"We can see the problem of Ivan the Fool": Shashilov on the carelessness of the biathletes of the national team and the best race of Mironova

- When in the mixed relay at the World Cup in Oberhof, Eduard Latypov left the final third, the fans, I think, even in their wildest fantasies, did not admit that Russia would finish with gold.

How did you feel at that

moment?

- When your own people run, you always believe to the end.

Hope for some miracle, especially on New Years.

How to live without it?

Boring.

- Are you satisfied with how your personal ward Svetlana Mironova performed?

- In the last starts, she very clearly began to understand why this or that mistake happens in the race.

An amazing job has been done in the mixed relay.

I would say this is the best race of her life.

Everything we fought over worked out.

- When you say "the best race", do you mean statistics or the first gold in your career?

- A medal is a transient phenomenon: today it is, tomorrow it is not.

Therefore, first of all, I mean indicators.

Until the peak of her form, she still has to work and work, but everything that Svetlana showed in the relay is the maximum she is capable of in her current state.

Although working in a coronavirus environment, without a gym and a bath, is very difficult.

But we are trying.

- How long have you been with Mironova as a personal trainer?

- I stopped counting for a long time.

About ten years, probably.

- When other coaches worked with your athlete in the national team, did you get the feeling that the preparation was somehow going wrong?

And how do you now perceive the fact that many girls, getting into the national team, cannot show the result that is expected of them?

- I think that behind the points, plans, seconds and methods, we very often stop seeing a specific athlete.

I don’t think this is just a biathlon problem.

Rather, a certain property of time.

Frankly, after so many years of cooperation with athletes as a personal mentor, it is difficult to reorganize to work with the team.

You bring up your own people differently: you deal with them as with children.

You can shout where necessary, and you know that they will not be offended at you, since we are doing a common cause.

In the national team, you constantly control yourself, because you never know what the reaction will be to certain words and what consequences this or that situation will turn out to be.

Sometimes it even seems that we are people from different worlds.

- How is this expressed?

- For me, for example, it is absolutely normal for an athlete to buy flowers, to come up with some trinket gifts for the New Year.

All my girls got used to this for a long time.

And here I suddenly saw an absolute misunderstanding.

Like: he brought us New Year's gifts for some reason, now we owe him what, it turns out?

- A difficult moment ...

- You can't even imagine how such trifles can be unsettling.

But they are quite common.

That is why I say that this is a problem for our entire sport, and possibly for the entire generation of today's athletes.

People see a catch in everything or try to calculate their own benefits, while normal human relations go somewhere irrevocably.

- Maybe it's easier?

When for many years you live under a flurry of continuous public criticism, then from any outstretched hand you will shy away as a homeless puppy.

- On this occasion we are constantly talking with the same Dmitry Guberniev.

I understand that television is a business where you need to keep the audience at the screens in any way.

But, perhaps, you can find a way to somehow support athletes when something is not working out for them?

With all the abundance of information, no one really knows how this or that athlete lives, what is happening in his soul or at home, why he closes off from the world.

It does not happen that absolutely everyone in life develops safely and smoothly.

And all these problems are deep inside every athlete.

- But the journalist is not a psychoanalyst, he can hardly help here.

- I agree.

But I remember well the times when even the greatest coaches of Soviet times in various sports put the concept of "team" at the forefront.

I was then quite a boy, but I remembered conversations on this topic well.

A team is, first of all, the ability to sit at the same table for everyone and discuss anything, like in a family.

Reach out when it's bad, congratulate when there is a reason.

And not to think about what and to whom you are obliged in this team.

Therefore, I say that human relations within the national team are the main problem for me.

- When you decided to put Evgeny Pavlov in a single-mixed, did you take into account the words of the athlete that it is still difficult for her to run at a high level for several races in a row?

In other words, if you knew about it, did you think about replacing Zhenya?

- No.

Pavlova only complained that her shoulder ached - she injured it at the New Year's race when she was running a single mixed with Matvey Eliseev.

On the one hand, I did not want to break their bunch with Matvey, Valery Polkhovsky (head coach of the national team -

RT

) supported this.

On the other hand, through Alexei Volkov, Zhenya conveyed that she was ready to flee in Oberhof without any discounts on her own fortune.

Also, by the way, the topic: girls only now, it seems, are beginning to understand that it is possible to share experiences and problems with a coach, and not to accumulate in themselves.

