupils?
SD: Everyone is increasing in volume, but we try not to do this.
Parents don't mind difficult jumps
- You said that parents are present at the trainings of your group. Why is this important?
SD: Yes. Every day, every other day or once a week - whoever can. We need parents so their children follow the instructions of the coach, and not discuss with him whether there was enough attention to their child or something to disassemble.
AK: Parents must set the child to work so that he comes to training and does all that's needed.
- The contribution of parents to figure skating of children is becoming more significant. And here are the stories about young athletes who themselves would set goals and complete them less. Why do you think this is?
AK: Time, other possibilities appeared in comparison with what it was before.
SD: This is not a matter of time, but of children. While they are small and not all aware, they need to be set up for work. Children still grow up and begin to answer for themselves. Earlier, parents helped too.
- How do they look at the fact that their children perform difficult jumps at a young age? The same Berestovskaya and Samodelkina?
SD: The parents of these girls are completely immersed in the realities of sports, adequately react to it. Everyone understands perfectly well: if you pity yourself, if you don't do it, someone else will do it, with the same legs and arms.
I bought a chocolate bar - made myself worse
- Many did not really like your statement about Viktoriya's weight problems ...
SD: And when others see, isn't it more offensive than just when your coach told it?
Weight is also part of your job. Soccer players watch their weight, the same wrestlers are driving the weight here or there to fall into the right category. This is not a question of beauty, but of technical preparedness, the lighter you are, the faster you are.
- You have clear recommendations for maintaining the right weight for students or just give a signal when it is more than necessary?
SD: The first is not to eat (laughs). Athletes in general should eat little, but correctly. Some even turns to nutritionists and selects the right foods for themselves.
- Inna Goncharenko, who came to visit SE, recalled how in a store she took the chocolates away from her pupils. Does it need to come to this?
SD: No, we are trying not only to take away something, but to convey that they need it, and not the coach. When this understanding appears, then everything will immediately change. So there will be this understanding: buy snickers - you only make yourself worse.
- How is Viktoriya preparing for the finals?
SD: She will perform at the stages of the Cup of Russia in Masters of Sports, there is still a lot of work. Reserves for improvements, of course, there are. Move some kind of jumping into the second half, learn the triple
Axel, but it all depends on her - whether everything that is required will be fulfilled, including with weight.
Why not insert a maximum amount of quads?
- Your students at the age of 11-12 already master a triple Axel and a quadruple jump, Eteri Tutberidze has many such young athletes. How to explain this phenomenon? Have really new methods appeared or did we just began to demand more from children?
SD: No, it's not even a matter of methods, just someone alone jumped and went. It's a sport, someone ran 100 meters in a certain time - everyone is already guided by this figure. Everybody starts to see the barrier that you must not only achieve, but also step over to win.
The rules allow girls to jump unlimited quadruple jumps in their free program, why not do it? Now we inserted in Samodelkina's short program a triple Axel in cascade with a triple Toeloop, if allowed, why not? Will we continue to perform with this cascade or will it be profitable to skate with something simpler, we'll see, but we have to try.
AK: It happens that children themselves ask: "Can we try?" When the child can, and I am sure about this myself - we pick up his desire.
- How much does it usually take from the very first attempt to the finished element?
SD: We need preparatory work, try push-offs, at least six months to eight months. But this is just an element that still needs to be implemented in the program and done ordinary. Afterwards the children themselves tell us: "But there was nothing special about it." Ultra-si requires more psychological strength, than physical.
The tale of the quintuple jump
- How are you doing with Maksim Belyavsky, whose five turn jump on the pole in May raised a lot of noise?
SD: We try to make his skating better, improve rotation. Now in his free program - two quadruple jumps and two triple Axels. We showed that jump not in order to surprise someone, but to show: you can work on it, nothing supernatural.
Of course, a pole jump is not considered to be completed. This is a jump on a safety device and with a lift. But you can lift in different ways, someone hangs straight down, and someone you'll support only slightly, as is the case with Maksim. However, around this a whole epic that was not worth it. We shoot such videos about many students: what they were when small and what they learned by growing up.
- Did this hype somehow affect Maksim?
SD: I gave two or three interviews, and when they came for the fourth time, I said: "That's it, I'm out."
Quad jumps need iron health
- Who usually was your initiator to shoot something from training on video and post it?
SD: Here the criteria are: it should be interesting to people and be an achievement for the child himself.
For someone, the achievement is a double Axel, we will post it, he is pleased, they will watch him, they will find out.
- I noticed that most young trainers have Instagram accounts with videos about successes of pupils in training. Is this becoming a trend?
SD: This is not a goal by itself, but rather visual information. We have more children coming to us, they look around, they like everything, they come to us.
- Speaking generally, what do you like about modern single skating and what not?
AK: It's great there are difficult jumps, moreover, with good spins and skating.
