“Without football, our world will definitely not die”: Shmyrev on the role of television, the Chinese matrix, the ping-pong phenomenon and Chopin's phrase

The interview with Maxim Shmyrev turned out to be spontaneous.

During one of the television programs, we talked about the 2020 Summer Olympics in Japan, which became one of the main victims of the pandemic.

When the cameras were turned off, Maxim said: “For some reason, it seems to me that the Japanese will definitely host these Games.

It simply cannot be otherwise. "

The phrase caught on so much that I immediately took out the recorder.

- Why are you so sure about this?

- At one time I spent a lot of time in Japan, participating in various table tennis competitions.

I managed to understand how everything works there.

For example, when you enter Japan, you are given a brochure listing the top ten landmarks in Japan.

Including - Haruki Murakami.

A writer whose books are associated with Japan all over the world.

And which is impossible to imagine apart from this country.

The decision to host the 2020 Olympics has become a national idea for residents, a decision of the whole nation, and not just a single handful of people who want to make money on it.

And since the Japanese said "yes" to the Olympics, it means that this must be realized at any cost.

At least in order to save face in front of the whole world.

- Don't you think that the idea of ​​the Olympics has outlived its usefulness to a certain extent?

Sport is increasingly going into show business, for the sake of this, the rules are changing, the format of the competition is changing.

And there is a dissonance: how can you seriously put your life on the idea of ​​winning the Olympic Games, when at any moment you can be pointed to your place on the arena, and this is the place of a clown?

- I've been thinking about it for a long time.

On the one hand, for the athletes who are involved in this business, the Olympics are the highest limit of human life in the segment called “sport”.

On the other hand, sport has long ceased to have any applied meaning.

It cannot be self-sufficient without sponsorship, without money, and money dictates the format, regardless of whether someone likes it or not.

In a global sense, it really is show business, nothing more.

- Then why do we reflect so much about the Olympics that did not take place this year, claiming that it must be preserved at all costs? 

- Well, let's answer ourselves: who exactly reflects?

First of all, these are athletes, coaches, journalists who need to write about this, that is, a fairly small part of people dependent on sports.

Plus - the administration, which uses the Olympics as an opportunity to manipulate the masses.

Games are certainly important for humanity - like concerts, like chess, like music.

But all this, if we recall the well-known saying about bread and circuses, still stands in second place.

The deeper we go into the era of informatics, the deeper we will plunge into dependence on television, on broadcasts, on sponsors.

Take television out of sport and the latter will bend. 

- Even football?

- Even football.

A friend once told me a story about how a rich man had a field under his windows, on which boys constantly played football, interfering with rest.

He racked his brains for a long time, thinking about how to solve the problem, and came up with: he began to pay these boys a dollar a day for coming to play.

When the players got used to it, the man reduced the amount to 50 cents, and half of the people disappeared immediately.

After some time, he stopped paying those who remained.

And the site was completely empty.

It is clear that football is, without a doubt, the number 1 sport in the world, including China, but still it is just entertainment, a distraction from everyday life.

Without football, our world will definitely not die.

• Stanislav Cherchesov and Maxim Shmyrev

- As well as without any other occupation.

With age, you generally begin to understand that any professional world is much narrower than those who are inside this world think.

Any outstanding athlete can indulge in the illusion that he is widely known, but in fact he is known in a very narrow circle.

- I absolutely agree with you.

I often remember how at the age of 13 I was invited to a major international tournament, and I played at the Luzhniki Small Sports Arena with the legendary Chinese Wang Hui Yuan.

It seemed to me then that the whole world was watching my game.

I remember how I was riding the subway, confident that everyone would begin to recognize me now, and for several days I waited for at least someone to say that they saw me on the TV screen.

And only then it dawned on me that all this was of no interest to anyone, except for a narrow circle of initiates.

Therefore, when I began to win already serious competitions, each time I lowered myself to the ground with the question: what did I do for humanity so that someone would even remember me?

By and large, any sport is needed only by those who practice it.

Yes, you can hide behind a flag, say that with our victories we glorify the country, and this is partly true.

Sports victories give a lot of people a reason to be proud.

But, speaking globally, we, in general, play with toys in our sandbox.

- At the same time, a huge number of athletes believe that the state should fully provide them.

- Now, it seems to me, the state is quietly moving away from financing elite sports.

Another thing is that if this is implemented, sport may simply die.

Especially in our country.  

- And table tennis too?

- Yes.

- But why?

Are people not willing to pay for their own hobby?

- Just ready for a hobby.

It's not a problem for me to pay 100 rubles for a table.

But if we are talking about a professional level, about medals, this is still quite a lot of money.

There should be very good conditions for training, good coaching and medical personnel, the ability to go to competitions.

Table tennis is a long-term sport: in order to grow into a unit, which is something at an adult level, an athlete must stand at the table twice a day for at least five to six years.

