The Childhood of a Champion. Anna Shcherbakova
"My grandfather is a professor of physics, mom and dad graduated from Moscow State University. We didn’t have professional athletes (in the family). Initially, my older sister wanted to do figure skating, and they sent me to the section after her."
So Anna began to talk about her childhood in an interview with one well-known magazine, in the shooting of which the skater took part. Shcherbakova was born in the family of a physicist and a geologist-crystallographer, Anna has two sisters, the eldest Inna and the younger Yana. The girls are very similar and have been inseparable since childhood, despite the present age difference.
“ I have two sisters - one younger, one older, I love spending time with them, as well as with our pets, our dog Boni and cat Shipa. I like to travel, and after I started performing at the international level, there were more opportunities for this. Japan was especially remembered. I really wanted to go there, because figure skating is very popular among the Japanese. ”
Thanks to her older sister, Anya got to the rink. At 3.5 years old, she came with her sister to practice, subsequently Inna left this sport, but Anna, on the contrary, remained and, admittedly, she did it for good reason.
When Anna was three and a half years old, her parents brought her to the skating rink at the Khrustalniy ice-skating school for children and youths, where her champion history began, although then few people could think this small and fragile girl could grow up into a champion jumping incredibly difficult four turn jumps and bewitching all spectators with her tenderness and beauty.
Later, the school was transformed into the Khrustalniy department and entered the system of the Sambo-70 Sports and Education Center. The first trainers of Anya were Yuliya Alexandrovna Krasinskaya and Oksana Mikhailovna Bulycheva.
“ My parents led me to figure skating at three and a half years, because my older sister was engaged in it. I saw it on TV, really wanted to ride, and they gave me away to skating. I really liked it, and I probably only skated for about seven years for pleasure, without thinking about anything at all. Competition? Well, I’ll go. But I really liked it all - funny programs, some images to show. ”
“ Anya was on the ice for the company with her eldest daughter - she didn’t know how to ksate at all, there were four of them in the group. It was very difficult for the coach to manage such kids on the ice, as a result, Anya began working with the elders only in the dry hall, ” Anya’s parents recalled.
In this video, Shcherbakova is only seven years old, she skates in the third youth category, only coaches and parents are in the rink. In just a few years, fans will come from all over the country to look at the skater and support Anna.
But time passed and Anya's success in figure skating ceased to be as frequent as we would like, so the parents decided to have Eteri Tutberidze asses the young figure skater.
“ After some time, realising that we started to “ slide a little ”, thought about the changes and decided to go to Eteri Georgiyevna.“ We knew the results, asked her, although it was already Olympic season, the level of the group was very serious. I was very worried - I thought that Tutberidze was a celestial, I was afraid to approach, to speak to her. Only then did we understand - she communicates with the parents on equal terms, not down. Is Tutberidze strict? It seems to me that I am strict, and Eteri Georgiyevna is often smarter and softer than me. Any parent who wants a reasonable future for their child will not be soft, " said Yulia Shcherbakova, Anna's mother, who shared her memories.
The debut tournament for Anya was the Open Championship for the prizes of the President of the Moscow Figure Skating Federation in 2012. Here, the young athlete became the 22nd out of 29 athletes. Alyona Kostornaya then skated in the same group as Shcherbakova, and Yevgenyia Medvyedeva trained in the older group. After a season, having gained experience, the young figure skater was already on the first podium in her life: at the S.A. Zhuk Memorial in 2015 she took 2nd place, surpassing Aleksandra Trusova by only a few hundredths of a point. In the same year, Shcherbakova won the bronze at the Crystal Horse tournament.
“ At first, the complex elements did not work out, and we decided to go to the coach Eteri Georgiyevna Tutberidze. About a year later I jumped, including the Lutz: first in three, and then in four turns. Each person of my age has many options for how to show yourself, there is freedom of choice. If you are really talented in something, people will notice you. ”
“ I did pretty well, and my parents, when I was nine, decided it was time to decide -would it remain like a hobby or try to do it professionally. And then we decided to try to go to the group with Eteri Georgievna, she was working in the same rink. Yuliya Lipnitskaya skated, and when we had training after them, we left the locker rooms, looked at how they train. Then it seemed to me that this was some unattainable level. And when our parents said that we would try to go to it, for some reason I didn’t even believe it was initially, but they took me to the group. At first it was very difficult, I only jumped double jumps, I didn’t get triple jumps for a very long time. At that moment I was a little stalled - all of the same age were already jumping them, but I wasn’t. It was hard moment, but then somehow I abruptly jumped all at once. ”
In just a few years, Anya herself and her skating will become an unattainable level, equal to which the other skaters will dream of such success. Now Anya herself is ideal for someone, for someone an example of how, overcoming injuries and failures, you can again be on the top step of the pedestal thanks to painstaking and continuous work.
After that, now Anya joined the group to Tutberidze, success was not long in coming - in the 2015-2016 season, Anya won a Bronze Medal three times - at the Open Cup of the Moscow Figure Skating Federation, S. Volkov Memorial, the Moscow Championship among boys and girls, thereby qualifying for the National Championships. At the last of these tournaments, held in First and Second Sports categories, Shcherbakova won in the older age group. The next year, Shcherbakova continued to storm the tournament tables. Performances at the stages of the Russian Cup in the fall of 2016 were twice marked by victories - in Samara and Perm. Anya skated already in the category of Candidate for Master of Sports.
At the Russian championship in 2017, Anna became the second, shortly before that she won two silver medals - at the Volkov Memorial and the open tournament of the capital. In the summer of 2017, Anya received a serious injury while practicing a cascade with a triple jump, so she missed a number of competitions.
“ When at some point Anya stopped working, we began to persuade her to give it all up. She cried and said - this is my life. Having realized this, we realised - in no case, we just need to help Anna fulfill her dream, because she’s not doing this for medals, this is her way, these are her victories and defeats, ” Anna’s mother recalls.
Anna returned to training in October 2017 and began to gradually return to shape. The first competition after recovery was the January Moscow Cup, in which the athlete took second place. 10 days later, at the junior championship of Russia, she became 13th.
Although the recovery period itself was difficult, above all, in moral terms. But thanks to the support of the team, Anya coped with this difficult stage in her life, she even came on crutches to watch the training.
“ After the injury, it was hard to train and perform jumps. My family supported me, the coaches called me from the federation to find out how I was. It was very nice. I didn’t feel like I was alone. Figure skating is a way of life for me. I can’t imagine so it would be if I didn’t ride. My every day is connected with this sport. I never had the thought of quitting it, even during an injury. I never thought that I didn’t need it or that I didn’t belong in it. ”
Such was the childhood and the first steps in the sport of two-time Russian champion Anna Shcherbakova, one of the best skaters in our country. And although at the age of 15 Anya does not seem too adult, her skating routines speak of something different - confident, technical, beautiful, and, most importantly, winning skating says more than age.
Just go, Anya!
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From:
https://www.sports.ru/tribuna/blogs/sportwithmari/2686343.html
Make sure to check the pictures and videos with many famous skaters still being very young.
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