- You attended the World Cup stage in Davos, where Russian skiers performed more than successfully. What feelings did you return with?
- I can't say that I came from there upset or in some kind of euphoria.
But there are a number of athletes from whom I expected better results in Switzerland.
- For example?
- For example, Gleb Retivykh.
He had to fight for the top three.
In the same way, I think that Natalya Nepryaeva could finish higher in the distance race.
And Anya Nechaevskaya is in her crown skating race.
- It is probably worth making a certain allowance for the circumstances of the current season.
- The season was the same for everyone.
I immediately said, back in the summer, that skiers and coaches have no right to speculate on this.
Since mid-June we have been working in an absolutely centralized manner.
If an athlete knows his goal and goes to it, then he will not be hindered by any external circumstances.
Probably, on my part it is somewhat wrong to say that I was not too happy with the result of the Zealous or Nepryaeva.
Natasha always needs a certain amount of time to run away.
But if we talk in general about the situation in all our teams, then I can already say that we have not missed anything.
Not only did they not lose anything and remained at the same level, but a number of athletes also stepped forward, which pleases.
- For example, not only Zealous, but also Alexander Bolshunov?
- Sasha is, of course, not as light as he should be.
But it normal.
After all, the main start for us is the World Championship.
And for Bolshunov, I'm sure, too.
- Is Tatiana Sorina's success a sensation?
- Tatiana has a very good character.
If you don't put pressure on her from above, she, I think, is able to move mountains.
- What is a good character in the understanding of Elena Vyalbe? Efficiency and hard work?
- Not only.
You can be very efficient, plow more than everyone else, but not have a core inside and, accordingly, stay in the last positions all the time.
Tatiana knows how to fight.
Her determination and desire to run, to show results was known to me before.
I am absolutely sure that the birth of children does not prevent a woman from returning to sports.
This has been proven by many generations of skiers, proven by science, and not only by the example of Russian and Soviet athletes.
Therefore, I think that Tanya and Yegor (Yegor Sorin is the husband and coach of the athlete. -
RT
) absolutely did the right thing.
There was no world championship last year.
Now we have a season before the Olympics, when you can get in the right condition to show the best results.
Plus, Tatiana has lost a lot of weight.
And now it gives a very, very big plus.
She is in perfect condition to run both in the mountains and in the plains.
- The fact that Sorin has been working with biathlete Karim Khalili for the second year does not distract him from his main task?
- Karim is a very good guy, an example for any athlete.
Working with him definitely does not distract Yegor in any way.
Although he is naturally not too happy with the results of Khalili, I know this.
- Do you think that such cooperation can be a step towards combining biathlon with skiing under your leadership, at least at the stage of preparation for the season?
- You don't need to attach anything to anything.
I read calls for this very often and I want to say that I am not some kind of superb leader, but the most ordinary one.
It's just that a team should be a team.
If people understand each other, they can lend a shoulder to each other, and give a scolding at the right time - this is very, very important.
At work, we can quarrel with coaches, swear, but this does not prevent us from sitting at the same table in the evening, laughing, discussing something together and continuing to cooperate together.
As for the result, there must be patience.
It seems to me that now the time has come for biathlon when Viktor Viktorovich (SBR President Viktor Maygurov -
RT
) should simply take his emotions into his fist and say: "With these coaches, I will go alongside the next four years."
After all, the biggest problem of biathlon is the annual replacement of those who lead the training process.
- Agree.
- You can't work like that.
Not a single human organism can stand to adapt to a new system, to new requirements every year.
We are not machines.
Even the car breaks down if you change the driver every day.
So it is in the coaching staff.
- I'm trying to remember: any of your athletes are now working on an individual program, separately from the team?
- Last year I removed Yana Kirpichenko from the team.
In the same way, Anna Nechaevskaya trained at home.
But not because they themselves wanted it.
It was, rather, a punishment.
- And if Alexander Bolshunov comes to you and says that it is more comfortable for him to work alone?
- I don’t understand the word “comfortable” in relation to sports and will never understand.
She herself also tried once to self-study when she performed.
But exactly a year later I realized that to achieve results by training alone is a utopia.
Firstly, we have a cyclical sport, where one is absolutely not a warrior.
You must constantly have a person next to you who, ideally, is a cut above you and can create high competition.
This kind of competition should be at every training session.
I'm sure biathletes know this too.
Well, the coach must make decisions.
Give a training plan, be responsible for this training.
If the athlete begins to dictate his conditions to the mentor, this is a 100 percent wrong situation.
Although now it sometimes seems to me that in our team Sergey Ustyugov is trying to lead Markus Kramer.
- When can we expect the appearance of Ustyugov in races?
- Sergei misses the Tour de Ski, but his participation is planned at the World Cup in Lahti.
If there are no health problems.
But I am sure that Sergei's problems are related not only to health.
To solve them, you just need to overpower yourself.
Throw away all unnecessary emotions and engage exclusively in sports.
He is a very, very talented athlete.
Highly.
- It is always difficult for talented people to force themselves to work. Everything is too easy. And such people experience defeat harder than anyone else.
- It really is.
It is a rare case when a person is talented and at the same time very disciplined in his work.
Although discipline is not only about performance.
It lies in many factors.
