At one time, Yana Khokhlova and Sergei Novitsky became pioneers in terms of incredibly difficult acrobatic lifts - an element that remains one of the most attractive and risky features in ice dancing to this day.
In 2009, the couple became the European champion, but a year later they ceased to exist: the doctors categorically forbade Sergei the load of big sports.
Attempts to continue her career with another partner were unsuccessful, and Yana somehow imperceptibly almost disappeared from the ice arena to return to her as an actress.
- With what feeling did you leave the sport? Bitterness, fatigue, relief?
- There was no fatigue, rather there was another disappointment, because with Fyodor Andreev, with whom I started skating in America with Marina Zueva and Igor Shpilband, after our couple with Sergei broke up, history repeated itself.
The second season together started quite well with us: it was already completely different supports, completely different skating.
I will not argue that we could have competed for the medals of the Olympic Games, since the competition in the world by that time was already too high, but nevertheless I think that we could reach a very decent level.
But Fyodor was trapped by an injury, and it was all over.
- Have you tried to stay in the USA, become a part of the Zueva / Shpilband coaching team or work independently?
- I wanted to stay.
Marina threw me a variety of options, we considered the possibility of working in another city, in another state, where I could come as a coach to some ice rink.
In this respect, the American system is organized in a completely different way than in Russia: even if athletes show results with a specialist, no one will give him free ice.
Everyone is on his own.
The more students, the more ice you can rent.
I had to start independent work from scratch.
While I was thinking about it, Ilya Averbukh called me and offered to skate in his ice project "Professionals".
Remember when ten duets were constantly changing partners on the ice?
It was a crazy experience.
As in sports, we were desperately fighting among ourselves for gold medals.
When the filming came to an end, the New Year trees began, and after so many months it became irrelevant to return to America.
To be honest, I just didn't want to leave Russian life.
- Ice shows - is it easy money or hard?
- Good question.
On the one hand, it would seem that there is nothing special: I went out, skated the show, received a fee.
But the same New Year trees in Moscow are one story.
And when you are touring all over Russia and around the world, when you do not sleep on the road, when you go straight from the bus to rehearsal with crazy eyes, when you cannot afford to get sick, and if you get sick, you still go on the ice, because you cannot take and throw out some role, roughly speaking ...
- But still this is a guaranteed job. Or is a person constantly in a state of struggle for his place?
- There are always a lot of applicants for the corps de ballet, because the athletes who finish their performances look at the show as an opportunity to make quick money.
Later, when they realize that the work in the show is no less hellish than in the sport, many leave: who is going to roll up, who is on the coaching path.
But Ilya Averbukh's backbone of champions is stable.
- Many years ago, two-time Olympic champion Katya Gordeeva said that ice shows are a very controversial story, especially for women. Because it is so addictive that you think: “Just a little more, a little more,” and then it suddenly dawns on you that it's too late to start a family and have children. How relevant is this question for you?
- Like any sane woman, I, of course, understand that life does not end in figure skating, and I certainly want to keep my health.
This is the first thing.
Secondly, my life plans never included skating until I was 40, and even at 35 I somehow imagined my life differently.
But it turns out that, even though I have decided everything for myself, I return to the show again.
Like now, for example.
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Post by Yana Khokhlova (@ykhokhlova) Dec 16, 2018 8:37 PST
- You were not going to participate in the anniversary television project of Averbukh this year?
- It would be more accurate to say that I wanted it deep in my heart, but I realized that, most likely, it would not work out - too many new people came to the project.
Including those who are much younger than me.
- Is it insulting to understand that with age you are less in demand?
- Partly.
Although, probably, this is not an offense, but a kind of longing for what you know, love, for which you are constantly unconsciously drawn.
- Therefore, when Averbukh called you and said that one of his artists was left without a partner and you have to replace Tatyana Totmianina ...
- Naturally, I agreed.
I didn't even have to think about this offer for a long time, because Ilya almost immediately called back and said: "Tomorrow we will ride."
- What does it mean to ride with a non-professional partner?
- Well, taking into account the fact that in different shows I fly over the ice on the ring and on the pole, it is difficult to scare me with something.
Although situations when the heart really goes to the heels have happened.
There were also falls from supports.
But this is a normal process, this happens to everyone.
- Do the skaters have any tricks in this regard?
- I learned to fall correctly only in America from Marina Zueva.
She somehow chased me all 45 minutes of training: "You are going to fall with me now."
That training really became a discovery for me.
- Do you want to say that before that you did not know how to fall?
- I didn't know how to get up quickly.
In dancing, it is very important how quickly a person is able to jump up after a fall and continue the program.
Accordingly, if you feel that you are about to fall, you need to be able to group in such a way that you will be back on your feet as soon as possible.
- What is the value of the American experience for you, if you look back?
- There are many aspects.
First of all, probably, this is a colossal skill of independent living.
In general, I have always been an independent child, but when you find yourself on another continent, around new people who speak a language you do not understand, this is completely different.
It was in America that the realization of responsibility for what I do came to me.
At home, everything was different: we ride, there are coaches above us, and somewhere in the depths of our consciousness there is a constant thought that they should kick, make them work.
- How quickly did you realize that no one owes you anything?
- In general, I very quickly had to descend from heaven to earth.
