- In September 2018, you became the fifth at the World Cup, after which you announced that your goal was to win at least two Olympics: the nearest in Tokyo and the next in Paris. On what basis was this statement based on youthful impudence and euphoria from a successful performance, or on a sober analysis of the situation?

- On sports performance, which I improve every year. Fifth place at the World Cup - a very high result in itself. In 2019, I became the first in the World Cup, this year I took second place. As for the Olympic victory, you can dream about it abstractly. If I train professionally, this is not a dream, but a goal. Otherwise, what is the essence of playing sports, and even the Olympic look? Why, then, do you get up every morning, go to training, deny yourself much, do not see your relatives and friends for months? Maybe someone has a different motivation, but I have never had another.

- At last year’s world championship, you, nevertheless, remained outside the top 10, failing to get an Olympic license. Was it an accident?

- In our sport in general there are enough accidents. Many species, the result depends on each of them, and in the same show jumping the result does not always depend on you.

- If you take all five disciplines, which is the weakest in your internal sensations?

- I have no such. Neither weak nor super strong disciplines. I’m rather a middle peasant: I have all kinds at a high average level.

- When Dmitry Svatkovsky won the Olympic victory in 2000, his coach said that running is often the most problematic discipline in pentathlon. Because if an athlete doesn’t “run” by nature, training him is pointless.

- I do not agree. When I came to pentathlon from swimming, I ran the worst in the group. The trainers then pointed a finger at me: they say that this girl will never run for anything. Now I am the first in Russia to run, and I am in the top ten of the world in the “combine”.

- Imagine how many people you are now encouraged with these words?

- Imagine. You can say, I take on the mission to say that you can not listen to everyone. You need to go after your dream, find your team, people who will believe in you, support and help.

- Another common stereotype comes from biathlon and is that there are people who cannot be taught to shoot.

- I, too, at the very beginning of my career had a period when shooting was the worst. In statics, I shot normally, but when I needed to combine this with running, I constantly shot myself and stood at the turn of 50 seconds. Now I shoot well, this level is enough for me. But in general, I noticed that in pentathlon there are quite a few athletes who do not know how to deal with shooting purely psychologically. Perhaps they were simply not taught by anyone. And then people just give up. This is really very difficult, when from start to start you try to somehow cope with yourself, but the result remains poor.

View this Instagram post

Publication by Ulyana Batashova (@ ulyana_batashova5) May 15, 2019 at 12:20 PDT

- Do you know that the two-time Olympic champion and the current head coach of the Russian team Andrei Moiseev was once panicky afraid of horses?

- No, he did not tell that.

- And what was your first meeting with the horse?

- It was like a child in an amusement park: “Wow! The horse! " For complete happiness there was only to buy cotton candy on a stick. But fear was not certain. Although the horse is, of course, scary. In terms of what an unpredictable view. It’s very scary to watch other participants go sometimes. Therefore, I try not to watch other people's performances.

- I read that in some countries horses for pentathlon are simply huge.

- For me it does not play a big role. I feel more the horse itself, its skills, handling, and not that it is high or low. There are huge horses that won't even come close to an obstacle, but there are shorties who jump out like that!

I constantly tell how we performed in Egypt, and there were so small horses that the guys kicked down obstacles with their feet. If the horse is really cool trained, it becomes dangerous even to prevent it a little bit - you can bring down. But in general, we have got used horses that different riders work for them.

- Outside of your sport, do you ride horses?

- No. In general, I tend to feel sorry for all animals that are used in parks or elsewhere. It seems to me a mockery.

- How did you stay with pentathlon with such views?

- When I first came to this sport, my views were different. Now the worldview is changing. For example, for two years now, I have not eaten either meat or fish with seafood, and this also changes my attitude to everything living. But I can say that our horses are always kept in excellent conditions: they are constantly watched by veterinarians, they are properly fed, walked, dust particles are blown away from them. By the way, if a rider in a competition hits a horse with a whip more than two times, he is removed for cruelty to animals. Even in the rules it is spelled out.

- If at some point the pentathletes are offered to replace the horse with a bicycle, will you support such a decision?

- Here I have a contradiction: although I feel sorry for the animals, I am much stronger against any new-fangled changes and innovations in our sport. It seems to me that such things kill pentathlon, like sports. It’s better to just close it than change one view to another, to third, to tenth.

View this Instagram post

Publication by Ulyana Batashova (@ ulyana_batashova5) Mar 8, 2020 at 12:46 pm PST

- Everything is just explainable here: television wants spectacles, extreme sports, but it also dictates the conditions. Hence the constant debate: what would be “unnecessary” deleted from the Olympic program in order to add a conditional break-dance there. The program is not rubber?

- All the same, I do not think it is right to clean up some sports. Moreover, that have always existed in the framework of the Olympics. Well, or then make some understandable criteria by which the sport falls into the Olympic program. Maybe the same breakdancers will be offended now, but in my opinion, this is still more a dance, not a sport. We are not trying to drag the ballet to the Olympics? But there, too, training, stretching, people suffer from stress, hold weight ...

- You manage to follow a huge number of sports and do a lot of things that have nothing to do with the training process. Where does the time come from and does this interfere with serious training?

