A tiny locker with a grinding machine at the Sokolniki ice rink, which has been Alexander Kuznetsov’s office for many years, will give odds to any sports museum. Shabby shoes of Sasha Cohen, Irina Slutskaya and Natalya Linichuk are mixed up on the walls and on the floor, and a paper heart sewn with a pin on a door jamb, on which Mao Asada’s hand shows words of gratitude in Russian. Instead of a doorknob, a blade fastened to a wooden canvas. And right above the machine on the wall is a rarity: the English skates of the century before last, sharply curved by an elongated snail and darkened by time and figure-skating adversity.

“Nothing unusual happens”

- Judging by the number of broken blades on your workbench - is this not a rare problem?

- Alas. This happens, as a rule, for the same reason: the design of the ridge does not withstand. The bottom of the boot should, in theory, be a very rigid plane, which prevents the sole from deforming in any way. But imagine that the structure is not very strong, and you are Andrei Chuvilyaev, a greenhouse with a two-meter height and a weight of 90 kg, and land from a jump on the prong and roll on a full hobby. The load on the bending of the blade in this case is incredibly high. Here it is trying to break. For dancers, this problem is not very relevant, since the loads are much less, and the skaters use shorter blades.

- Because they take more complex steps?

- Not only. In dancing, partners need to be very close to each other. Plus - a lot of small movements. All this requires high maneuverability, so it is imperative that the blade does not protrude beyond the perimeter of the boot. And he, it turns out, performs a safety role. In loners, the blade becomes longer as a person grows, the foot increases and, accordingly, the distance between the middle and the calcaneal stance. Therefore, you have to constantly engage in fitting.

- Is the problem of choosing shoe length and blade length in figure skating generally difficult to solve?

- Yes, since the sizes of boots are traditionally produced in a metric scale, and the sizes of blades are in inch. All this went from England, where in 1696 the company "John Wilson" was formed. At first, the company produced edged weapons, some kind of cutting and stabbing tool, and eventually began to specialize exclusively in blades. Skates became popular with them after in 1841 the company presented the blades to Queen Victoria of England and her husband Prince Albert. But on those broken blades that you hold in your hands, even the name of the owner is - his name is Dmitry Aliyev. The breakdown happened just before the Grand Prix finals.

- When in this season the skaters started breaking down in a rather massive manner, as a specialist, you immediately understood what was happening?

- Of course. The paradox is that nothing unusual happens. It’s just that in the last few years the press began to pay too much attention to figure skating, almost under the magnifying glass to consider it: Alexandra Trusova jumped, Anna Shcherbakova - this, the dancers made an open rental, the greenhouses made a mistake at the workout ... Plus - costumes, hairstyles. What else can you write about? ABOUT! The shoes are broken!

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  • © Elena Vaitsekhovskaya

- You want to say that it has always been like this?

- Of course. Canadian Kevin Reynolds once changed nine pairs of boots during the season - Canadians themselves told me about this. In my practice, there was a case when an adult skater changed three pairs of boots of the same company from July to November. By the stage of the Grand Prix in Moscow, the guy broke the third pair and stood on the shoes of the company, which he did not think about at all, starting the season. He told me that he likes new shoes much more than those that he used before.

“I have never heard that Yuzuru Hanyu had problems with shoes.”

- He has his own personal master. I think that the Japanese have no less problems with the inventory than the rest of the skaters, it just doesn’t go public. Although I sometimes helped repair Daisuke Takahashi and Takahiko Kozuka shoes. Shoes generally fly often: the blades are set incorrectly, some kind of factory defect, excessive loads. I myself was a skater, coach, specialist in the point and installation of skates and I can say that the shoe inventory is extremely imperfect. Unlike hockey, by the way. Every time I go to a sports store, my mouth is drooling. I see a huge number of models, new materials. Plastics, composites, fiberglass. The same skaters, short-trekkers, skiers use the shoe phenomenally. They make a mold, create a 3D model, and pour shoes on the foot.

- Why then is this not done in figure skating?

- There is a small set of companies that are engaged in such production, but they are quite conservative. Although I am sure that some companies are already preparing some kind of revolutionary proposals.

- The company that will be the first to solve this problem and put products on the market will earn billions?

