"Figure skating is not only ice": Davydov on the age limit, quadruples by Samodelkina and the "arms race"

“I don't look at pupils as small children. They are athletes "

The coach who managed to challenge Eteri Tutberidze is a rare characteristic, almost a sensation. But this is exactly what happened at the pre-season skates in Novogorsk, where 13-year-old Sophia Samodelkina, who is working with Sergey Davydov, showed absolutely the best result, beating not only the Khrustalny skaters in points, but also all the juniors who performed in the men's category.

- At a training session in Novogorsk, your athlete Sofya Samodelkina showed an excellent quadruple salchow, but did not include it in the free program at the skates themselves. Why?

- In order for a complex element to "stand up" thoroughly, you need to have at least 50% confidence in its reliability. Otherwise, it's a lottery game. I just wanted to use the pre-rental adrenaline. When you learn all these technical elements - axel, quadruple jumps, there always comes a moment when an athlete seems to be ready to start performing them, but some additional push is required, and not even a technical one, but an emotional one. Spectators, judges, other coaches who are at the rink with you at the same time contribute to this.

- After all, at one time you also tried to master the quadruple jump, insert it into the program, but, as far as I remember, it was not very successful. What is teaching quadruple jumps to little girls?  

- Well, first of all, I knew how to jump quadruples. It’s just that we didn’t work well enough in our time, this must be honestly admitted. And, secondly, I do not look at pupils as small children. They are athletes. In addition, we do not set the task of jumping quadruple for everyone, but only for those who have the necessary qualities for this. After all, this is, in general, a traumatic thing.

- Some coaches working in single skating are sincerely convinced that an athlete should not pay attention to injuries, but must endure pain, overcoming himself at every workout, and not complain.

- There are muscle pains, which, of course, everyone has to endure - there is no escape from this in sports. But when it comes to sprains or some other serious injuries, forcing an athlete to train is unacceptable for me. For starters, he simply cannot jump normally. When a person has something very painful, he will never work at full strength, even if he really wants it. 

- Are your training sessions open to parents?

- Now everything is closed due to the pandemic, and last year we let the parents in. We wanted to show ... More precisely, not even to show, but to teach them how to treat the training process correctly. Do not meddle in your own business, relatively speaking. They need to know how they can help their child without interfering with the coach's work. To this end, we even held parent-teacher meetings, explaining that it is very important to understand exactly what a specialist can be dissatisfied with, with what dedication the child himself works. You don't need to be a professional to see this. Everything is done in order to teach children how to work properly. So that they want to ride, so that from them, and not from us, comes the desire to come to training, run, stretch, learn quadruple jumps and so on.  

- Doesn't it happen that a child skates just because he is afraid to upset his parents who want to see him as a skater?

- It happens. But you must understand, children, especially small ones, do not always realize what they are doing.

- So I'm trying to understand to what extent hard training work provokes a person to grow up? In other words, is a 12-13-year-old figure skater a child, or already a professional athlete?

- Those children who already know a lot at this age are usually older than their age. I cannot say that these are adults, but they already have developed a clearly directed conscious thinking. It can be seen that the girls understand why they come, what they have to do, for what ... I think that is why they progress faster than others.

• Sergey Davydov
• RIA News
• © Grigory Sysoev

"I would like to try Lutz with Samodelkina, but we are in no hurry"

- Tell us about Sofya Samodelkina. Why, by the way, do you call her Sofa, and not Sonya?

- She immediately told us when she came to the group: "My name is Sofa."

- Jumping quadruple jumps - is it her personal desire or just a stage to which you, as a coach, brought her?

- Without aspiration, a skater will never jump. Initially, many children have the same thought: "I won't succeed." We, coaches, teach, lead to complex elements and, as it were, give the child the bait: "You can, you are already ready." And the athlete begins to understand that this is a really achievable goal. And he lights up with work. Well, then a chain reaction of more and more complex tasks begins, which you constantly support.

- Is the quadruple jump an element that can be taught to any child?

- Not. There must be certain abilities. Correct coordination and a balanced body that is ready for these loads. It is important not only to teach, but also not to "lose" the element. Quadruple is complete, absolute concentration. You have to come to workout as energized as possible and you cannot afford to work half-heartedly. If you feel that you have lost some sensations, it means that you come back, do the training exercises again, and tune in.

- Samodelkina quite early began to perform the triple axel, a jump, which they say that it requires a much more refined technique than quadruples. Is it really so?

- Rib jumps are always harder than cog jumps: a cog is a support, you can push yourself out, even if you didn't jump very well. And from the edges people sometimes fly away completely unpredictably. There must be a very developed sense of balance to catch the right sensation when pushing off. If you look at quadruple jumps, you will see more serrated than ribbed. Therefore, it is really more problematic for girls to learn a triple axel than any cogged quadruple.

- How to explain that in your time quadruple jumps broke programs even for such skaters as Alexey Urmanov, Elvis Stoiko, Ilya Kulik, Todd Eldridge ... Why does this not happen with girls? 

- In the old days, figure skating was less expensive or something. There was another difficulty, other requirements, the athlete did one ride a week, getting used to it. And of course, when they inserted a quadruple jump into the program, he screwed everything up. Now children have been working in a completely different way. Need to roll in a new element? This means that we will roll the whole number until this element falls into place and takes up as much strength as in the very first execution.

