“My whole family was really put under house arrest”
We didn’t agree to talk about figure skating. And especially not about the coronavirus, which informally crushed the world for itself. But the situation dictated otherwise: my phone call caught Oleg Vasiliev in a Moscow apartment, where the coach, like his whole family, was locked due to quarantine.
- The current circumstances with absolute self-isolation provoke a person to engage in something else, not his own profession. What are you doing?
- The first time I’m lying on the couch and haven’t been doing anything for three weeks now. I’m not ready to do something globally - to learn another foreign language or to master some serious skill. The first two weeks I really enjoyed the fact that I could be with my family for a long time. I work in St. Petersburg, and the family lives in Moscow. Spending time together turned out practically only on weekends. And now both the wife and the child are falling asleep and waking up with them, there’s no need to run away - this is really something unusual for us, unusual and with a positive sign. But in connection with recent events, the situation has changed a bit.
- Are you talking about a regime of voluntary self-isolation?
- Alas, we have it forced.
- That is, the information that you have been diagnosed with coronavirus is true?
- Everything turned out very interesting here. After my wife Natasha and her daughter Varey returned from Switzerland and had to undergo compulsory quarantine, we all were tested and said that with my son Natasha, Dima, the first test was positive. But no one showed us this test. That is, there is no documentary evidence that we really are carriers of the virus.
For the past few days, I have been solely calling at all levels: to the Department of Health, to the headquarters for the fight against the spread of coronavirus, to Rospotrebnadzor, to the ambulance, to the clinic’s referral service — to all structures that have at least some relation to today's situation. I would like to finally understand my status.
Neither in electronic nor in paper form information about our supposedly positive test does not exist. But there is a letter in Rospotrebnadzor that I and Dima got a positive result and are on the list of more than forty people who should be forcibly isolated.
- On the basis of what should people believe in the reliability of the readings or any tests?
- So I had the same question: why should I take someone’s word that my test gave a positive result? The clinic has a single database, but in this system there is also no mention of my positive test. After the first test, several more studies were conducted, all of them gave a negative result. Nevertheless, my whole family was actually put under house arrest. We are strictly forbidden to leave the apartment.
- Does someone monitor compliance with this requirement?
- All of us were photographed first of all. There is a face recognition system, video cameras hang on the porches of our house, the first step from the house will be fixed, and no one knows what this will all turn out to be. Minimum - 15 thousand rubles fine, maximum - criminal prosecution. We do not have the right to go to the store for groceries, we can’t go to the cottage, we don’t even have the opportunity to take out the trash. Does anyone imagine how much household waste a family of four leaves daily? And how much garbage accumulates in the apartment in three weeks?
"Figure skating accustoms a person to pain"
- You and your wife are inveterate theater-goers ...
- Now you won’t say so - the very beloved Bolshoi Theater is not working. But we watch broadcasts on the Internet, yes.
- When people have some kind of joint hobbies, someone alone is usually keener. Are you a master or slave in theater?
- Well, it’s not a secret here that Natasha always pulls me into the theater, and I don’t strongly resist. This is purely her passion, and now she continues to watch all the available performances online. To another extent, our culinary passion can be considered cooking. Despite the fact that we are limited in the choice of products, Natasha cooks a lot, her crown is desserts. Repeatedly passed special confectionery courses, I learned a lot from them. I’m self-taught in terms of cooking, but I like to make something meaty.
- Your passion for cooking is the cost of a hungry sports childhood?
- I would not say that childhood was very hungry, but, of course, I had to limit myself.
- If you compare the requirements for the athlete that existed at the time of your performances and which are now - are they comparable or tougher?
- In modern sports, everything is much tougher. Firstly, you have to train a lot more. Previously, a lot was abstract: it is clear that the technique existed, but it did not have significant significance: no one bothered, for example, from which edge you jump a flip or lutz. Now just such details play a very big role.
- And they require more thorough preparation of the body?
- They require, first of all, time. The more detailed you learn the element, the more time is required for preparatory exercises, in order to bring the body to ensure that the element is performed correctly. Take the same steps: no one has bothered not only with certain edges or turns, but in general, let’s say, the technical saturation of the tracks. Yes, we had a “school”, obligatory figures, and now it’s all - links of one chain, that is, a track is no more an element than a quadruple jump.
- Does figure skating teach a person physical pain?
- I think yes. This pain is not constant, but at certain points in the season you have to live with it. With pain in the feet from the wearing out of new skates, with pain in the body from learning new elements, from excessive physical exertion, with pain in the head, because you can’t fit into it, how can you do something that no one has ever done. That is, this is a kind of obligatory part of the process of your annual growth. No other way.
“I dance very badly. Although I know how to waltz ”
- There are a lot of discussions in the media about approaches to the coaching profession, including methods of working in women's single skating. You have worked in the United States for more than 15 years, and it will not be difficult for you to answer which style of education is right?
- If you talk abstractly, everything is quite simple in sports: if work gives a result, it is correct. Everything else is exclusively the ethical side of the issue. It’s just that America’s ethics and philosophy of sport are on the same plane: when you pass the exam necessary for coaching, you sign up to a code of ethics that has existed there for a long time. I think this is correct, since the coach’s influence on a small child is very large. In our country, no one bothers at all with what methods the coach obtains from the athlete the execution of one or another element or, in total, the program. The main thing is that this program or these elements should be executed better than others.