- In fact, this problem is hardly solved radically. Because there are different legs, different riding styles. Remember the shoes for the "school" figures? They had to be as soft as possible, "rag" so that the skater could control all his micromotion, as he wants. Initially, figure skating boots were high boots with a huge number of hooks. Then they became lower and lower, and in the end, they turned into almost sneakers. The boot language also has completely different functions. Previously, it was very thin, like a decoration. Now it makes up a third of the upper part of the boot.

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  • © Elena Vaitsekhovskaya

- Skaters complain that in some models such a language becomes the main reason for strong namin on the rise of the leg.

- In the place of an internal fracture, the boot begins to put strong pressure on the ankle. Accordingly, on the front of the rise there are not even bastards, but huge bumps and growths. This is crazy pain. Paradox: companies that produce shoes for skaters are constantly trying to come up with something better, but in reality it turns out that the best is the enemy of the good. Therefore, thinking skaters always note in which model they were most comfortable riding, so that, if necessary, it was possible to order a specific pair from the previous series.

I know, for example, that for Stephan Lambiel they still make three or four pairs of models of the 2003/2004 season every year, Seryozha Voronov uses shoes that he skated 10 years ago. Many people really think that the equipment that was once is much better than what is offered to the skaters now.

- I was told that many stores selling figure skating equipment in Russia started their business by buying substandard boots from manufacturers for cheap - they took them not even individually, but by weight ...

- I would willingly believe it, but I have no reason to say that this is the case.

- And did you happen to take a shoe in your hands and understand that this is substandard?

- Yes. In such cases, I try to immediately explain to the client: if you want to be sure that your child is being properly trained, you need to have an inventory of the appropriate quality. Therefore, I highly recommend going and changing this boot until I made the first hole in it. People who sell shoes in a store sometimes probably hear my last name, and I don’t think they are enthusiastic about this. But their task is to sell the goods, to attach them somewhere, and if it is not possible to do this in Moscow, then the shoes will leave for Vorkuta, Chelyabinsk, Murom, and so on. And my task is for children and adults to ride on normal equipment.

“It's like playing basketball with boxing gloves”

- Ari Zakaryan once told how Tatsuki Machida rolled a new pair of boots with him, and when he took off at the end of the day, blood flowed from the boots. Is this the cost of the profession?

- Rather, it is an individual story of each athlete. There are people who are 100% sure of their inventory, they know exactly what model they need, dozens of times in it. Accordingly, they go out, and can begin to perform normal elements on new shoes during the first trainings. And there are those who are constantly engaged in experimentation: somewhere the athlete himself heard something, or one of the parents said that the conditional Papadakis rides on such boots and blades and wins the world championships, which means that his child It was supposed to ride on the same.

“Is that a kind of masochism?”

- No, this is a kind of stupidity. Just some sincerely believe that tormenting with shoes is part of the mandatory process. But it's not right. Although many athletes like to take as tight shoes as possible. So that the shoe after rolling sits on the leg extremely tightly. Roma Kostomarov generally skated barefoot to feel the ice more subtly. It’s like blinds grinding their fingertips to the touch to feel any unevenness. But parents, on the contrary, like to order a super-duper insole, which in their understanding should correctly form the foot. But it's like playing basketball with boxing gloves.

“And where is that middle ground?”

- Everyone should live their own mind. When I worked as a videographer with Zhanna Gromova and for the first time sharpened skates for Ira Slutskaya, she went out on the ice and cried half-training because she could not perform a single element. Then, in tears, she admitted that she was insanely sharp. I immediately took the appropriate tool, blunted the blade. Then I was more free in my experiments. He could cut shoes, insert some metal parts into them, strengthening problem areas, repaint, change hooks ...

When Zhanna Fedorovna saw how and what I was doing, she said: “Kuznetsov, I will be engaged in my coaching work, and you have the responsibility for all the equipment. What you think is necessary, then order. But if, if we have problems with blades or boots, these will be your problems. ”

The agent of Slutsk then was Andras Shalai (world champion in ice dancing in 1980. - RT ), he worked at IMG and could buy anything. He bought for us American grinding machines with the cost of a Zhiguli car. And we amazingly collaborated for ten years.

- Many times I saw on public ice rinks how the master drives the skate into the machine - and the grinding process goes on its own. You sharpen skates by eye. Why?