Such a resource can be created by wealthy parents; there are many examples.

For example, in Germany, Ukrainian Dmitry Ovcharov plays, who in 2018 was the first racket of the world.

His father left Kiev in the 1990s and devoted himself almost entirely to creating a winning athlete from his son.

I pasted over the whole house with notes, like: "at 10:10 you will serve a long serve", "losing 10: 4 you still have a chance to win, but you have to bite into this chance with your teeth."

Etc.

- Relatively speaking, he taught his son tennis in the same way people learn a foreign language by hanging stickers in the toilet?

- Yes.

Only he taught the ability to win.

He brought up such a bull terrier with a mortal grip in his son, which at any moment can break off the leash and gnaw at an opponent, regardless of any regalia and authority.

Therefore, at the age of 13-14, Dima began to regularly beat stars from the top ten of the world.

In our sport, this is unrealistic.

Too much has to match.

- And at the right time.

- Exactly.

For example, there was such a legendary player Wang Hao.

In terms of the totality of all the qualities required in the game, he was definitely the strongest in the history of Chinese, and, therefore, world table tennis.

He really was an absolutely outstanding athlete.

But at three Olympics he remained second in the personal category three times.

In 2004, he lost in the final to Korean Yoo Seung Min, whom he had won 13 times before.

The Korean, in fact, won then the only competition in life: at the only right moment everything worked out for him.

- Can table tennis be combined with some kind of personal growth in other areas?

Or is it the same plowing as in any other sport, which does not allow you to dissipate on anything else?

- Absolutely the same plowing.

Another thing is that in our sport before, there was much less money spinning, so somewhere at the age of 30 people stopped holding on to it.

Now our sport is much older.

For example, Hee Zhi Wen, who changed his Chinese citizenship more than 20 years ago and moved to Spain, at the age of 57, continues to play excellently at a professional level.

Earns this several thousand dollars a month.

50 strongest table tennis players - millionaires.

- Is table tennis your main profession or a related occupation now?

- Good question.

I graduated from professional table tennis at the age of 40.

I tried to settle down somewhere, I thought that my experience would suddenly turn out to be in demand in Russia, but nobody needed it.

I turned around and went into business.

He created his own company, at first he sold everything necessary for table tennis, then smoothly flowed into scooters, scooters, skateboards.

I started to create my own brand, but I realized in time that this work does not appeal to me at all.

I'm not interested in being one hundred thousandth in the rating of Russian business.

And it would be a total waste to throw out of my life everything that I have learned in sports for 30 years.

- Now you are the head of the Russian Ping-Pong Federation.

- Which he himself created.

Ping-pong, as a separate type of table tennis, appeared in 2010 in the United States as show business - it was invented by the American Jeffrey Bagatin.

He did a show in Las Vegas, and in 2011 there was the first world championship I won.

Barry Hurn liked the idea very much (English sports entrepreneur, founder and head of the promotion company Matchroom Sport and president of SkyTV. -

), he bought it out for several seasons, and after a year or two he personally told me what ping-pong had brought to five or six times the expected effect.

And that he, as a man who at one time turned darts and snooker into the sport of millionaires, will certainly make ping-pong players equally wealthy.

- Made?

“Father Onufriy refused to pay,” my coach Evgeny Olegovich Edel said in such cases, quoting his favorite story.

But everyone really likes ping pong.

I would say that he reconciles table tennis with people.

Our sport itself is not always clear to spectators.

From the point of view of physics, everything is understandable.

But not in terms of sensations.

When Pete Sampras launches the ball at a speed of 250 kilometers per hour, and the opponent simply does not have time to react, everyone understands.

We also have similar techniques, while the rotation of the ball in table tennis and, accordingly, the direction that it is capable of acquiring is not typical for any other sport.

I can do ten innings, and you won't take one, even with a very high level of physical fitness.

In addition, the inventory is constantly changing.

In the 80s, a rubber was invented, which was called an anti-spin, and compared to the usual one, it reflected the ball exactly the opposite: if an ordinary racket gave top rotation, then with a new rubber, the ball fell down.

In this case, the new cover was the same color as the previous one.

When it was introduced, table tennis became hell for everyone.

It was possible to navigate only by the sound with which the ball bounced off the racket.

Some specially learned to stomp at this moment in order to completely confuse the opponent.

- It was quickly banned, if I'm not mistaken.

- Yes.

They began to use overlays of different colors and immediately it became easier: in hundredths of a second of the flight of the ball, the brain already had time to cope with information.

We have a really difficult sport.

Have you ever seen the legs of a Chinese tennis player?

- No.

“It's scary to look at them.

These are knives that even track and field athletes do not have.

They are sharpened for explosive energy, and you need this explosion not once, but throughout the entire game, each blow.

If the player does not explode in time, he will not be at the point from which it can be struck.

