"Anyone can sit for three minutes under water": Kolesnichenko about Russian synchronized swimmers, fear of heights and conversations with her husband

My call found the three-time Olympic champion Svetlana Kolesnichenko on vacation.

- Sveta, why Dubai?

Really, during the ten plus years that the team has been traveling to the Emirates for recovery camps, the city has not bored you yet?

- Vice versa.

It is comfortable, healthy, warm and… I don’t know, somehow calm.

I really know everything here by heart and I like it.

Plus a short flight.

I'm afraid to fly.

- Are you afraid of heights or the flight itself?

- I'm afraid of heights too.

I know, for example, that I will never jump into the water from a ten-meter tower, my limit in this regard is seven and a half meters.

In addition, I am afraid of situations in which nothing depends on me.

Our sport teaches us to control absolutely everything.

And here I have no idea who is sitting at the wheel, I do not know what this person has in his head.

Therefore, the moment of fear is present.

- In ordinary life, do you also strive to keep everything under control?

- Oh yeah.

The girls even laugh at it.

I always need to know when we have music, when to warm up, where to go, where to go, what time this or that bus will come.

In this regard, I am, in fact, a backup team manager.

I love it when everything is clear.

- With such subconscious attitudes, you do not want to come out of the sea upside down on vacation?

- One hundred percent hit the spot.

My husband constantly stops me: just don't lift your legs on vacation, please, just don't bully.

And this, apparently, becomes a habit to such an extent that it becomes completely impossible to resist.

Especially at sea.

Salt water is more propellant.

Keeps it afloat more tangibly.

You can feel it very well with your hands.

- What else do synchronized interpreters feel with their hands?

- First of all, the density of water.

I don't even know how to explain.

When you don't swim for a long time, as, for example, I now, when I haven't come to the pool for a month, the feeling of water disappears.

It takes a week or two to get used to the sensations again.

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- I associate your sport with high jumping.

There you clearly understand what kind of effort must be made to overcome the bar.

In your case, an athlete is also obliged to feel what effort must be made in order to push himself with his feet up to a certain height, but at the same time not stand out from the general row.

- Yes you are right.

It's just that we probably have more painstaking technical work than in any other sport.

These are long, tedious, everyday hours aimed at working out the vertical, the degree of certain angles.

Closer to the competition, all this happens at an automatic level: you no longer think about how to work with your hands: purity of movements and synchronization come to the fore.

- Do you know the feeling of inadequacy with your partner?

- I am, probably, in synchronized swimming, in general, the record holder for partners.

There was a time when I changed them almost every year.

It's hard: you get used to one girl for a whole season, and then they change her, and you have to start all over again.

Everyone works differently in water.

Covering is a very long process that takes not a month, not two, or even three.

- I didn't really mean it. When the two-time Olympic champion Dmitry Sautin stopped performing in synchronized ski jumping with Alexander Dobroskok and got Yuri Kunakov as a partner, it was clear to everyone that the latter was not Dobroskok. Not in terms of talent, skill, or experience. Sautina's coach even once admitted that she makes Dima jump lower so that the difference in technique is not so striking. Then I constantly wondered: what Kunakov should have experienced, realizing that he did not correspond to his star partner?

- I understand this state very well.

After the 2012 Games, when Natasha Ishchenko went on maternity leave and I was paired with Svetlana Romashina, I constantly thought that I was absolutely not suitable for this role.

Every day I tried to analyze a situation that seemed to me more and more failed, and it all ended with the same question: how could the coaches choose me at all?

At that time, Sveta was already a three-time Olympic champion, it is clear that in technique, visually, and in general by all criteria that could exist, I could not be compared with her.

And she was wildly afraid that everyone would see it at the World Cup.

In the end, everything worked out for us, but it was incredibly difficult.

- The 2013 World Championships in Barcelona - the very performance where you almost fainted from the tension in the final?

- Yes.

Probably, it was the hardest competition in my life.

I remember that at some point I stopped thinking about the elements altogether and concentrated all my strength only on keeping my brain from shutting down.

And so that we can finish the program.

- Your coach Tatyana Danchenko said the following about your performance: “Sveta really finished the program unconscious, on autopilot.

But now she is one of the most reliable and technical athletes in the national team, and in a duet she is able to match a partner of any level. "

Have you ever asked why Danchenko chose you from several applicants?

- I asked.

I understood that one of those who advised me to try me in a duet was the five-time Olympic champion Anastasia Davydova.

Asya and I worked together at one time in pairs, and I think that she told the coach that she sees certain prospects in me.