- Why then didn’t you stay to work in America?
- Because my marital status has changed - I got married. And the wife did not want to leave Russia. We discussed and jointly decided that this option is not acceptable for our family.
- Have there been situations in your life when you really felt a lack of knowledge or any everyday skills?
- The understanding that I do not own something is constantly present. Therefore, I go to the same theaters with pleasure: Natasha receives real pleasure from this, and for me it is an opportunity to close certain gaps in education. Or take foreign languages: at school and institute I studied German, which in Soviet times I did not need at all. Therefore, even after graduating from the Lesgaft Institute, I did not really remember anything except “Hyundai Hoh” and “Hitler Kaput”.
But then I realized that knowledge of languages in the modern world is as necessary as clothes: you can’t walk naked in society? When I worked in France, I picked up French, when I moved to America, I learned to speak English so that they understood me. If I had been in Austria or Germany for a couple of years, I think I would have greatly strengthened the level of German.
- Does the profession of a coach limit a person in a professional framework, or develops him?
- It develops clearly, because there are no restrictions. To remain in demand in a professional environment, you must constantly study, update your knowledge in the specific aspect in which you work, in all related fields. I mean, in ice dancing, on the floor, in acrobatics, in figure skating itself, because the rules are constantly changing.
- Are you dancing well?
- Very bad. Although I know how to waltz. At one time, Tamarochka Moskvina invited a variety of specialists to her skaters. We had classes in acrobatics and modern dances - the same jazz class in the early 1980s turned out to be very useful for me, because these classes greatly developed coordination, which later came in handy in everything. In Soviet times, finding a jazz dance teacher was very, very difficult, but it was then that I realized that it was necessary to constantly develop and maximize athletes from the comfort zone.
- During the time of your performances with Elena Valova, not all music was allowed for use.
- One of our first programs was put to the music of “Pictures from the Exhibition” by Mussorgsky, but I remembered very well how one of the training sessions was attended by Valentin Piseev, who was then president of the figure skating federation, and ordered this music to be removed. Tamarochka removed, but the fact itself was important for us that we found music that had not been used at all in Soviet figure skating before, set up a program, made costumes ... And there were a lot of such examples in our sports life.
- One of the trainers said: "When you gain some very big victories, inevitably there is a feeling that you are holding God by the beard." Do you know this?
- No. Even when Totmyanina and Marinin won the Olympics in Turin, the sensations were completely different. Both from a well and very correctly done job.
“In America, he worked with a couple under the age of 60”
- The Olympics in Turin was almost 15 years ago. How to keep motivation to work when the right material does not fall into the hands and its searches drag on for years?
- Good material is certainly a great gift for a coach, but any athlete is interesting if you don’t formally approach to working with him. Therefore, to say that the less professional an athlete is, the less motivation a coach would be, it would not be entirely correct. In the same America, I worked with kids aged 5-7 and after each half-hour training, I realized that I taught something to these children that they left with burning eyes. It’s just that the work that we do with leading athletes is much more visible.
- In Chicago, did you work only with children, or with everyone in a row?
- Until Tatyana Totmyanina and Maxim Marinin appeared, working with everyone in a row was my main duty. The age range is from 5 years to 70 with a ponytail. I had a couple who started at the age of 60. Another one sat in the office until the age of 40, were completely uncoordinated and undeveloped, but suddenly decided that they could do figure skating.
They appeared at my skating rink and began to work hard two or three times a week, and for two years I taught them how to make support over their heads - the so-called “fish”. This couple every year went to the American Championship among adults, performed in their age category, and almost always returned with some kind of medal. In America, it’s absolutely normal to work with everyone who wants to learn something.
- But in Russia?
- In Russia now, too, there is such a tendency, and many of my colleagues are engaged in exactly what they work on tackle and train, as we say, "everything that moves."
- That is, if figure skating is curtailed and you have to earn by rolling, it will not mentally break you?
- Why should it break if in America I have been doing this one way or another for 16 years?
- I heard that you quite often get out to major tennis tournaments ...
- This is also the influence of a wife who loves tennis and, in particular, Rafael Nadal. Accordingly, we follow all tennis tournaments, we always have it on the TV screen, and if there is an opportunity to go to the same Roland Garros, we go there.
- With the confectionery and culinary talents of your wife, do you make any efforts to maintain the ability to pass through the door during a forced quarantine?
“I have lost four kilograms in the last three weeks.” Firstly, I try to control myself, despite the fact that Natasha, indeed, cooks very tasty. Secondly, there is a daughter who, let's say, makes sure that I do not lie on the couch 24 hours a day. She constantly terrorizes me in every way, tries to somehow use me in her own games, crawls on my neck. Therefore, I am very pleased with myself in terms of physical fitness.
- If you were allowed to leave the house, where would you first go?
- To the park, to the cottage, somewhere where there is space, where there is freedom of movement, because it is difficult to constantly be in four walls. If we were isolated from the world in the country, I would not even bother about this because there is fresh air, you can go out into the territory for a walk, change the scenery. Now, the longer I stay at home, the stronger the feeling that we are all in prison. In such a good European plan, a comfortable prison with a family, good and tasty food, everything seems to be wonderful, but every second you very sharply feel to what extent you are limited in rights.