"I swore with all my partners in training": Kostomarov about his violent character, two disqualifications and the role of a drug dealer

For an interview, Roman Kostomarov rolled up on a motorcycle.

Catching the surprise that flashed on my face, I reacted instantly:

- I'm a city person, I live in the center, so I choose transport depending on the situation on the roads.

In Luzhniki, where the shooting of "Ice Age" is taking place, they are not allowed on motorcycles, but today there is no training.

So I take my soul away.

What are we going to talk about?

- Let's start with the fact that your victory at the 2006 Olympic Games with Tatyana Navka was the last for Russian ice dancing.

Did you go to Turin to win?

- Sure.

Nobody could guarantee us a 100% gold medal, especially since the 2001 world champions and bronze medalists of the Salt Lake City Games Barbara Fuzar-Poli and Maurizio Margallo returned to those Games, but we went to fight for the first place and not for anything else, that's for sure.

- And they lost to the Italians already at the start in the compulsory dance ..

- Rather, the Italians were simply made the first there, although they absolutely did not deserve it.

Everyone understood that Barbara and Maurizio would support as much as possible: this is Italy, they are within their native walls, their "home" Olympic Games, but Tanya and I were only thinking about keeping our own emotions in our fist, not splashing out, not hearing anything, not see and in no case lose concentration.

At least that's how I set myself up.

Relax a little - a mistake will always happen.

- How did it happen in Turin with five couples who fell in the original dance?

- At the Olympics in Salt Lake City, if you remember, there was also a rockfall in the dances: the Canadians who had claimed victory, the Italians, collapsed.

But psychologically, something terrible was happening in Turin, if even Rita Drobyazko and Povilas Vanagas fell - people who, in my memory, were never mistaken.

It seems that you try not to watch the previous warm-ups, but you arrive at the rink in advance, hear conversations, willy-nilly glance at the monitors, and there they fall, fall, fall ...

- Won the Olympics - is it an incomparable story in terms of emotions?

- With nothing at all.

When I started skating, I thought that the main thing in sports was to become a world champion, and everything else was bullshit.

In Salt Lake City in 2002, I performed absolutely calmly, since Tanya and I did not fight for anything there at all and remained tenth.

And in this case, you only think that it would be a little more pleasant to rise one or two places higher in the final protocol.

- I didn't think that the difference between tenth and ninth place could be fundamental ...

- By and large it is not.

But there are people with whom you compete for many years, and one way or another you constantly compare yourself with them.

When Tanya and I arrived at our first European Championship in Prague in 1999, there were two compulsory dances in the program.

In the first we beat Albena Denkova and Max Staviskiy, and in the second we somehow failed to pass, flew to 13th place and from that time until 2004 we could not beat but even come close to Max and Albena.

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Publication from Roman Kostomarov KRS (@romankostomarovkrs) 27 Feb 2018 at 11:29 PST

- When in 2004 you won the European Championship in Budapest against this couple, and then the World Championship, there was an unthinkable amount of talk that your main advantage over the Bulgarian duo was the Russian flag ...

- According to this logic, we should have been on the podium of the World Championship in 2003, when they guessed right with the eastern program under Peter Gabriel, and skated superbly, and Elena Anatolyevna Tchaikovskaya helped as a coach.

But they lost.

By the way, Max and Albena had a very successful program in 2004.

And then we risked going out with our "Pink Panther".

And after all, the whole season was unmistakable, they won everything, starting with the Grand Prix series.

- It takes some courage to decide to dance to the grotesque ...

- I agree.

Especially when you're no longer a junior.

In general, many of our dances, I would say, suddenly took shape.

The same Austin Powers was the result of a trip to the cinema with Tanya and Sasha Zhulin.

The program for Michael Jackson was made because in training in America, Jackson was constantly turned on at the rink - we liked to move to this music.

- At one time, one of the Russian coaches said that working with a couple is always a triangle, where it is very important to have a majority, which means that the coach must try in any way to drag one of the partners to his side, tie him to himself.

Working with Navka, who was married to Alexander Zhulin, you, in fact, always remained alone.

It's hard?

- To some extent, I myself created such a situation.

He made a mistake, for which he later paid off for several years.

- A mistake you call the decision to pair up with Anna Semenovich in 1999?

- Yes.

We then fought a lot with Tanya.

Natalia Vladimirovna Linichuk, with whom we trained in Delaware, did not besiege me much for this, but in some ways even supported me.

Therefore, the conflicts became more and more acute.

Tanya had already met Zhulin at that time, he, naturally, stood up for her in all situations, once a man even came to our skating rink from him to talk to me.

Then, I remember, it was very enraged that Sasha did not come himself, but sent someone from outside.

All the accumulated negative and led to the fact that I made that choice.

- Having rode with Semenovich for one year, did you realize that you got excited?

- At first I was just very upset that the season had gone down the drain.

Then he somehow cooled down, succumbed to consolations from the outside that “the coach knows what is best,” and after a while he came to Sasha Abt, who had his mother at home.

And sitting in the kitchen, she suddenly said to me: “Rum, what are you, you fool, or what, absolutely?