- What is the next quadruple you plan to master with Samodelkina?

- While the task is to roll what is: sheepskin coat, salchow. Of course, I would like to try lutz too, but we are in no hurry.

• Elizaveta Tuktamysheva
• RIA News
• © Alexander Wilf

"Raise the age - the race for complexity will lose all meaning"

- How do you feel about conversations that the admission age of figure skaters to the adult level can be raised after the 2022 Olympic Games?

- It's such a double-edged sword. Still, women's figure skating is now at the highest technical level. Great attention is riveted to him, he is constantly discussed, they write about him, and all this is precisely because of the quadruple jumps.  

- I disagree with you. It seems to me that personal confrontation is still at the forefront. Evgenia Plushenko and Alexei Yagudin, Yuna Kim and Mao Asada, Evgenia Medvedeva and Alina Zagitova ... 

- I don’t know, frankly, what is the truth here, but I still think that the “arms race”, all these complex elements, to a very large extent draw attention to our sport. Raise the age - the race for complexity will lose all meaning.

- I heard a lot of similar arguments in artistic gymnastics, but from time to time people appeared there who overturned all the dogmas. For example, Boris Pilkin, who figured out how to use Svetlana Khorkina's long arms and legs to her advantage, so that the athlete does not lose complexity. 

- It seems to me that it is primarily a matter of the personality of Khorkina herself. If Pilkin took four athletes of the same physique and brought them all to the highest result, we could talk about some special method. If the coach had not had an outstanding personality, he would not have done anything, unfortunately. It's like Liza Tuktamysheva in figure skating. Which is not only in amazing shape, but also shows that in adulthood, you can perform the most difficult elements.

- Leonid Raitsin, a well-known figure skating specialist, has always held the position that the key to success is in the correct physical and special training of an athlete. And that any person can be prepared so as to bring the margin of safety to the maximum. In other words, for him it is not a dogma that only such slender girls as Alexandra Trusova or Anna Shcherbakova can jump quadruple jumps. 

- You can raise the margin of safety, but all the same, as soon as the girl's transitional age begins, her whole physical form comes to naught. No matter how cool you prepare it.

- Taking an athlete through puberty - is it an interesting or painful process for a coach?

- I would say inevitable. You still have to go through it, you can't go anywhere. Worst of all, there are no tools.

- In what respect?

- In terms of the fact that every coach has a tool to teach a child to jump a quadruple toe loop, but there are no recipes and templates to guide a child through puberty and growing up.

• Eteri Tutberidze
• RIA News
• © Vladimir Song

"A person must understand that he cannot turn around and leave with impunity"

- You worked with such luminaries of the coaching department as Nina Ruchkina, Rafael Harutyunyan, Elena Tchaikovskaya. Which of the mentors most of all laid in you the principles that are guiding you now? 

- Hard to say. I am very grateful to Tchaikovskaya and Vladimir Kotin, with whom I worked not only as an athlete, but also started as a coach, and worked with Ruchkina the longest. From her I went to Harutyunyan, then returned. And of course, the understanding that figure skating is not only ice, but a balanced work that needs to be done correctly and on time, was laid in me by Nina Ivanovna. Now, to be honest, I don’t remember why I left her: we didn’t fight, but then I really wanted to go to Moscow. There is no one to help, I was alone, even my mother did not live in Vitebsk, but in Rostov, so I made such a decision - young, maybe ...

- Each young coach goes through a period in one way or another when more experienced colleagues use him as a supplier of "raw materials". You, as far as I know, are no exception.

- Many left, and not only from me - everyone lives with it. Now the 37th school (the school of "Khrustalny". - RT ) is faced with this ...

- Do you need contracts?

- I think so. Until the relationship begins to be formalized legally, the coaches will have no way of tying the athlete to themselves. Hockey and football live according to such systems. A mentor should know: if, for example, he concludes an agreement for three months or for three years, he will work quietly throughout this period. If the ward breaks the agreement ahead of time, some kind of forfeit, compensation should be provided. That is, a person must understand that he cannot turn around and leave with impunity. And, perhaps, people will begin to think more seriously before making a decision.

- Are you making any efforts to keep the athlete in the group, or at least to minimize the likelihood that a person can be lured away, outbid, captured?

- Useless. Judging by how many people have left for us, and how many third-party transitions occur in general, we can conclude: if a person decides to leave, he will still do it, no matter what you do. It can be returned for a while, but, as a rule, such people are still constantly looking for options that will turn out to be more profitable. We left here, stayed there, went to the third place, to the fourth. I don’t take the level of the world championships, but in adolescence, almost everyone begins to feel for periods that everything is going wrong. Therefore, I always teach my children, and myself too: the competitions passed, they made a mistake - everyone must find this mistake in himself. I sat and dug, you sat and dug, we drew conclusions together, and only then something can come of it. And if you constantly look for the guilty and blame your shortcomings on the circumstances, then nothing will come of it. 

- Why can you kick an athlete out of training?

- For "not working". I never kick it out if I see that the child is working, crawling out of his way, but he cannot. 

- Did you have to expel someone forever?

- No, but I set the conditions: either you live by my rules, or you need to look for another specialist.