“I don’t understand why we are scattering coaches”: Guryev on leaving the biathlon team, failing at the European Championship and working with children

Coaching life of Leonid Guryev is one continuous paradox.

Having prepared four Olympic champions and seven world champions, he was forced to sit at his desk at more than 60 years in order to receive a specialized education.

Our conversation with an outstanding coach began with this topic.

- I congratulate you on receiving a red diploma, Leonid Alexandrovich!

- Thanks.

I thought I had set a record by graduating from university at 66.

It turns out not, the specialist of our center Nikolai Parkhomenko defended his diploma at 72.

- Admit it honestly: did your studies give you anything?

Or was it just for show?

- By my first education, I am a physics teacher.

From a pedagogical point of view, there is a lot in common between the teaching and coaching professions: teaching methods, psychology.

When I came out to defend my diploma in the fall, my former athlete Anna Kholmanskikh, world champion and bronze medalist in summer biathlon, master of sports of international class, was my supervisor.

She herself defended her PhD when she was an athlete.

So, when I studied all the special literature before the exams, I caught myself thinking that I had passed all this repeatedly.

It's just that if normal people go from theory to practice, I did the opposite.

The topic of the diploma dealt with the specifics of biathlon and shooting, so nothing was very difficult for me.

- Didn't you want to retire after you left the national team?

So that for real: a garden, a vegetable garden, chickens ...

- In the summer, everything is fine.

And what to do in winter?

And I don't want to bury my coaching experience: I have been working in national teams since 1992 - from the very moment when women's biathlon was introduced into the Olympic Games program.

Therefore, when I returned to Tyumen, I came to my first student Luisa Noskova, who is now the director of our sports school.

I work with children, and this is a very special pleasure: you sculpt what you want.

It so happened that I am not limited in time, no one hits my hands, and I understand that I will not do anything wrong, everything has been tried dozens of times.

My children, when I started to work with them seriously, even asked a question: "Leonid Alexandrovich, will you stay with us for a long time?"

- The phrase that became famous thanks to the film "Officers" ...

- At first I was even confused when I heard this question.

Then I just understood its meaning.

- How tied were your hands at the time that you worked in the Russian women's team?

- Well, how connected.

It was just that everything had to be coordinated with the senior coach, constantly keeping in mind how he would look at this or that exercise, at the same idle exercise machine.

For example, in the spring, I looked at the numbers: the juniors had five medals at the end of the season, we had none.

We did 20 hours of training in a year, and they did 90 hours.

- Why didn't you do more if it is so important?

- He did.

And I heard in response that the girls are tired.

And what do the girls want when the workout ends?

Smartphones, tablets, gadgets.

Everyone is happy, satisfied that there is no exercise machine in the evenings.

I talked a lot with the shooters when I started my coaching career.

They do 70-80% idle and only 20% clean.

Now I check many of my thoughts on children: for one and a half to two hours a day we work on an idle simulator.

The other day we ran the control race - two girls have already shot two zeros in the sprint.

Three months after seeing the rifle for the first time.

Psychologically, training is very hard work.

On the other hand, it's not just about shooting.

You can work out the care, and the approach, how and where to put the sticks, how to remove the rifle.

So, we found two "extra" seconds at one line, and four lines are 8 seconds.

You yourself know what eight seconds are when there is a dismantling for places on the podium.

This is a very serious figure.

When it comes to seconds, I immediately cite Martin Fourcade as an example.

He always acted very rationally on the lines.

- But what about the widespread opinion among biathletes that if a person does not shoot, it is impossible to teach him?

- It depends on what we are talking about.

It is very important how a person takes their first steps: how they laid him down, where he started from.

This is generally the most important thing.

Taught the child to write beautifully in childhood, he went through life with this handwriting.

It's the same with shooting.

In childhood, the eyes are sharp, the fingers perceive all sensations well and they quickly grab the shooting.

It's a completely different matter when an athlete comes to biathlon from the same skis at 25 or 26 years old, when the eye is no longer the same, and the finger is not the same ... I’m not saying that you cannot do a result with such people, but everything becomes much more complicated.

