- You have worked in Russian biathlon for many years in a variety of capacities: with women, men and juniors. How productive, in your opinion, is a scheme when one of the team leaders prepares according to an individual plan?
- When I was in the national team, there were no such cases.
Rather, we could talk about some changes in the general plan of work in those cases when we noticed that the athlete does not pull some kind of load.
Some, on the contrary, sought to increase the volume.
But I do not particularly remember individualists.
- That is, it turns out that there is no alternative to team training in biathlon?
- What is alternative training?
- If we talk about the current Russian team, these are Alexander Loginov and Matvey Eliseev.
- Loginov went to full self-training only this year, and Eliseev too.
Before that, they were both part of the team.
- But before them there were Anton Shipulin, Alexey Volkov.
- I would not call it self-preparation.
Self-training is when an athlete works alone, individually.
Anton just created his own autonomous mini-group.
He had a support staff in the person of a separate shooting coach, a separate coach for functional training.
Plus, there was a so-called research assistant who played the role of a massage therapist.
Yes, and Volkov appeared in the group rather in the role of Anton's sparring partner.
Not to mention the fact that all the work was carried out under the supervision of the leading specialists of the Sports Training Center.
- Was that isolation of Shipulin from the main team justified?
- If Anton had worked in a team for at least one year, then we could compare and talk about it now.
But Shipulin trained alone for almost the entire Olympic cycle.
Therefore, I would call the question open.
I do not know.
- But wouldn't you argue that the success of any scheme determines the result? If at the World Championships in Pokljuka the same Loginov won the gold medal, now it would be possible to talk about the fact that individual training in his case fully justified itself. And that this particular format of work should become an example for the rest.
- In principle, you are right.
The main assessment of the work that was used in preparation for the season is, of course, a medal at the main start.
Even if Sasha did not become a champion, but won silver or bronze in personal races, there would be reason to say that the athlete did everything right.
But the medal did not happen.
This means that the preparation was imperfect.
Although to be honest, I am not ready to act as an expert on the Russian team.
I do not have enough information for this.
- I do not at all urge you to assess someone's work, and even more so to discuss the actions of your colleagues. I argue simply: if the whole world biathlon prefers the team format in one way or another, then perhaps there is some grain of truth in this?
- This is the most important grain.
We always take leaders - Norway, France, Germany as an example.
And we see perfectly well that the teams of these countries are like an egg, inside which all the best is focused.
First of all, they perform quite smoothly.
Secondly, they support each other in case of victories and failures.
As they say, sorrows and joys pass together.
Looking at the Russian national team from the outside, I would say that it certainly lacks team spirit.
But in order for it to be, it is necessary to work in a single team.
- Why does he need this team spirit in biathlon?
- Although we have an individual sport, there are, nevertheless, such types of programs as relay races, where the principle “One for all, and all for one” has always been at the forefront.
For this, in fact, command tactics and mutual understanding are needed.
- After the ninth place of the Russian team in the single mixed in Pokljuka, one of the Russian coaches noticed that perhaps Evgenia Pavlova and Eduard Latypov lacked just mutual understanding. What does this phrase mean? And what difference does it make whether it exists or not, if people start each at their own stage?
- Mutual understanding is, first of all, internal support.
Those who run in the relay must first develop a certain tactics of work at a distance, tactics of struggle.
When a good relationship of trust develops between athletes, then the result is achieved much easier.
By the way, if we return to the topic of team training of our rivals, it should be said that both the Norwegian and French teams are not isolated by men's or women's teams.
They have both teams working together.
And even, one might say, one program.
Before the World Championships, the Belarusians and I trained in Antholz, where Swedes and Italians trained in the same way, according to the same program.
It was very interesting to look at it from the outside.
- How can men's and women's teams work according to the same program?
- This is not a problem at all.
The program is, first of all, the same direction of the loads.
But the dosage can be different.
- To be honest, I was surprised to learn that you and the entire Belarusian team are not going home from Pokljuka, but to the training camp in Ramsau. Why did you give up the rest?
- Because of the coronavirus, it has become a little difficult to move from country to country.
So we decided that it would be easier and more correct to stay in Europe and take part in further competitions than to go home and then come back.
For teams like Austria, Germany or Italy, the trip home is not a problem at all, everything is close.
Although Belarus is located closer to the border than Russia, the distance is still quite decent.
Plus a difficult road, unnecessary fatigue, the loss of several days in the training process ...
- The women's national team of Belarus is now headed by an Austrian specialist. Could you compare his style of work with the way you yourself worked in the Russian men's team under the leadership of Ricco Gross?
- With Ricco Gross we went together towards the same goal.
In the Belarusian national team, I train men, and the women's group this year has acted according to its plan.
We spent training camps together, even at the shooting ranges, sometimes we crossed paths.
But, frankly, I do not know at all what and how our girls did in training.
I had so much of my own work that there was no time left to take an interest in someone else's.
- But you are probably analyzing what is happening in the world biathlon. The Norwegians have some new stars almost every year. But is it hard to believe that more talented athletes are born in their country than in Russia?
- I am inclined to agree with you.
Having such a large resource and not raising four or five elite athletes is, of course, not a completely normal situation for our country ...
- Then what is it? In a system, once in which, a person loses the ability to progress and show results? Correct me if I'm wrong, but in cyclical sports, by and large, all the mechanisms have been worked out and studied a long time ago. In the same shooting, there is a huge number of all kinds of exercises that are also known to our specialists. What, relatively speaking, are Norwegians doing differently? Why do they have a result, but we do not?
- It seems to me that a large share of the responsibility of the Russian team plays a rather negative role here.
- Do you think that it is larger than that of the Norwegian?
- Quite right.
In Russian biathlon, people simply have no room for error.
After the first misfire, a huge amount of criticism arises.
- Are you talking about coaches or athletes now?
- And about those, and about others.
Let's look at an example from the recent World Cup.
Svetlana Mironova in the very first race, a mixed relay, brings the team two penalty loops, then runs six penalty loops in the sprint, does not get into the pursuit.
If it were not for her personal trainer Mikhail Shashilov (senior coach of the Russian women's national team -
RT
), she could have ended her performance at the championship altogether.
Correctly?
- Maybe yes.
- And here Sveta is quite successful in the individual race, takes fifth place and gets into the mass start, where she again makes six misses.
How many negative comments on her poured out during the championship from the media and experts?
How to show a good result with such a load of responsibility?
- You know, I got a completely different impression. When a person, having failed a race, completely sincerely says that he sees no reason to work on shooting more than he works, I want to ask: “Girl, have you messed up anything? Do you understand where and why you are? "
- We, biathletes, have such a proverb: kilometers are not money, they may be superfluous.
I cannot know how much shooting work Mironova did, and in general I am not going to either defend her or scold her.
But I believe that every athlete should always have a chance to correct a mistake if he made it.
Or maybe two or three chances.
Let's recall Pokljuka again, for example.
World Champion Emilien Jacquelin wins the graze with a fairly high speed and high quality shooting.
And in the mass start at the second firing range, not a single shot hits, after which he demonstratively runs poorly along the distance.
If any Russian athlete did something like that, how much criticism and criticism would fall on him?
And in the case of Jacquelin, everything went without any excesses at all - in an even calm manner.
- Well, you know, if Sasha Loginov won bronze and gold in the sprint and pursuit, and then went through the mass start backwards, no one would have said a word to him.
- Now this is just an assumption.