This is something new, there is room to develop and something to learn, like complicating by the transfer of elements into the second half of the program.
- But what about the view that jumping quadruples at a young age is harmful to children's health?
SD: Professional sports and health are incompatible things. Doing any kind of sports, you can get injured. If you can do complex elements while 10 years old - just do them. Other athletes do the same, no one dies, if you correctly approach the process. Top of sports requires congenital iron health and a high pain threshold. Because something is always hurting, muscles or joints.
- Now in Russian single skating there is this paradoxical situation: the girls are technically walking around the boys.
SD: At this teenage level, girls develop faster, they are more mobile. And the boys in majority are imposing and therefore do everything more slowly. But then it gets harder for girls.
- Do the boys somehow mobilise this situation?
AK: They continue to do their own thing, they will see a girl jump a quad, clap and ride on.
SD: There are those who chase after everybody, they watch different performances, they evaluate everything, but for others, everything goes on as usual and when done, get scolded - okay. Now we try to unite the pupils, but when the boy jumps a quadruple jump, this will stimulate other boy harder.
- How in a large group you pay attention to everybody and do so without offending?
SD: I organize children's meetings at which I explain the nuances of work. There are conflicts as much as elsewhere, but then everyone calms down and works on. We are trying to convey that if you want to defeat someone - beat him on the ice, why sort it out off the ice?
AK: On the ice, they are all rivals and certainly not friends. And when they leave the rink, they celebrate together birthdays, hang out.
What if 200 reps do not help?
- We talked a lot about technical nuances, whom in terms of choreography and expressiveness could you highlight?
AK: Stefan Lambiel's free program "Seasons" in Turin, 2006.
SD: There are athletes who themselves skate outstanding, hence the presentation of their programs.
As was Carolina Costner, or the same Lambiel. Someone waved a hand - it's already beautiful, but some else then for that same effect will need 200 repetitions and still it will not be as perfectly.
- Many athletes have black spots or situations where they are hopeless, lose to the competition. Moreover, sometimes the best decision is to end your career. You had to give such advice to your wards?
SD: Rather, in childhood, when a year passes after the start of training. After all, in the very beginning, when you take a child, it may seem that he has everything, and then it turns out that you can teach him something, but there will be no achievements. Normal parents understand everything, because otherwise, they will suffer themselves and torment their children.And how much time will be lost? They hardly learn anything.
Accident, suspended career
- And what is the day of a figure skater prodigy?
SD: They arrive at 9-10 in the morning, and leave at 8 in the evening. Ice, PE, choreography, classes in the dry hall, lessons, someone even manages to escape to school. We have three groups and a total of 40 people. Groups of 10-13 are on ice at the same time.
- The accident which happened to Sergey along with Anna Tarusina in August 2016 on the way to the French stage of the "Grand Prix", about which she could clearly declare herself, - unfortunate sports failure?
SD: In sport, besides tremendous work, you cannot do without luck. That accident became bad luck. Not saying it crippled Anna, since she recovered later, although the consequences remained, albeit not threatening.
Another thing is that this suspended the development of her career, and for girls this is very bad: arrested - in your place there are already five people who will not move aside. But at the time when we had this accident, we weren't talking about lost opportunities.
The child was all cut, she just had to go home and continue living. Thank God everyone lived, there was this mountain road, we could fall down and everything, is was good we crashed into a pole.
- One of the main reasons for skepticism regarding young skaters with quadruple jumps - they only have them for a short time. Do you have an understanding of whether you can somehow keep them at least until 18 years?
SD: So far, you need to have time to win everything before the age of 16. If the age limit changes, then everyone will build his work different. Will they elevate it? It seems to me, yes. And it's not just about our skaters - other countries are also preparing girls, take the same Alysa Liu.
Sooner or later they will come to the conclusion that there is a female single skating, and there is a children's one. Despite that little girls already have interesting programs with many complex elements and connections. But there is a difference when a teenager comes out, and when - Yelizavate Tuktamysheva or Ashley Wagner.
- Is the division into artistic and technical programs capable of changing the situation?
SD: Anyway, there will be those who consider it cool and those who don't like it. It seems to me that after the introduction of the new assessment system, everything settled down and became more or less clear.
- Social networks, and especially live broadcasts very often lead to the fact that young athletes say or write something personal. How much do you usually control your pupils?
SD: We strictly forbid children to discuss something on social networks on the topic of sports or doping, it's your life - please.
You opened a bottle of water, loose it briefly from view - you don't touch it anymore.
Some droplets for the eyes or just a cure for colds - be sure to call the doctor and clarify, and if necessary seek an alternative.
(c) Екатерина Беспалова
I want him to find a good coaching situation so badly. But it is his life. Whether I understand it or not. The least I can is support him whether I think he made the right decision or not.