- I am not a fan of automatic machines and semiautomatic devices at all, I want to feel with my hands what exactly and why I am doing. On the machine, the master is forced to completely go through the whole cycle, that is, to remove a certain layer of metal for no purpose. And very quickly you begin to realize that, having sharpened the blade five times on the machine, you just need to throw it away, because the curves have become too gentle. I try to do a set of the same manipulations, but very carefully. But you don’t see a halo above my head? And since he is gone, why don't I make mistakes? For example, I sharpened skates at the European Championships for seven dance couples who took first, sixth, seventh and further places. And then a parent comes to me in Sokolniki and says that his child’s back part of the blade jumps off. And I understand that I didn’t work as a pebble.

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  • © Elena Vaitsekhovskaya

- But Elizaveta Tuktamysheva doesn’t sharpen skates at all ...

- Sasha Samarin also does not handle this for six months. The same Zhanna Gromova had Seryozha Dobrin - we, I remember, persuaded him to skate either Russia or Europe before the championship to skate, because six months have passed since the last sharpening. I had athletes who went to sharpen skates to the great Edward Pliner, and the next day they returned to re-sharpen. But this does not mean that Pliner didn’t sharpen skates well, but that everyone has different requests.

When Tatyana Anatolyevna Tarasova worked with Mao Asada in Moscow, she once asked me to come to them in a kind of referendum - to help understand what is happening with the skates. It was a very funny situation in which about a dozen people participated: Mao herself, her mother, Tarasova, translator, physical fitness coach, agent ... They called to Japan, from there they said: look at the left boot. I looked and answered: yes, it seems to me that she should be dumped inside, because of this she tears off the flip and salchow, and besides, she can not stand on the outer edge when playing the lutz.

When I suggested trying to change the balance a little, Mao said that this could disrupt the triple axel approach, and this jump was her signature element. In general, we called many times to Japan and vice versa, all this was translated from Japanese into Russian, from Russian into English, and in the end it was decided not to do the rearrangement so as not to lose the triple axel. To lose it would mean, in the Japanese sense, to lose face.

“I really don't like the smell of metal dust”

- I am sure that you were touched by conversations during the December championship of Russia about whether Evgeny Medvedev could bring the competition to the end, despite having broken on the eve of the short boot program. What do you think about this?

- Eugene could ride such boots. She, in fact, and skated - in a short program. But, when an athlete suddenly and very abruptly has some kind of event related to his inventory ... Michael Schumacher, probably, could have reached the finish line on a faulty Ferrari car if there were half a circle left. But, if 30 or 60 laps, he would simply go the distance, realizing the futility of the effort.

- In other words, was Medvedev right when she refused to roll an arbitrary program?

- The fact is that any, even a small problem with the inventory at the level of complex elements sometimes gives an absolutely negative result. If the conditional Maria Lasitskene storms the bar at a height of two meters, she must be sure that everything is in order with each spike. As soon as doubts arise in the athlete’s head, the entire course of motor actions is disrupted.

Zhenya is an experienced person with an iron character, who knows how to analyze perfectly. Of course, she could get together for that rental and somehow make all her jumping elements with not very successful S-shaped exits, for which she would get her “minus one”, “minus two”, and would be in sixth or seventh place. Does she need it? At the Russian Championship in women's single skating, you can not ride imperfectly.

- At competitions I constantly see you as an ISU technical specialist. I know that at one time you defended a dissertation, received a degree and, probably, could have successfully engaged not only in coaching, but also in teaching. Instead, prefer to sharpen your skates. Why?

- When there are two trainers in the family, and in the courtyard some year 1989, someone alone must earn money. I was the director of the regional children's and youth sports school in figure skating, in addition to the director's salary, I received money for working part-time as a coach. Plus - premiums for a degree, for a coaching category, for the title of master of sports. But when my friend, unfortunately, already deceased, offered me to work as a toolmaker in a cooperative for the production of badges, I began to earn ten times more.

My wife then cried even because of this discrepancy. Mom also tried to persuade her to quit figure skating and go to her as an engineer at the Paris Commune factory, where she worked for 62 years. But I immediately said at home that I love figure skating and would do what I want. Actually, all my life I have been doing exactly what I want, and I get great pleasure from it. From fussing with skates and shoes including. Although, in truth, I really do not like the smell of metal dust ...

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  • © Elena Vaitsekhovskaya