"At the Games is not the time to think about jumping on a springboard": Sautin on Schleicher's failure and Chinese superiority

- How do you perceive what is happening now in Tokyo?

- With surprise.

First of all, these words refer to the speech of Nikita Schleikher.

- In synchronized ski jumping, he received a zero mark for his final jump, passing the board.

But you also had a case in your career when at the Games in Athens you hit a springboard with your feet and were left with Alexander Dobroskok without medals.

Why do such mistakes happen at all?

- From nerves, from lack of concentration, from the fact that the athlete is not psychologically tuned in the right way.

Nikita has already had something similar this season - at the World Cup.

- And at the European Championships, although the consequences there were not as serious as in Tokyo.

- It means that the athlete cannot cope with the stress of big starts.

I cannot find any other explanation.

Moreover, I don’t know this athlete very well, I didn’t see him at the training camp, I’m not ready to talk about the system of his training.

- Unlike you, I have never performed on a springboard at major competitions, I have not trained this apparatus too much.

Explain why the main component of the jump - jumping onto the board - can go wrong for a springboard?

- The springboard itself is a very heavy projectile in terms of working with the board.

But if an athlete specializes in it, he is simply obliged to keep the swoop technique under constant control.

How I held it myself.

Because it really is 50% success.

It's just that in relation to a specific athlete, it is more correct to address such questions to the coach.

At the Russian Championship, Nikita jumped just fine.

But as soon as he goes to more serious starts, something seems to switch in his head.

For me, I repeat, it is very strange: if you come to the Olympic Games, you should not think about jumping onto the springboard.

All this should be worked out to absolute automatism, and even if something does not work out, all trampolines from childhood are accustomed to "save" the jump.

It's just that Schleicher's swoop came out in such a way that it was already impossible to save.

- To be honest, I was also surprised by the performance of Evgeny Kuznetsov in the individual final.

- I agree.

It was a very strange sight.

So is the image.

I just don't understand such things.

He himself would not have dared - the children are watching.

And then, if I showed up at training in a similar form, my coach would just rip my head off.

And she would be right.

- Maybe you and I are just lagging behind modern life?

- Maybe.

But the point is something else.

If the appearance of an athlete causes exactly the same rejection among the judges, and this option, you see, is more than likely when a variety of people are sitting on the line, this may well be reflected in the assessment.

The referee will give you half a point less, which, I note, is completely unpunished in our sport, and this is exactly what you may not be enough for a medal.

But in general, I think that even if Evgeny had done well three and a half turns back, that is, the jump in which he made the most gross mistake, at best he would have fought for fourth place in Tokyo.

“You don’t believe in him that much?”

- The competition was too high.

In general, I consider the two Chinese separately: they were not mistaken in the final, both completed the final jump by more than a hundred points, that is, they did not give any reason to think that they could be beaten.

Cyborg people.

As for Jack Lo, he was very much in the mood for this ending.

It was clear from the eyes that he was about to start vomiting everyone.

- In diving, there was a point of view for quite a long time, which I myself shared that Chinese jumpers are well judged even when they jump dirty - with their legs spread apart in a grouping, with bent knees.

In Tokyo, I did not see any "dirt" at all.

- They cleaned their jumps very hard.

It can be seen that people have worked a lot on this.

Therefore, now I have no idea how you can compete with them.

- It turns out that the bronze won by Alexander Bondar and Viktor Minibaev in synchronized diving from the platform is a tremendous success?

- If we compare with the performances of our athletes on other apparatus, then yes.

- You said about the inaccessibility of the Chinese, but the British won on the tower.

Could we be in their place?

- I do not think.

In principle, our guys showed a result close to the maximum.

That ending was generally amazing.

- In what sense?

- The fact that the third position on the podium remained open until the very last jump.

It could be occupied by anyone, and even without particularly straining - as we say, "on one leg."

Lucky for ours.

But I really do not remember in sync such favorable circumstances at any previous Games.

- But in Sydney, where synchronized jumping first appeared in the program, you and Igor Lukashin also had a decent luck, considering how little you trained together.

- I don't quite agree with that.

At the World Championships, the synchro appeared two years earlier, and the competition at the Olympics was already very serious.

And the Chinese looked very strong, and the Australians were preparing this shell in order to win a medal at the home Games.

For Igor and I, this was the fifth joint start, and, of course, there was an element of luck in our Olympic victory.

If not, God knows what experience they were able to gather as much as possible at the right time.

- Did you regret that there is no London Games champion Ilya Zakharov in Tokyo?

- Sorry.

I think if he played in sync with Kuznetsov, the guys would not have missed their chance.

But there's nothing you can do about it.

- I agree.

Moreover, the topic is not easy.

We all remember the "triangle" on the eve of the Sydney Olympic Games, where Yulia Pakhalina chose Vera Ilyina as her partner, and not Irina Lashko, and this choice justified itself, but now Kuznetsov chose Schleicher in a very similar situation.

And I miscalculated.

- Well, you never know what could have influenced that choice.

We do not know why Eugene decided to do this.

I don't think anyone has the right to condemn him for that choice now.

Moreover, Zakharov himself set up both himself and his partner, with an absurd disqualification.

Could Kuznetsov be offended by this?

I think yes.

- What expectations do you associate with the final on the men's platform?

- You need to fight.

And the third place is possible, and the second.

- In other words, is the fight for gold for Bondar and Minibayev impossible in principle?

- Sasha has one rather problematic place - the purity of the lines.

Not always stretched out knees, socks, and at the Olympics, judges tend to cling strongly to those "little things" that are forgiven to an athlete at some other competition.

In this regard, I was in general for the fact that Ruslan Ternovy was taken for an individual performance in Tokyo.

He now performs in Kazan at the Students' Games and jumps just amazing.

It is very clean, very beautiful, and in our sport it is very important to be able to perform jumps in such a way.

When everyone understands: an athlete has entered the water, and it is impossible not to give him a top ten.

But for most jumpers "nine" is an absolute ceiling.

Viti Minibaev also has excellent lines, but he does not have such entrances to the water as Ternovy.

- An abstract question, which, nevertheless, is constantly circulating in the language: why are we worse than the Chinese?

- The amount of work, both on the water and in the hall.

The physical fitness of Chinese athletes speaks for itself.

In this aspect, we do not stand next to them at all.

In terms of physical training, the world has moved forward very strongly for a long time: new simulators have appeared, new methods of working in the gym.

I think that in the pool we are lagging behind the strongest in the number of jumps.

Hence the result.

- How many jumps did you do in training?

- When I was preparing for the Games in Atlanta, that is, I was young and still without serious injuries, I could make up to twenty attempts of one jump.

Especially if something didn't work out.

I repeated it until I achieved at least three perfect attempts in a row.

I think that in Soviet times, when the competition on apparatus was much tougher, athletes trained no less.

- Sergei Nemtsanov, who had no equal in the world on a ten-meter platform before the Games in Montreal, did 250-300 jumps during one training session.

- That's what I'm talking about.

These are, of course, exorbitant numbers, but sometimes there is simply no other way in our sport.