- Put yourself in the shoes of your charges.

They really don't trust anyone.

And there is no reason: a large number of specialists changed in their memory, none of which led the team to noticeable results.

- The times when an athlete was obliged to unconditionally trust the coach are long gone.

Now every athlete must understand what he is doing and why.

But in practice something quite different often happens.

A person who trained individually comes to the World Cup.

You ask if he has a training plan, and you hear in response: "Now I will call the coach, I will ask."

So we can see a certain problem of the Russian Ivan the Fool lying on the stove.

When a person wants a princess to be his wife, and half a kingdom in addition, but it does not occur to him that for this it would be good to get off the stove first.

Think, for example: if we arrive at the stadium on the day of the race 15 minutes before the start of the shooting, and we see that the rest of the national teams arrived earlier and are already warming up with might and main, then for some reason they are doing it?

But a big result is made up of little things bit by bit.

• globallookpress.com

• © Martin Schutt / dpa

- In one of your interviews, you said that everyone who gets to the World Cup would do well to constantly look around, notice how the same Norwegians work, and learn from them.

What did your own gaze catch first?

- For the clarity of the work of coaches in conjunction with the athlete.

This is a completely different mentality, a partner mentality: people go to the start, fight for every second, every meter, regardless of where the person is in this or that race.

Every minute there is cooperation - this contact is immediately evident.

- Partnerships are not very typical for Russian biathlon.

Rather, they can be called commanding-puppet: the coach said that the athlete must obey without a murmur, regardless of what he thinks about it.

- There is such, unfortunately.

And most importantly, such a structure cannot be quickly rebuilt: it may take more than one Olympic cycle.

But we must strive for this if we want Russia to have a team capable of creating.

In which there would be a partnership between everyone, when no one seeks to bite or snap back, protecting himself from attacks.

You just need to understand that partnerships are not familiarity.

- What's the difference?

- Familiar relations very quickly form in the athlete the feeling that it is possible to do what is offered to him, or not to do it.

This is a fairly thin line, but you must definitely feel it.

- Alexey Volkov, who was involved in the national team as a shooting coach this season, is he a colleague for you, or is he still an athlete who also has to learn something?

- We communicate a lot, and we would very much like Lyosha to become a good coach.

So that temporary failures do not break him.

- The problem with most talented athletes is that, after becoming coaches, they try to teach their wards to work the way they did it themselves.

But this does not always work.

- There is some truth in your reasoning.

I fully admit that the same Volkov now no longer remembers what path he traveled before becoming an outstanding shooter.

He didn't become one overnight, did he?

Errors never arise spontaneously, they always have some kind of background, a starting point.

It is a great misconception that any mistake can be corrected by some kind of momentary correction.

The coach must first of all understand the essence of what is happening, see the root of the problem.

Moreover, how many people are under your command, there can be so many options for working on mistakes, individual for each.

This, by the way, also shows the difference between our approach and the way leading foreign specialists work.

The same Siegfried Maze can begin to explain in detail to Tiril Eckhoff at the sighting of the World Cup why she makes the mistake of trying to focus her eyes on the target.

- How do you know what the coach is?

- All the time I stand by my side, and any coach, and Maze is no exception, explains most of the technical things on his fingers, accompanies words with gestures.

- Do you have a separate shooting specialist at home or do you handle all shooting tasks yourself?

- Himself.

- Do you clinch with Volkov at the training camp regarding shooting, if you do not agree on technical issues?

- We try to find a common language.

So far it turns out.

- Any coach who comes to the Russian national team is actually deprived of the right to make a mistake.

He has no choice but to prepare his charges for the main start of the season, since it is on this result that work is evaluated.

Does this apply to you?

- No.

Least of all I think about it now.

Of course, we are making every effort so that the girls have a result right now.

But I think it is much more important to put together a team.

Unite people, teach them to train long and hard so that they can withstand the season from start to finish without emotional and physiological failures.

Relatively speaking, we now have a small and rather wobbly coffee table at our disposal.

And there must be a strong table, at which one and a half to two dozen people can be accommodated, including athletes, coaches, technical personnel and service staff.

And which is capable of becoming a kind of fulcrum for all of us.

Like ski jumpers: hit the push-off - flew.

It doesn't even matter if I find myself at this table myself.

But only in this case, we will have a team capable of winning medals.