- After the end of the 2020 season, you returned to Tyumen.

Was it your desire, or did you just find no place in the main team or in the reserve?

- There was no place.

If Vladimir Drachev continued to be at the head of the SBR, I believe he would have remained in the team, since we initially discussed with him a certain strategy of work.

After all, consider that for three years we went with all our athletes to ensure that in the sprint we were at two lines of 50-55 seconds, and in those races where there are four lines, 110 seconds, and not 70 and 135, as it was before.

It's just that when we came to these numbers, the world elite had already started shooting 45 and 90, respectively.

But even so, we did not lose much in shooting.

As in the functional part.

When all specialists are swept away during a change of leadership, it is wrong, even strategically.

Because in addition to the training process, there are certain contacts with coaches and companies, certain developments with the same paraffins, powders, equipment, training camps, and so on.

Take the same shooting of weapons: with Nikolai Zagursky, all the logistics were fine-tuned to automatism, there were no problems.

As for mistakes, all coaches ultimately make them.

And I did.

But I had excellent teachers who understood how important it is to prompt, give the coach the opportunity to correct the mistake.

Vitaly Noritsyn was not given such an opportunity, and he left for Bulgaria.

- Like Alexander Kasperovich ...

- Well yes.

Why we are so scattered with coaches, I do not understand at all.

I remember the same Andrei Padin in the reserve team, both women and men tore to pieces - each pulled to his side.

For Padin to become a senior coach on their team.

Moreover, Andrei, unlike many of his colleagues, is not a theoretician, but a pure practitioner, a specialist, of which only a few.

And what's wrong with the same Kasperovich?

As an organizer, as a coach, he is very strong.

We are now talking about the fact that only Loginov is reliable in the men's biathlon, but it was Kasperovich who prepared Loginov for the last year's World Championship.

Sasha got up psychologically very strongly, smiling there constantly.

I went to the mountains with sticks hardly every day.

He left in the morning, came to dinner.

As a result, he worked great, and everything worked out for him.

Kasperovich also left for Bulgaria to have guaranteed accreditation for all competitions, to be closer to Loginov. 

- And as soon as the interaction scheme was broken, Loginov sagged?

- I tend to attribute this to the costs of individual training.

Sasha had one or two training camps with the team.

Compete, some kind of relay race, mass start.

That is, to understand for oneself: whether I am lagging behind, not lagging behind, whether I am working in the right direction.

It is no coincidence that now there are teams all over the world, and even very strong riders are eager to work with them.

Individual training has not given anyone anything good yet - the effect of such training can be for a maximum of two to three years.

Plus, there must be strong partners nearby.

When we worked with the late Vitaly Fatyanov in the national team, we specially attracted skiers to our trainings.

If there will be shooting, if it won't - it's not that important.

The main thing was to bring these "trotters" to the track, so that they would work as accelerators, and pulled out functionally our athletes.

And we did it very well.

- I'm afraid a number of athletes will disagree with you regarding individual training.

- Well, there are obvious things.

You run a control race - obviously the first.

Where to "be patient", where is willpower, where is character?

How to work out all this, if there are no competitors nearby, there is no contact struggle.

Now, even within the framework of the national team, the thought suggests itself that all control races should be carried out only in the format of mass starts.

Because at the same World Championship we have a continuous contact struggle: graze, mass start, mixed relay, big relay, singlemix.

Yes, in the same sprint, 50-70 people gather in one circle.

And they all impose something on you.

We need athletes to be well oriented in any situation.

To make the right decisions on the track, on the lines. 

- Constantly keeping athletes at long training camps, as we do, is also not entirely correct, is it?

- We had the experience of Wolfgang Pichler, who worked with the team at the training camp for 14 days, and then dismissed the athletes home for two weeks.

This is not possible in Russia.

We are not used to such a system.

For example, an athlete returns for 14 days, regional coaches do not always adapt to these terms, someone has to leave for other training camps.