- The ideal athlete in this regard - Ole Einar Bjoerndalen?
- The Norwegian is in general some kind of unique.
It seems to me that he still lives in blinkers that are very correct for an athlete.
I don't know how possible this is.
Sometimes we all want to kick up, break the regime.
But for this there is a certain time.
If in May you can afford to go to bed not at 11, but at 1 am, then in September it is definitely not worth it.
These are some very small common truths.
In terms of such discipline, in our team, pah-pah-pah, for a long time no problems have been observed at all.
Neither the athletes nor the coaches.
I don’t even remember that the mentors complained that the ward was late for training, went to bed at the wrong time, and wasn’t eating well.
We really somehow moved away from this.
It is clear that there are difficulties of a different order.
The same Marcus sometimes says: "Lord, well, why are all the madmen gathered in my team?"
- What can piss you off to such an extent that you start yelling at an athlete?
- Only one.
If a person is an idiot and does not understand normal words at all.
- When did this happen last time?
- It happens from time to time.
In the same Davos.
Well, what to do, this is not uncommon in sports.
The main thing is that even after such situations, we still communicate normally.
- How did you find Yulia Stupak after her return from maternity leave?
- I saw at what price it is given to her.
She came back hard, all the muscles fell off during the pause.
Although Julia, after giving birth, began to move early enough.
She is very patient, the perfect person for results.
Will work, endure and do whatever the coach says.
In Davos, it was already clear that she was gaining shape.
Maybe I didn't run the sprint as well as we wanted, but the movements were already completely different.
I even said to Markus: "This is our old Julia."
And literally the next day, she calls into the top three.
It is very important that she knows how to be happy and upset.
That is, to throw out your emotions, both positive and negative.
- Relatively speaking, yelling in the forest, as you yourself once yelled?
- And yell and cry if need be.
It is necessary, in fact, in order to move on without the emotional burden.
- Have you ever taught this to athletes?
- We have a psychologist.
Daria mainly works with young athletes, with juniors, with U-23.
In the first year of work, when she came, many adult athletes took it somehow ...
- It seems to me that any successful person, whether he is an athlete, coach or sports leader, when mentioning a psychologist, the first reaction is always rejection.
- Agree.
But, at the same time, many kept repeating: we need a psychologist, we need a psychologist ... Now there are some athletes who, before the start, always talk with Daria.
In addition to direct communication, she posts very large articles on Instagram, where she explains what needs to be done before the race, how to tune herself to it, how to behave correctly if a failure suddenly happened ... Sometimes I even find it interesting to read this.
- But in your time this was not?
- We had a psychologist in our team, but I could not work with him.
He conducted his sessions, as a rule, at lunchtime after training, and when I came to these meetings I fell asleep right away.
But I didn't need a specialist of this kind.
To this day, I consider my first coach Maksimych (Viktor Tkachenko
- RT
) to be the
best psychologist
.
I repeat to coaches all the time that the best psychologist for an athlete is his mentor.
It is he, like no one else, who understands when to yell at an athlete, when to feel sorry for him.
Although, for example, with Sorin over the years I have repeatedly talked about how a coach should be able to restrain his emotions.
Yegor is quick-tempered enough.
And it doesn't always work with athletes.
- Do you regret that Sorin stopped working in conjunction with Marcus Kramer?
- On the contrary.
It seems to me that we are doing the right thing to put very young guys as second coaches.
Egor once came to the national team with an analyst.
Earlier I offered him to take some small team and work with it independently.
He answered: "Elena Valerievna, I am not ready yet, but I am striving for this."
Now he has been working with the team for the third year, and a younger guy, Andrei Nutrikhin, is constantly next to him.
Sergey Turyshev is working with Kramer.
This will be a very good replacement for any specialist in the future.
- Is Yuri Kaminsky's departure to biathlon a loss for skiing?
- If Yuri Mikhailovich was not focused only on the sprint, then, of course, he would have worked in the team for many, many years.
But in this respect, I never managed to find a common language with him.
I don’t understand, and I don’t understand, perhaps, why drive talented athletes into these crazy sprint blinders.
After all, at first the same Nikita Kryukov ran only "classics".
Just like Alexander Panzhinsky.
And if Nikita still learned to run "skate", then Sashka could not.
It turns out that when you come to the same Olympic Games or the World Championship, where six sets of awards are played out, you can only fight in one discipline.
Besides, the lottery is enough.
Something went wrong - that's it, the competition is over.
Now we have one and only obvious sprinter - Gleb Retivykh.
All the rest, whatever one may say, are generalists.
- Do you share the opinion circulating on the Internet that the Norwegians withdrew from the World Cup because they are afraid of Russian skiers?
“Well, no, I don’t think so.
I do not know the reason and I cannot say that I think about it a lot.
But it seems strange enough to me that in other sports the Norwegians take part in all tournaments.
Jumpers, biathletes, biathletes ... Journalists asked in Davos: "Is it a shame that the World Cup is turning into a Russian championship?"
No, it's not a shame.
What is written in the protocol?
Stage of the World Cup, Davos.
Who took first, second, third, fourth place?
Russia.
This is what I am glad about.
What the Norwegians, Swedes or Finns think about it is their problem, not mine.