(about the Belorusian figure skating)
Y: I always say jokingly, that I live between two capitals. It is absolute true. I live by the M
inskoye highway, so if I turn to the right - I'll find the way to Moscow, if I turn to the left - I'll come to Minsk. We shot the "Beauty Gallery" TV project which will be aired on the Belarusian TV from the end of March or from the beginning of April. I was at a business lunch on Thursday, we agreed on further work, on creating other TV projects. So I'm going to come to Minsk several times a month. I'm happy about that.
If we speak about figure skating (including the Belorusian skating), I'd like to mention your header of the Skating Federation Yulia Komleva who is very ambitious. I know she did much to make this fest in Minsk come true
(the European Championship). I know her goals in regards to developing of figure skating in the country. Since I'm going to come often to Minsk, we'll try to open a figure skating school here. Yet we should remember, that it is relatively lengthy process. /.../
The country needs coaches, and of course, there should be conditions for those professionals, so that they could live and work here. My first coach is a vivid example. One day he said to me: "Alexei, I need to feed my family - so I go to work in Sweden". I vote with both hands for that: first of all, people should think about themselves and about their families. So the country needs to provide conditions for coaches, so that living and working here would be interesting and comfortable for them. There are rinks in Minsk, I know one more modest-sized ice arena is being built. The first step is done. The interest to figure skating will be nourished thanks to the European Championship 2019. Next the country needs coaches.
Q: Are you ready to help to find those?
Y: Yes. Yet I'm only a small part, it depends not only on me. Always a team should work.
https://sportpanorama.by/2019/02/10/aleksej-yagudin-zhivu-mezhdu-minskom-i-moskvoj/
(during the European Championship)
Y: It is the third day of the competition, everything is awesome. /.../ This 15000 arena - Minsk arena - is filled almost 99.99 per cent in evenings. It shows, that there is an interest to the European Championship here. I repeat again and again, that it's impossible to kill love for the ice hockey in Belarus. Now thanks to this love for the ice hockey Minsk has this arena which finds room for 15000 viewers... /.../
Q: How high is the level of figure skating in Belarus?
Y: Hmm... now it has no level. Yet we remember Alexander Kazakov - a single skater. We remember Sergei Davydov who was in one step to the podium of the European competition - he was the fourth. It is not easy to raise figure skating almost from ground zero, yet Belarus has skaters almost in all the disciplines, but that is not enough. We are Russians, you are Belarusians - actually, we are similar: our temperament, our set of mind. So you need only to enforce a bit, to be not cruel, but tough, to develop a pattern - and you'll have it. I'm sure Belarus has talented kids. We talked today... as far as I remember there are 32 or 34 ice arenas in your country - so you already have a foundation...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RIHJoz-pTY