Daniil Gleikhengauz: “ It is important that a program is remembered by the athlete’s performance ”
In an interview with Japanese and German publications, as well as the website of the FFKKR, coach and choreographer Daniil Gleikhengauz summarised the performance of the Khrustalniy figure skaters at the Junior World Championships in Tallinn, describes each of them, tells how the programs are born, why the jumping technique is changing and revealed Eteri Tutberidze's group's secret to success.
- Daniil, how do you rate the performance of the girls at the Junior World Championship, where Kamila Valiyeva became the champion, and Dar'ya Usachyova won Silver. Did your coaching team's plans come true?
" Nothing can be foreseen in advance. We could only prepare as much as possible for the World Championships, to show the best skating. In the short program, not everything was successful for Dasha Usachyova and Maya Khromykh. Kamila Valiyeva was closer to the perfect skating run, but her short program was still not quite, and Kamila knows this. "
As for the free program, in Tallinn all our athletes performed close to their maximum. Yes, Maya did not get the quadruple Salchow, but she did a great job with the rest of her program. Not only with jumps, but also with choreography, presentation. This was one of her best performances.
Dasha, finally, in her own free program did not allow herself to make mistakes, because it is already a little worn, especially to herself. We talked a lot with Dasha on this topic. And she really worked a lot during the preparation for the World Championships and deserved such a result.
Kamila skated perfectly, except for the error on the first quadruple Toeloop, which made us all nervous, because the athlete herself made the decision: to change the program and go to other jumps or take risks and make the second quadruple Toeloop, realising that if there is a mistake again, then this jump will go under as “REP”. We discuss all this in training, and the fact that Kamila went, and it was a risk, but she got herself together and made a cascade with a quadruple Toeloop, which allowed her to set a new world record.
- How did you manage to bring Valiyeva in this form to the World Championsnips, because the season was not easy for her?
" The most difficult moment was after Kamila got injured, and it was necessary to recover. Not only physically, but also psychologically. At first, psychologically, she had a fear of entering complex elements, like quadruples, so we trained on a fishing rod to overcome this feeling. Then there were the first attempts at jumping. Then a set of “physics” to skate through the program ... But we conducted all this preparation before the junior Championship of Russia. In Saransk, Kamila was absolutely ready, and in the period from junior Russia to Worlds, it was a question of keeping the athlete at her peak, without overloading. We gave her the opportunity to leave training earlier, slightly reduced the load in order to bring her well in shape and head to the World Cup. "
- In Tallinn, three athletes of your group performed. You can tell about each of them.
" With Maya, the most important thing is to shout to her, to get across, because she does not always react, for some reason doubts what her name is. But if she responds and skates up to me, then the rest is simple. Maya is a calm, judicious girl. She'll do everything you tell her.
Dasha has days when her body does not want to do anything, although perhaps even the athlete herself does not understand this and really wants to. At such moments, the training process for Dasha turns into a large number of skating runs, because the first ones were terrible. For the rest, Dasha is quite positive, funny. You can always talk to her, laugh. She understands everything.
And Kamila is a bunch of all kinds of emotions. Constantly looking for something with her eyes, sometimes shy out of the blue ... Kamila is growing, developing, and the main task is to help her go this way from juniors to moving into seniors, so that she gets stronger. Reinforced not from the point of view of technology, the complexity of her programs, but psychologically. In this sense, she is still very fragile. But all this comes with experience. And regarding what happened to Kamila at the first competitions, even internal starts, and what she is now - a big difference. Kamila is on the right track, became more confident, better copes with emotions.
- You now have not two, but three age groups - the oldest, middle and youngest. A new group of 5-6 year olds has appeared recently. Is this a conscious need?
" The sooner you start working with an athlete, the better. When you lead a skater from 5-6 years old, he gets your vision, technique and you don’t have to waste time retraining. "
- Do you like working with kids?
" There are two points. On the one hand, it’s hard to change from older to smaller ones. It is. On the other hand, the kids are so positive, such energy comes from them! When they all run out onto the ice, smile, shout something, make nods and, happy, skate around all over the ice, then you are so charged! "
- How are the roles distributed among the trainers in your group, although, most likely, you have been asked this question many times?
" This is the biggest misconception - people believe that in our group there is a distribution of roles between coaches. In fact, we are all fully involved in the training process - from sliding lessons, jumping technique training, choosing music, an image, a costume, a hairstyle, to stretching and exercising. Sergei Dudakov does the same, with the exception of choreography. He does not do choreography and this is the only thing that he does not do.
It is strange to me that people think differently. But how then do athletes travel with each of the trainers individually to competitions? If, for example, I didn’t understand jumping, couldn’t teach the requirements, then how to send a skater for a week to compete with a man who can only straighten his arm?
Every day we are all together in training. Over the years, we have combined our vision, presentation on technology and other things, we have no disagreements. We all think, explain, show, teach the same way, and there is no confusion in the heads of athletes that one coach says so, the other - differently. That is, for our students we are as one. "
- Was it difficult to come to such an interaction?
" When I first came to the group of Eteri Tutberidze, they naturally looked at me, and if I explained something in my own way, they corrected me. But we are all developing, we are all studying different techniques of other athletes, we are not standing still. Lately, a lot has changed. And although we are starting from a basic technique based on the knowledge gained from our trainers, for example, Viktor Kudryavtsev, today, to do a quadruple, the bases alone are not enough.