Accordingly, in order to train, you must first stick all the targets yourself.

And the conditions ... Well, we have a grid around the stadium in Tyumen, they've surrounded everything so that no stranger can climb in, but there is no such thing at other shooting ranges.

I left the rifle at the turn, came through the circle - and it's not a fact that you will have a weapon.

- And the practice of two-week training was decided to stop?

- Pichler himself said some time later at the coaching council that it was necessary to move to the 20-day training camp.

But he didn't know what to do in those three weeks.

I thrashed in terms of loads immediately, from the first day to the last, so the girls "got up" by the end of the third week.

This was especially true of work in the mountains.

In the mountains, Wolfgang did not know how to train at all - he had no idea what a mountain was.

It took him a year with the same barbell to realize that the barbell does not work in biathlon.

But at first, how many delights there were: oh, Sveta Sleptsova set a record, took 40 kg.

Three months later 45, then 47. So what?

Why do we need these muscles?

- Your famous colleague Alexander Grushin recently told me the same in relation to cross-country skiing.

What a complete nonsense to pump muscles that are not defining for a skier.

- Well, that's what I mean.

He himself always taught his athletes to work only with their own weight.

Nastya Kuzmina once told me that all her career she did the same, exactly as I taught her.

You need to feed large muscles, you need to drag along the track.

It is doubly difficult to do it at high altitude.

And in Europe, almost all competitions are in the mountains, because there is no snow in the lowlands. 

- Fans are still discussing the failure of Russian biathletes at the European Championships, where our team did not win gold medals for the first time in 26 years.

In your opinion, is it worth attaching importance to this?

- Let's not forget that the European Championship is the second most important competition after the world championships, while the World Cup is an exclusively commercial tournament where money is made.

If so, it is necessary not only to perform, but also to present a worthy team.

For example, I don't understand why they brought Nastya Shevchenko and Daniil Serokhvostov to Poland.

If we say that Shevchenko needs to be protected before the junior world championship, then why put her at a distance of 15 km and rejoice in fourth place?

Put her on the sprint, graze and on the baton, let her run short distances.

Why not run Serokhvostov on the baton?

Why do we put 30-year-olds there, what's the point?

Although in what - it is quite understandable.

- And what is it?

- See the results of the same Evgeny Garanichev in comparison with the young ones.

If the young ones turn out to be stronger, then they should be taken to the World Championship, as Said Karimulla Khalili was taken.

But there was no more choice.

Nikita Porshnev had had a coronavirus and did not recover, Semyon Suchilov and Kirill Streltsov also turned out to be none.

Well, who should you send to the national team?

Of course, the most experienced is Garanichev.

That's the whole alignment.

I don’t know why we are doing this: we select, we always select someone somewhere, but there is no team.

- It is believed that athletes are greatly emasculated by continuous selection.

- Our main mistake, it seems to me, lies in the fact that every year we change the rules quite thoughtlessly.

I have said many times: this cannot be done.

Let's say the selections were held in December or November - just put on paper: what happened in terms of results, what didn't.

No need to wait until spring or summer with this.

Not satisfied with the results of the European Championship?

This means that in the selection of athletes we were wrong somewhere.

And we need to puzzle now: why did this happen?

Here, from year to year, the same thing: in the summer they come up with rules, in the fall they announce: new rules, new criteria, everything has changed.

But in fact the same confusion continues.

- After Mikhail Shashilov's wards won the relay at the World Cup in Anterselva, many people started talking about the revival of the women's team.

Do you have a feeling that the team really improved?

Or is it just some kind of coincidence, and it's too early to flatter yourself?

- It's hard for me to judge this, being outside the national team.

The relay race in the composition that ran in Anterselva turned out to be very strong.

Probably no one in the world has four athletes of this level.

God grant that everything will work out for them, so that they do not repeat the mistake that happened in Nagano in 1998.

We were so clearly the favorites that the girls were ready for anything to get into the relay.

They understood that the gold medal was guaranteed.

But we lost the baton.