Without striking, you will receive a striking blow back and the development of the next combination may go completely different from your scenario.

That is, every second there is a decision-making, the perception of someone else's information.

I myself went through a completely classical education of the Soviet table tennis school.

Then he spent ten years in Germany, trained for five years at the best club in Europe at that time, Borussia.

Constantly studying, observing, writing down everything.

I began to keep these records at the age of 14: I watched each player, laid out table tennis, like chess, into moves, positions, movement, technique.

- Why everyone plays table tennis, and only the Chinese are the first?

- There is a very popular point of view that the Chinese are by nature created for table tennis.

In my opinion, the point is different.

In a monstrous amount of work.

The Chinese have been training since they were five.

From five in the morning until late at night, they simply do not leave the hall.

Weekend means half a day on Sunday.

The Chinese system is a kind of "Matrix" in the sense that I once perceived the Wachowski film.

If suddenly something wants to prevent this matrix from living, it simply digests the obstacle, becoming more and more perfect.

I became a three-time world champion in ping-pong, when this sport was not yet developed in China.

- Explain the difference for those who do not understand it.

- Ping-pong is the same table tennis, only it is played with the simplest piece of wood, as was played 50 years ago.

In this form, we are still playing with the Chinese matrix, but in China we have already taken ping-pong seriously.

Several millionaires gathered, jointly built a system in which people train seriously all year round, play the country's club championship.

For two years I was the only European who went to these competitions all over China.

I understood perfectly why they were inviting me.

- And for what?

- To learn the best.

At that time, I played in a technique that no one else in the world played anymore.

Very modern, with active attacks from both sides.

The term even in our country was like that - "shmyryovschina".

- I would not say that it sounds complimentary.

- Something like this was treated.

Back in the early 90s, that is, 30 years ago, I started playing close to the table, intercepting the opponent's attacks with a counter-topspin.

This is practically the pinnacle of table tennis, one of the most difficult hits is the twist.

It, of course, existed in tennis before me, but I was the first to start twisting the ball both on the right and on the left, playing at an extremely close distance - I did it as my trademark “trick”.

I was not always called to the training camp, because many coaches really did not understand how I play, and this greatly annoyed everyone.

I know for sure that most of the rivals in the Soviet Union were very unpleasant to meet with me, although I was never considered a superstar.

He was just small and nimble.

At the age of 13 he became a master of sports, which is a rarity in table tennis.

Everyone I beat in training said that I would definitely become the world champion.

Even the Chinese thought so.

But I only became world champion in ping-pong.

- Do you talk about it with pain in your voice, or did it seem to me?

- From a professional point of view, this is, of course, a very big understatement.

Well, yes, I am a 19-time Russian champion, but for me this is a weak consolation.

Because he pretended to conquer the whole world, he wanted to be only the first.

- If it weren't for the pandemic, would you be working at your school in China now?

- Probably yes.

- Is it difficult for a Russian to deal with the Chinese in business?

- If a Chinese person feels a partner in you, it will be a real, honest partnership.

Fortunately, I created the school with just such a person.

He got into ping-pong at the dawn of the development of this type in China in a company with one of the big businessmen, and somehow we immediately developed a relationship.

The man even learned English in order to communicate with me.

Interestingly, he first recognized me as a ping-pong player, and only then found the information that I can play table tennis quite well.

For China, where several thousand people play table tennis at a high level, 53rd position, which I occupied in the world ranking, is a very respected achievement.

- What is the main income of a top table tennis player?

- Basically it's a game for clubs.

Some of them earn $ 500 thousand a year on this.

Plus participation in commercial tournaments.

Although, in comparison with tennis, our fees are a penny.

- Is there a practice when a person just gambles with a random partner?

- There is no such thing as a way to make regular money.

In Soviet times, I know, there were katals who specially went to work in some city during their own vacations.

Nowadays, table tennis is not so popular that gambling parasites are everywhere.

They are, but it is clear that this is a system closed to prying eyes.

On the other hand, there are many rich enough people who love table tennis, are ready to train regularly and pay for the services of a professional coach.

- In other words, can anyone hire you for an hourly rate?

- Is not a fact.

I have some of the highest rates in table tennis that I don't even offer to normal people.

At the same time, I am happy to work with those who want to achieve high results.

I even had to hear from some that I am a genius in teaching.

Although in this respect I stand firmly on the ground: I understand that I am just a coach. 

- Who knows how to play table tennis brilliantly.

- You know, when Frederic Chopin was once asked how he manages to play the piano so masterly, he answered: “It's very simple.

You just have to press the right key at the right moment. "

I've always loved to play.

I trained all day long, did not leave the table.

This was the main component of my whole life, its meaning.

Although, when I left sports at the age of 40, it seemed to me: well, this is so trivial, what I have been doing for so many years, everyone can.