I arrived in the status of all my regalia, with the full feeling that I know everything in dancing, and when I started to work, it suddenly dawned on me: how much I, it turns out, do not know how.
Starting from a very primitive base, roughly speaking.
Thanks to Marina, I realized that studying is cool and never shameful, at any age.
In a sense, it shaped all my subsequent coaching activities.
And acting too.
- When I watch how world dances develop, I constantly ask myself: why do our couples lose from year to year to those who ride across the ocean? What are our coaches doing wrong?
- The same question was asked to me in the Russian Figure Skating Federation when I returned from Zueva and Shpilband: “What are they doing?
Tell me, explain. "
At that time, I myself did not fully realize what the reason was.
I couldn't formulate.
Now it seems to me that the point is in the very responsibility of the athlete to himself.
Always ready to do more than the coach says.
Any technical skill can be learned - in this regard, our athletes are no less talented than anyone else.
But people often just embody on the ice what they were offered.
This is great in terms of discipline, but it is very important for the result when you yourself constantly push yourself forward.
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Publication from Yana Khokhlova (@ykhokhlova) 19 Feb 2019 at 6:42 PST
- Sometimes it seems that many Russian coaches, deep down in their hearts, are afraid to show their own weakness, to admit that they do not know something. And as a result, they cook for years in the same kitchen, without risking going beyond it.
- It seems to me that the reason lies a little deeper.
We are, as it were, constantly trying to hold on to what is already there.
And we direct all our efforts to retain what has been achieved, and not to expand our own boundaries.
And we must go forward, we must open up to some new things, even if they seem absurd.
In the same America, at first, many things seemed strange to me.
Why, for example, invite actors or people from professions completely distant at first glance to trainings?
But this is all the same expansion of one's own consciousness.
Why not try it?
It didn't work - ok, let's go, try something else.
In our country, we constantly feel a certain “iron curtain” that will never fall.
- That is, it is not a matter of talent, but of mentality, psychology and way of thinking?
- I think so.
Plus what we have already said: in the West, the coach and the athlete work at the same level of responsibility for the result.
In Russia, a coach is an unhappy person who sits and torments himself with thoughts almost around the clock: “What if I try something now and everything will fall apart?
Where are the athletes going?
How can all this be reassembled then? "
Plus a salary, plus - some professional positions ... One pulls the other, and it is completely unclear how to get out of this.
- If it were not for the “Ice Age” that suddenly formed in your life, would you now work as a coach?
- I also work.
At the moment at the school of Ilya Averbukh.
- That is, you are engaged in rolling with everyone?
- Not only.
I organize my own camps, master classes, I constantly have all kinds of events.
In general, I started coaching very early, from the age of 16, when I still did not have any specialized education and did not understand how to properly organize work.
I just went out and started showing the kids what I know and can do myself.
- Did you want to try what it means to be a coach, or didn't you have enough money?
- On the one hand, I wanted to have my own personal money, because at that time Sergey and I had not yet entered the national team and we had no salary.
And besides, it was just wondering if I was able to teach someone something or not.
In 2015, I even had my own school - in Dmitrov.
But the skating rink was municipal, it was closed, then bought, then sold, and problems constantly arose.
It is necessary, for example, to prepare athletes for competitions, but there is no ice.
As a result, I had to stop working there.
Although all my former dancers still call when you just need to consult on any questions.
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Post by Yana Khokhlova (@ykhokhlova) Oct 2, 2020 9:01 am PDT
- If we talk about the skater of your class, does the work on the rinks provide an opportunity to develop? Or is it still the exploitation of some old skills?
- It depends on how you treat it.
I had a period when I deliberately did not take small children - it seemed to me that with my level of skating it would not be interesting.
But I realized very quickly that it was not so.
Firstly, I generally like to tinker with small ones: they are so funny ... And secondly, it is interesting purely psychologically: how to interact with children, how to get what you want from them, how to find an individual approach to everyone.
Now coaching work, whether with children or with adults, gives me tremendous pleasure, regardless of the level of training of those involved.
Maybe people will not learn superelements, but they will leave with the understanding that they are really worth something and are capable of doing something.
- How do you see your life in ten years?
- With a huge family.
Friendly, with family values instilled in me, because I believe that children should know the history of their grandparents.
I became interested in some things in my own family when I realized that no one had ever tried to get to the origins before me.
I began to collect information bit by bit from grandmothers and grandfathers.
It turns out that the family had very extraordinary people.
One of my great-grandfathers, for example, was the chef of the Moscow-Vladivostok train.
And at that time, people were not taken to such positions just like that, from the street.
- You yourself know how to cook?
- I can, and I love.
This does not bother me, I generally like to spend time in the kitchen.
- When was the last time you cried?
- Oh ... I never deny myself such things.
It is clear that I'm not talking about hysterics now.
And about the fact that sometimes the accumulated fatigue, emotions, some kind of negativity really rolls up.
I am a very patient person, I can hold anything in myself for a long time.
But if I feel overwhelmed, I don't hesitate to cry.
It's like a reboot: everything bad came out with tears, and you immediately realize that life is not over.
Something new will definitely come to this place.
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Posted by Yana Khokhlova (@ykhokhlova) Aug 13, 2020 8:56 am PDT