What have you done? "

These words hit me as much as a knife to the heart.

All the wounds tore open at once.

I came home and said to my mother: "We must do something."

So it went, it went.

First I called Tanya's mother in Dnepropetrovsk, then Tanya herself ... It's just that when we agreed that we would try to skate together again, it was clear that it would definitely not work to do this in the Linichuk group.

- Did that story make you reassess your life?

- I definitely had to shove my ego much deeper.

Every time we had some tense moments in training, I was reminded of almost all my sins.

Many times I wanted to give up everything and leave, but every time I said to myself: "Be patient, be patient, be patient!"

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Publication from Roman Kostomarov KRS (@romankostomarovkrs) Dec 17, 2019 at 8:54 PST

- You have been disciplined twice during your sports career.

Where does such a riot of character come from?

- At the age of 20-25, for many athletes, any attempt to break the regime causes some kind of insane surge of adrenaline, crazy emotions.

It's not even a desire to do something, but just alcohol does its job.

You become more violent, noisier, noisy, the thinking skills turns off.

My first disqualification was in 1997 at the Universiade in South Korea, when I skated with Katya Davydova.

- Because of which?

- We came to those competitions without a coach, and after the first compulsory dance we became the third, although we should not have lost the second place.

At dinner I ate ice cream out of grief, and in the morning it turned out that I could not breathe and, accordingly, I could not skate.

The head of the team then chewed me in the tail and mane, but I did not go to the start.

Well, in the evening, already in the village, he drank and began to retell this whole situation to one of the guys quite loudly, standing on the balcony.

Under the balcony, to my misfortune, was the very leader who learned a lot about herself that evening.

So I was disqualified until the end of the season.

- And what happened then when you returned to the ice again?

- Then there was an adult tournament in Austria, where Katya and I took third place, and my friend Vakhtang Murvanidze twisted his leg in training and withdrew from the competition.

So we sat down in the bar of the nearest mall and started drinking.

I am with joy, Vakho with grief.

Then we returned to the rink to watch the girls skate.

For some reason they tore off a fire extinguisher from the wall on the podium, began to water each other ... Then they left for the hotel to continue the holiday.

On TV they showed some kind of militant, so we wrapped towels around our hands, began to destroy everything around.

They cut themselves, stained the walls with blood, and then flooded to the gas station to buy something to drink.

On the way, passers-by were attacked from behind the bushes, that is, just some kind of schizophrenia began: we are soldiers, there is a war around us ...

In the morning, at the request of the owners of the hotel, I checked out, but to what extent it all smells fried I realized when I arrived at the rink and saw that Katya and I had been deleted from the number of participants in the demonstration performances with a bold red felt-tip pen.

Then they told me that a bill came from the hotel to the Russian figure skating federation, where very large amounts in foreign currency appeared.

- Was the federation also paying for your sins?

- No, myself.

Two years earlier, Katya Davydova and I won the World Junior Championship, received the first money, and I bought a car.

I had to sell.

- Did this story sober you up?

- For a while, yes.

In America, when I started training there, a lot of things also happened.

To this day, I don’t understand how we managed to avoid any really serious consequences.

Don't go to jail, for example.

- Did the adaptation come at such a high price?

- In the first four years, everything was very pressing.

You are in a foreign country, you have left all your friends, you have absolutely no money of your own, you are given 150 dollars a month, on which you eat and live.

The room in the "Russian House", where the Americans provided housing for the athletes Natalya Vladimirovna (Linichuk.

), was free, but there was not even an air conditioner there to somehow get rid of the forty-degree heat.

All meals - sausages for a dollar a piece or Burger King.

Thanks to the older guys, they helped in every way, fed them: Angela Krylova with Oleg Ovsyannikov, Ilya Averbukh ...

- Did you manage to earn extra money by rolling on the day off?

- There was no free ice on our skating rink at all.

Sometimes Gennady Karponosov asked to take his daughter Nastya to dance classes.

This meant three hours by car one way, wait an hour and a half, then come back and immediately go to the evening workout.

But this gave at least some additional money, because there was no way to live on 150 bucks in America.

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Publication from Roman Kostomarov KRS (@romankostomarovkrs) March 27, 2020 at 3:53 PDT

- Was the decision to return to Russia after eight years of American life unanimous with you, Navka and Alexander Zhulin?

- It happened by itself.

Immediately after the Olympics in Turin, we went on tour to Art on Ice, then there were demonstration performances in the cities of Russia, some other proposals, and in the summer it became known that Ilya Averbukh was going to do the project “Stars on Ice” on Channel One and wants, so that Tanya and I skate with him.

That is, it was just work.

Well paid, besides.

- That is, leaving the sport was painless?

- So it seemed to me while Tanya and I were very busy in the show.

But it was impossible to watch the same stages of the Grand Prix when they were held in Moscow in the first two years.

An inner discord immediately began: what about me?

And when will I?

Why do they win there, am I sitting on the podium?

- How long did you have the feeling that at any moment you can return to your old life and continue to win?