Galya Kukleva fell in a hollow and hesitated there.

Then Albina Akhatova went to the wrong circle, returned after a hundred meters.

But now our girls are fighting, even individually they can look good.

Moreover, they live at the same height as the stadium, they must adapt well to this height. 

- How much depends on the emotional mood of the athletes at the World Championships?

- It all depends.

As far as the functional part is concerned, you will not correct or lift anything during the competition.

You can only break a person by overloading him with work.

Therefore, I have always said to everyone: the most important thing at the World Championships or the Olympic Games is to get enough sleep.

And everything will be fine.

But if he has already begun to wind himself up, he launched cockroaches in the head, as if to shoot a zero, as if to get into the winners ... That's it, you will burn out completely.

I often hear: they say, you need a psychologist on the team so that athletes can work with him.

But this is a double-edged sword.

First, not everyone will admit a stranger to their own.

The psychologist is interested in understanding the athlete.

He begins to itch, walks relentlessly after the person everywhere: at the shooting range, and at the hotel, and during the day and in the evening.

Sometimes an athlete just wants to rest and relax, and a psychologist picks him, picks, picks.

- Most specialists of your generation are used to thinking that a coach should be a psychologist.

- And there is.

So, Shashilov came to the national team with his girls, he knows them thoroughly: where to push, where to shout, where to joke.

And he really united the team, although he didn't really know many, especially since at first they worked with their coaches.

Tatyana Akimova trained with Nikolai Lopukhov, who lifted her very much after the birth of a child, Zhenya Pavlova - with Kostya Popov, Ulyana Kaisheva trained in her Udmurtia.

- Is your ward Larisa Kuklina, whom it was decided to involve in the national team after the European Championship, is able to strengthen the women's team?

- It can be useful for the relay.

Larisa is a shooting sportswoman, she shoots very hard, in principle, there were no problems with her before.

Vitaly Noritsyn and I talked a lot on this topic.

I convinced him that good shooters should run the baton first of all.

All the more so - a mixed relay.

At the World Championships, this is the first type of program, where all countries will place their strongest in order to win a medal.

The medal was hooked - and we went further throughout the championship with our heads held high.

In general, you know, I often began to think: all our Olympians - from Galia Kukleva and Luiza Noskova to Albina Akhatova and Nastya Shipulina - took place when there weren't really any conditions for training in Tyumen.

No shooting range, nothing.

The weapons were stored in DOSAAF, or in general, where necessary.

They shot in the logs.

They put shields on the same "Pearl" up the hill and fired.

On the road, we skated on rollers - it was lucky that there were no injuries or accidents.

It is not clear where the gyms were rented.

Now there is everything that I once dreamed of: a shooting range with a lift, its own gyms, food, accommodation, boarding schools, but the result ... Although if you take skiers - and Sasha Bolshunov cooked here before he left for Arkhangelsk, Denis Spitsov completed all the training, starting with the boarding school, Ivan Yakimushkin, Tatiana Sorina.

We train Evgeny Belov, Gleb Retivykh.

Everybody ran at the Tour de Ski, now they run at the World Cups.

You look at them and think: why is it so in biathlon?

- The question was removed from the language.

- I think it's primarily about organizing the process.

In Tyumen, the senior coach in cross-country skiing, Andrei Ivanov, has very clearly built the entire coaching vertical, assigned all the specialists in positions.

Someone was invited from outside, someone came along with their athletes, but one way or another, everyone fit into this chain very well.

In biathlon, there has always been some disconnect between children's sports and adults.

No matter how much we talk about the fact that one way or another we work for the national team, we do a common cause, and the worm sharpens everyone.

And I was sharpening for the first time: I worked with an athlete for four years, gave him up, in five to ten years he may become the champion of the world or the Olympic Games, before that he will change a few more coaches, and they will forget about you altogether.

Someday, maybe, they will remember, but when?

Well, who wants to work for an uncle?

This is perhaps not important for me now: firstly, I am retired, and secondly, I just like to mess with children.