So this is the translation of the interview taken by Vaitsekhovskaya.
Way back to herself.
We are sitting with Medvedeva near pond a few steps from her native skate rink. Almost everything is suitable for slow communication but this is just an illusion. In a few hour skater has flight to Frankfurt then Toronto then …
- Zhenya, did you have time to find the apartment at least?
- Oh sure. We have chosen online. How can I fly to foreign country without place to live?
- So at the airport the owner will wait with keys?
- No, this would be Jason Brown. He will meet us with my mother and take us to our new home. And from the 18th of June I already have a detailed training plan.
- You took part in many competitions and almost not lose during three years. Now you actually start new life from the scratch – new coach, new life circumstances, no clarity how quickly adaptation will go and what the result will be. Do you worry about future defeats?
- You know I am practical girl because of my nature. I would eat myself about result only if I understand that I could be done better. I can to acknowledge to myself the unpleasant truth. If I will understand that yes this was my limit I couldn’t do better at the moment so I acknowledge my place, the one that is right for me.
Now I clearly realize that my new life starts for me. I never live in foreign country before, I never train with foreign specialists before, and I never eat foreign food before longer then few weeks. So absolutely everything is changed. Absolutely new page.
-Is it frightening?
-No. I eagerly await for it. Now if to be honest I don’t think about possibility to lose to somebody. I'm trying to look a few years in advance. At first I want to stay healthy. This is my primary goal. Just need to try to make sure that this goal does not interfere with the result, to find right balance. In physical exertions, in nutrition, in mentality, in physical state.
-All your life before Olympics was limited by your rink. You only trained or prepared to train.
- Yes, this how it was. During all these years that I skated.
-Now nevertheless you let yourself go internally. You got free time, new possibilities to try the different life with far less figure skating just because you have left your coach and lost opportunity to come to the rink every day. How do you perceive this new life?
- I’m not that let myself go. It's more correct to say I opened my eyes and just look around. Yes I had goal – Olympics. I was going to it, straightly focused only on it, didn’t see anything except it. I didn’t have friends actually, didn’t have any interests despite the fact that I consider myself a fairly versatile person. There were no new acquaintances; I simply did not support them because of lack of time, and sometimes desire. There were only training sessions.
Last winter when I was injured I started thinking suddenly what when I will finished with the sport I would be with no friends, with no any knowledge and skills, with no personal life, with nothing? And only after Olympics I opened my eyes and my life didn’t go other way it just became broader, like from little brook turned into river. I got more friends, many interests and including the prerequisites for a future profession that I might like or may be everything will change for 150 times more.
- But can you refuse from this new life voluntarily? Again crunch yourself, put in previous limits and go to the goal again? And will you want it?
- I will want it. I think I will be ready to leave absolutely everything for result. The main thing is to stay realist. Not to do something that can hurt yourself or your family. I am often thinking that that my mother and grandmother largely sacrificed their lives for the sake of developing me as skater. If I suddenly feel that I don’t fill their expectations… I don’t want to feel that.
- So does the feel of guilt for family in your soul appear sometimes?
- Very rarely. My parents are also realistic people and understand that the main thing in life is to continue the work. No result – continue to work. Result? Great, continue to work. But if I for some reason don’t fill my obligations there the feel of guilt will appear.
Start in Canada.
-How quickly do you go back to yourself after Olympics?
-It was long process. My body and brain are organized such way that I recover very quickly after any stresses. Mentally and physically. But after Games everything took very long. In fact only now I can say I fully recover mentally.
-I happened to the hear version that you are not going to Canada to train seriously. Only for promotion to get more shows.
-I tell you the secret. I definitely don’t have the lack of shows.
- Was Brian Orser the only candidate for coach?
-Yes.
-Why him?
-Because of Yuna Kim. This is the first thought which came to my mind when I started to think about transfer. Yuna won the Olympics in Vancouver in 19, in 23 she won the silver in Sochi. On the Olympics in Beijing I will be 22. Of course it is not only about her. Orser has many athletes who are called adults in figure skating, who passed more than one Olympics. Yuna is only one of them.
Upside down
- Are you concerned that Orser took rather many new young athletes this summer?
- Not at all. I spent all my life in constant competition. It does not bother me at all. Especially since Bryan has the main part of his group are boys. This is for one thing. Secondly Orser is practicing individual approach to very athlete and he himself constantly emphasizes this. So time and attention will be enough for everyone. And I like the fact that I will look on so many top athletes which can give me more than I had before.
- How do you keep the form when you don’t simply have the place to skate?
- Those form which I had on Olympics, I simply can’t to hold physically and it doesn’t need to. On Olympics I had rather strong emaciation so I prepared myself to come on the very peak to Free Skating. I had there the minimal weight and the maximal morale state. Because of that I had to recover very long after that.
I gained more weight but not too many. I have trainer at home which allows my muscles to stay in working state. As for functional form there is no athlete who can keep it without intensive trainings. For that I am going to Canada.
- Do Orser express any wishes?