Every day we look for, try to help our students in the development of complex elements, find ways to reduce the load so that it is easier to jump, so that they spend less time on this, which, accordingly, will reduce the risk of injuries.
As for technical issues, we repeat, are in a constant search for solutions. And perhaps in five years time the technique will be very different from what we have today. "
- Athletes in your group jump quadruple jumps. But can skaters go further - jump fivers?
" I can’t say no, because once the same question was asked about the quads, which today have become a reality. Both in men and women. The next 4-5 years, probably this will not happen. Possibly later? Figure skating will still progress, move forward.
But at the moment I’m very interested to know if Yuzuru Hanyu will jump the quadruple axel - a jump, more than four turns. Perhaps this will be the first step on the road to revolution towards the quint. "
- Together with Eteri Georgiyevna, you are staging programs. Where do you get your ideas, topics?
" Absolutely everything can serve as sources of inspiration, ideas - ballet, any art, as in the program of Eteri Georgiyevna for Kamila Valiyeva “Girl on the Ball” ... Films, musicals ... Even just hearing some kind of music on headphones, you begin to imagine how it would be on ice. And if you yourself like it, you feel that it can turn out interesting, you start trying on ice, on skates. By the way, one of the ideas for the program was born now, while I was riding the bus. "
- What is “good program”, “good choreography” for you?
" A good program involves many components. And here a lot depends on the athlete. You can come up with something incredible, it will seem to you, this is a masterpiece. But all this will remain in your head if you don’t correctly transfer your idea to the ice, and, individually, to a specific athlete.
A good staging is an idea, the completeness of the composition, so that everything is “read” from beginning to end. But the most important thing is not to have too much of your “I” as a choreographer. So that the athlete in this program could express HERSELF and show HERSELF from her best side, and not like the choreographer emphasised, he staged it, this is his handwriting. It is important that a program will be remembered by the performance of the athlete. "
- Probably not every choreographer shares your opinion. But I want to ask about this: in the Olympic season, Alina Zagitova skated both programs in ballet tutus. Why did you get such an idea? What role did your personal “background” play?
" This “Background” is really big. My mother was a ballerina ... But first, Eteri Georgiyevna and I put Don Quixote for Alina in her final junior year. And in the Olympic season, I definitely wanted to make a “Black Swan” for her. I brooded on this idea for a long time. I once said in an interview that when I first joined the Eteri group, I suggested that Yuliya Lipnitskaya should perform this program. But at that moment, I was probably too young. And so it would be easy for anyone to stage a program for the Olympic champion, although Tutberidze was not opposed. As a result, “Swan” was delivered to Alina, but even since there was a direct reference to “Swan Lake”, it was immediately clear what the costume would be. We talked a lot with Eteri Georgiyevna then, and she believed that it was significant - two ballet programs, two tutus in the Olympic season.
Plus, I had the idea of turning a white swan into black. And it was necessary to express and emphasize this in the costume of Alina. Now we have moved to a new level of costume change in programs. Back then was the beginning. "
- Do you mean the costumes of Sasha Trusova and Anya Shcherbakova?
" When we staged “The Firebird” for Anya, I understood that Stravinsky’s music is a bit heavy for perception in 4 minutes, therefore I combined the classics with the first part of the Six Gnossiennes program. In order for viewers to become more clear about the moment of transformation, it was necessary to focus on it. Therefore, a change of costume was needed. The thought even crossed my mind that the athlete should go out onto the ice in black, and then “catch fire”, as if a Phoenix bird had emerged from the fire. But Eteri Georgiyevna said, let it remain in your head, and came up with other colors - purple and red. This is what we did. "
- Your group has many talented students. How much do they trust the coaches? Can you share some secrets?
" We talk a lot with our students. I can’t say that in these conversations they tell very personal things, but how they spend the day, what they wanted to buy, what they liked, which of the girls had manicures, anything, these topics are discussed without problems. We laugh, joke, discuss, communicate, watch the Internet ...
But all this should not turn into very friendly relations, because otherwise subordination will be violated. The athlete should have a feeling, not of fear but of the understanding that next to her is an adult who will always support her, who knows what to say, how to help, so that the skater becomes better. Of course, everything depends on trust. I don’t see any reason to train with a coach whom the athlete does not trust.
But the main thing is that the student must not lie. If she did something badly, there is no need to deceive, say: this is cool, wonderful. It’s better to immediately call a spade a spade, say: you need to go back and redo it. Of course, we don't feel what they do, but from the side we always see things better. And here, trust is just showing. If you trust the words of the coach, and, despite your own feelings, go and retry, then the correct relationship is formed between the coach and the athlete.
- Reveal the secret of the success of coach Eteri Tutberidze? From the side, she seems strict, very serious, but how is she in reality?
“ This is how it should be, and only relatives know who Eteri Georgiyevna really is. All that she has achieved is the result of working every day. She started from scratch, like any coach. There was no ice, a quarter of the rink ... I won’t go into details, I can only say that Eteri Georgiyevna is madly in love with figure skating and this love, her great desire to realise herself, helped her to come closer to her goal. To work with such a trainer means to grow and develop. She lives figure skating. So do we all. And we really want to bring our sport to a new level. This love and this attitude to the cause of Tutberidze attracts. This is just her life.
(c) Olga Yermolina, Tat'yana Flade, Akiko Tamura
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From:
https://fsrussia.ru/intervyu/4979-d...gramma-zapomnilas-ispolneniem-sportsmena.html
It's not supposed to travel to Russia to make an interview with a russian in english, I would say.