- I had options that allowed me to go to the 2010 Olympics, let's say.

- With Oksana Domnina?

- We really had several joint trainings with Oksana, we saw a certain potential, but, to be honest, I myself did not really believe in this idea.

I thought that a new partner is just a few steps back, no matter how you skate.

- Oksana was not offended that you did not want to continue?

- It seems to me that she valued our personal relationship too much.

Even after those several trainings held together, it became clear that working with me is not so easy.

And disagreements on the ice could well lead to the fact that we would have parted in life.

Therefore, I somehow immediately came to the conclusion that if I came back and tried to become a two-time Olympic champion, then only with Navka.

Tanya, by the way, was ready to go to the Games even for the sake of just getting into the top three.

Moreover, an option was considered in which we would not even lose money in those shows that we miss due to preparation for the Games.

But subconsciously, I realized that I didn't want to get into this bondage again for any money.

Moreover, for the sake of fighting for second or third place.

I saw perfectly well who I would have to compete with.

- Could you assume, speaking with Ilya Averbukh in Stars on Ice in 2006, that the history of your relationship with ice shows will last more than 15 years?

- I could not imagine that it would be so successful, and that this project would give me so much.

We should all be very grateful to Averbukh for the opportunity to live so brightly after sports - to work in his show, in his great performances.

In this regard, Ilya has done a great job for the skaters.

I was lucky with my partners.

Although now I can honestly admit: after returning from America, where for eight years we did not even have Russian television, I had no idea who Chulpan Khamatova was.

- And Ekaterina Guseva, with whom you skated in the first season and immediately made it to the semifinals?

- Well, "Brigade", of course, in America everyone watched.

In the very first season, I was happy that I had such a cool partner, so I gladly agreed to skate with her.

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Publication from Roman Kostomarov KRS (@romankostomarovkrs) 15 Sep 2020 at 10:18 PDT

- When you teach an adult to stand on the ice, do his fears greatly interfere?

Or do you have to stop?

- At first, for some reason, everyone wants to start jumping right away, and certainly - a sheepskin coat.

- The key word "at first"?

- Well yes.

Now, for example, I skate with Regina Todorenko, she watched a lot of programs from "Glacier" with my participation, and in general she looks a lot about figure skating.

Not so long ago he showed me a video: "I want it this way!"

And there the Olympic champions of Sochi, the Americans Meryl Davis / Charlie White perform their most sophisticated support ...

- And?

“Yes, yes, yes,” I say, “next time.”

- I was once shocked by the program that Pyotr Chernyshev performed with Elena Podkaminskaya: he lifted his partner, put on his boots, skated the whole program and put it back on the ice ...

- They had another program, where Peter actually did not skate at all, and Lena skated alone.

That is, he also experimented, mocked his partner properly.

Although this project is certainly not about complexity.

- I was amazed at the speed with which the figure skaters began to disintegrate seemingly very strong human relations within the framework of "Glacier".

What is the reason?

Is it just that a new body appears in the hands?

- A new body, new emotions, new sensations, plus you spend a lot of time with this person and subconsciously want to please your partner.

In their profession, artists, in one way or another, are initially sharpened for flirting, for self-affirmation, but it seems to me that many often play in ordinary life.

It's just that when you come across this for the first time, you don't realize it.

And you're starting to get addicted too.

And then, like boiling water, scalds: what are you doing?

It would be fine at 20, when there is no family or children.

- Many skaters marry their partners just at this age ...

- I, for the most part, cursed with all my partners in training.

I left the ice with the thought: "I shouldn't see you for another week!"

What kind of marriage is this?

- Is your work in the cinema a direct consequence of the acquaintances and connections acquired at Glacier?

- It was just with the movie that everything turned out completely by accident.

Alexander Ashotovich Atanesyan, with whom I starred in the film "A Close Enemy", told me after filming: "I rarely watch TV, but somehow I pressed a button on the remote control, I saw you with Chulpan, when you were sitting in kiss & cry, waiting ratings, and something hooked me, some very interesting emotion ... ”As a result, I was approved for the role of a drug dealer without any auditions or auditions.

- I was sorry when you were killed in that movie ...

“By the way, it was terribly difficult to die.

This scene was filmed last, in late autumn, and it was really cold in the unheated mansion that we rented for filming in Batumi.

I had to fall in my dressing gown on the marble floor and lie motionless - so that my eyes would not twitch, my lips would not tremble.

And me, not only was sausage from fear, plus a cold dog.

In general, it was hard enough.

- I cannot but ask you one more question - the readers will not forgive.

Your bandana or baseball cap has long become as integral part of the image as Mikhail Boyarsky's hat.

Do you take off your hat at home?

- Sure.

This, as you rightly pointed out, is only part of the image.

Once upon a time it was so more comfortable for me to feel on the ice: my hair began to thin out, but my partner still needs hair when you perform in dances.

In single skating, this is somewhat easier.

Well, now I'm just used to it ...

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Publication from Roman Kostomarov KRS (@romankostomarovkrs) Dec 26, 2019 at 10:20 PST