- No. I think he understood when we talked in Korea that I keep training to the extent of my abilities. Circumstances. If I will have ice I will go to it. I don’t have ice in Moscow. I mean I don’t have the main base. Before Japan we managed to find few hours and I managed to “rise” some jumps. What I wanted for so long.
- You don’t jump to long?
- I didn’t jump too long. I had so much pleasure when I got my jumps back.
- I always was curious do you have time to think about something during the jump?
- About everything! Thousand of thoughts are in this moment. I even have to see everything around. I am trying to control everything.
- Do you discuss your programs for next season with Orser?
- No. First of all I want to listen all possible opinions on this count. Not only from Orser but from Tracy Wilson, from David Wilson who is going to do my programs.
- Do you know this people personally?
- I know David. Less Tracy. Surprisingly I know their athletes much better. Hanyu, Havi, Jason.
- What do you want personally?
- If to talk about whole season I am not going to miss any starts nor open skating neither GP. First of all I changed as a person so possibly I can’t to remain the same image on the ice. I have different perception of life and world.
I am sure that when I will come to Canada and in my head everything will go upside down again. I want to try new images on ice. There are many roles I even don’t try yet.
- What jumps will be in your new programs?
- I was thinking about that but it is too early to tell.
- I this aspect you have to be inspired by new rules which limit the jumps in second part.
- This changing gave me the foundation for my future work we can put it this way. If we are told to jump now everything in second part I silently would go and do it.
One word, two words
- Did you always like those programs that you had to perform on ice?
- I insanely loved the very first adult program, where I play a deaf girl. I really like Karenina. But the one with which I have won the second Worlds, at first I did not like at all. I fully "tasted" it just at the end of season. I did it, set a world record and I liked it because it helped to reach the goal. As for "Karenina" as they say, I go crazy. Especially after these January stars where only my dress was beautiful.
- The coach of Oksana Baiul said that if the skater allowed to sink in her role when she going into triple she would go out on her back. In which extent you let yourself go from the elements while skating?
- “Karenina” allowed to do it substantially. When I was skating this program on Olympics I just let my body to do its work and dived into character fully. Even didn’t try to distract myself like it is happened sometimes, to imagine that I was on training now. There was some insane internal freedom. If you only knew what I had in mind when the step sequence began!
- And what?
- I skated and I asked myself – “Do you understand that is Olympic Games? Do you understand that millions of people or even billion look on you at this moment? Do you understand that if you make the slightest mistake everything would go to hell? And I answered to myself - “I understand”. “Cool?” – “Cool! Let’s go get fun!” There was no stress at all.
-Do you ever ask yourself why the Olympic champions of previous years with rare exception didn’t want or couldn’t to continue for next Games. Why didn’t stay Baiul, Tara Lipinski, Adelina Sotnikova?
- Probably this is fear to lose everything that you worked for all these years. Wish to skate is always there as I think but when person get chance to try some different life it is also addictive. Not many are getting the opportunity to combine sport and normal life.
- I know fighter who won Olympics in 23 and finished his career with words “I don’t want that life goes somewhere when I go to trainings”. Do you feel that way?
- I never feel like this. I have the normal childhood I played not in common playground but in gym but I had fun. And I don’t think now that life goes somewhere. I finished school and enter to university.
- When do you managed to learn English?
-I didn’t learn it on purpose. I simply understood I didn’t have choice.
- In what sense?
- Literally. I saw like foreign athletes of my age or older talking between themselves on competitions and every time I thought I also really wanted to talk with you but if I only knew – how? Once tried it, then another time I tried it again.
-From one trip I brought three words, from another one five words. I looked on internet how to make some phrase right, somewhere I learned some slang. And I even didn’t notice how I became capable of not only to talk even to give interviews. Of course with mistakes, yes, somewhere I'm stumbling, sometimes with wrong grammar. But people understand me. And I understand people.
- Do you have difficulties to acknowledge that you don’t know something?
- Not at all I do not know about a lot of things. I do not know how to do a lot of things. I’m not ashamed of this and don’t have difficulties with this fact. Because it is really so.
- How much can you be without figure skating without physical discomfort?
- Little. Very little. In general I can’t to sit in one place without activity my muscles start to ache and it is really uncomfortable in physical sense. When you don’t skate too long the same thing, legs started to ache constantly. I have one more special trait more when I have holiday without ice the head starts to hurt madly though to put her in fridge! Probably there is something in the ice that I can’t live without. Besides it is simply hard for me sit on one place emotionally.
- How quickly skills go away when you don’t train?
- It is very quick process. You stop to feel blades. You skate and realize that you do everything automatically: “sit on skate”, go, brain knows what to do, but leg goes in opposite direction. It is like contact between brain and legs are lost a little. You want one thing but go in another place. All the most ridiculous falls were because of that. Bruised knees, elbows…
- Back to your leaving to Canada you have to think about the amount of money which your new life will require.
- Mainly my mom thinks about that. This was her task to understand how we are prepared to that.
- So when your mom said that you are ready…
- I realized that is time to take my skates and go to Canada.
- Did anyone try to dissuade you from this step?
- Honestly? No. At all…
haha javier
Pictures please... Maybe Jason will join too... How about Jin?? LOL
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