- In fact, I think that if you go in for sports only and when you come home, think only about training or competitions, you can easily go crazy. I was very close to this state at the beginning of 2018, when there were no personal awards at the adult international level. This is a fine line: no matter how seriously a person practices, you need to be able to disconnect from this work. And allow yourself to do it.

Another question is what discipline should always be. There are talented children who train, show good results, but can afford to go out after a workout without a hat, or break the regimen and go to bed late. For me, such things are absolutely unacceptable. But at the same time, I easily switch from training to some other business.

- One of your hobbies is a video interview with people from the world of pentathlon. Which of the interlocutors made the most powerful impression?

- I will not single out anyone especially, because without an interview I knew a lot about these people. I just wanted to tell a wider circle of people that there are such athletes and coaches, cool, kind, not arrogant, despite the high achievements, that they, in addition to the pentathlon, have some views and interests.

- Can you name three people from the world of sports, with whom would you especially like to chat live? But with one amendment, except for Alexander Karelin.

- Why is it “except”?

- Consider that I named him myself, because I know that he is your main idol in sports life.

- Irina Wiener.

View this Instagram post

Publication by Ulyana Batashova (@ ulyana_batashova5) Nov 8, 2019 at 10:50 PST

- Why such a choice?

- I watch all of her interviews, I really like her as a coach: tough, with her own worldview. In addition, so many champion girls went through her in rhythmic gymnastics. Isn’t it just that everything fell from heaven? I would like to talk about this.

- And what, by the way, is in the way? You train at the same base in Novogorsk.

- Well, uh ... Irina Alexandrovna arrives at the base according to her own schedule, and I have five workouts a day after all ...

- Then call the third candidate.

- So, now I’ll think about it. Maria Sharapova. She will say for me, the standard of the right athlete. A man who has perfectly built his brand.

Maybe, of course, this is just a coincidence, but it seems to me that Masha is a really outstanding person in herself. She didn’t have the same results as Serena Williams. But even when Sharapova lost, many sponsors wanted to work with her, and remained with her even after Masha ended her career.

- Now almost all famous athletes are engaged in their own promotion in social networks. For what purpose are you doing this?

- First of all, to popularize our sport. Many journalists do not pay attention to the pentathletes, although it would seem: come to the training team and will certainly stumble upon the Olympic champion or world champion. Plus, I know that many children who practice modern pentathlon live in small towns where there are no broadcasts. How can they look into the world of big sport, where to find a little click to see how athletes train, what they live in, what they do in their free time, how they prepare for competitions?

- Your Instagram photo album suggests that you like the most in your abs and waist.

“I like everything about myself.” But, as they say, demand creates supply. Once I posted pictures, a lot of likes fell right away. Therefore, I continue to do this.

- Do you receive promotional offers?

- My manager deals with these issues, and now we are actively working with him in this direction.

- Do you have a chance to qualify for the Olympic Games in Tokyo?

- Well, of course, if everything returns to square one. There is no clarity in this yet. It seems like they announced the dates of some competitions, but we are still sitting at home, training as best we can, and it is not clear when it will all end ...

View this Instagram post

Publication by Ulyana Batashova (@ ulyana_batashova5) November 6, 2018 at 3:41 PST

- What does a pentathlon training day look like in isolation?

- In fact, my conditions are just excellent. I immediately went to a country house, there is a treadmill, there is a professional cycling station on which triathletes train, there is an equipped gym - a Swedish wall, a bar, some pancakes, rugs, rubber harnesses of all kinds, plus now I have made a special cart for swimming - simulator that allows you to simulate movements in water.

- You built this sports communism yourself ?

- We just have a sports family. Parents designed the room immediately when they built the house. There is also a mannequin, which I can stab, I can dress him with a trainer.

- Does the coach send you a task, or are you working with him in video mode?

- I have a training plan that is specifically designed for quarantine, I try to fulfill it. Of course, this is not exactly what we did at the training camp, and the loads are not comparable at all, but now the conversation is no longer about maintaining a result or sports form, but about not losing tone. A professional athlete can’t abruptly take and stop training, you can probably just die from it. Although, to whom I am telling this ...

- Although there is some clarity as to when sporting life can begin again, do pentathletes have it?

- The updated schedule was posted on the website of the international federation not so long ago: in September various small tournaments and junior competitions begin to start, and the main championships are postponed to later fall. The European Championship will be held, as expected, in Hungary, but the world championship, which was supposed to be held in May in Wuhan, was moved to Cancun.

- The fact that the Olympics were postponed a year later, do you see any advantages for yourself personally?

- I do not consider the situation from the perspective of pluses or minuses, or from the perspective of the Olympics - it will be in a year, two, ten, or it will not be at all. I want all this to end somehow. So that people can live normally, as before, so that everything works out, no one is sick, everyone has recovered - in this regard. Speaking abstractly, the minus is probably that all the federations counted on the preparation of specific numbers, laid the budget. We went to training camps, spent a lot of money, and it was not some kind of treasury money that fell from the sky, but ours too. It turns out that all this was wasted ...

View this Instagram post

Publication by Ulyana Batashova (@ ulyana_batashova5) Dec 5, 2018 at 7:47 am PST