In the sense that I can most quickly be adjusted to a more or less acceptable level.

Perhaps the final decision was influenced by the fact that I had a great desire.

I was ready to move mountains, work from morning to evening.

Yes, and Sveta and I turned out to be similar in legs.

In a word, there were many criteria, but all the same for me it still remains a mystery in some way why I was so lucky then.

I am very grateful to fate for this.

- Your colleague on performances in the group Maria Shurochkina not so long ago said that she was very grateful to her mother, who from childhood forced her to practice acrobatics. Thanks to this, Masha always had such a strong trump card as support. How did you have the opportunity to stand out from the crowd?

- I always tried to swim the fastest.

Not because I wanted to show off somehow, but simply always worked at the maximum, every workout.

In another way, I just do not know how, if I set myself a goal.

And the goal was to get into the main team.

When I first came to the national team, I saw more than once that some girls are simply afraid to enter the group, they are afraid to claim an empty seat even when it actually appears.

I clearly understood that I wanted to stand in this group no matter how well I did it.

Maybe she flogged something, did something wrong - at first, after all, everyone really wants to somehow stand out.

- And group work does not encourage this.

- Of course.

In a group, it is very important not to stand out, especially when you are already in the main line-up - we always work a lot on this.

Because the main thing is synchronicity.

Ideally, judges should see eight identical faces, identical bodies and identical pairs of legs.

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- I remember well the period when Sveta Romashina very much doubted about her solo performances.

She was afraid that a comparison with her predecessor - Natasha Ishchenko, whom everyone considered a soloist from God, would be strongly not in her favor.

Starting from the new season, you will have to take the place in synchronized swimming that Romashina occupied for many years.

Will you strive to become a soloist?

- Most likely it will be Varya Subbotina.

I had the experience of solo performances after the Rio Olympics.

Before that, I performed in this form only at the junior level, and then I got into a situation when Romashina took a time-out, the World Championship in Budapest was ahead and it was necessary to prepare two solo programs at once.

- With whom, let me remind you, you won two gold medals at that championship.

- Yes, but when we just started to stage those programs, I understood that in the water, I beg your pardon, I'm just a log.

Especially in comparison with how Romashin worked in solo.

I don't know how Tatyana Evgenievna got out of me everything that we finally managed to show, but she really pulled out and turned my whole soul inside out in those programs.

I think it was the most painful solo in the world.

Therefore, now I will not concentrate on solo performances with a light heart.

Although it's not so scary anymore.

- And there is no desire to compete for the position of the soloist?

- If it suddenly turns out that Varya will find it difficult to pull all types of programs, and this, in addition to solo, duet and group, is also a combination, and, possibly, highlights, I will gladly take some of the programs.

It's just that at the moment we have agreed that Varya will do two solos and two duets, and for now I will only perform in duets.

Now, while training has not begun, this division is rather arbitrary, but if there is strength, there is a desire, then why not?

- Got a taste?

- You can say so.

By the way, when we stood on the podium in Tokyo after performing in the group, many girls cried, realizing that this was their last Olympics.

At that moment, I somehow understood very clearly that for me this was definitely not the end of my career.

- You are a 16-time world champion and next year at the world championship in Fukuoka you can add four or even five gold medals to your list of victories.

When titles are numbered in the tens, does their number matter?

- It is not the quantity as such that is valuable, but what is behind each of these medals.

Somewhere long tedious workouts, somewhere tears, injuries, overcoming.

It is especially valuable to win medals in the kind of program in which you have not yet won.

Our team, for example, has not yet had a gold medal in a relatively new discipline - highlight.

- So Russia did not compete at the last world championship in this form.

Why, by the way?

- Because there is not enough time to work out one more program.

And besides, it seems to me that it is politically more correct to periodically give a medal to someone else.

- So that it doesn't work, like with rhythmic gymnastics at the Tokyo Games?

- It is difficult for me to judge that situation, so I don’t presume to comment.

In our case, the primary reason is that we ourselves are not ready to take on such a large number of programs.

The position of the leaders in this regard is very binding: any performance is a great responsibility.

Therefore, I think the highlight will wait a little.

- Sveta Romashina's Wikipedia says that she can sit under water without air for four and a half minutes.

How long can you be without air?

- I do not know.

I think that any of our girls can easily sit under water for three minutes.

Personally, I find it difficult to sit under water for a long time without moving - I'm afraid to suffocate.

- And when you work long underwater bundles, there is no fear that there is not enough air?

- It's easier on the ligaments: there you clearly know at what moment you emerge.

At first it is difficult, then it becomes easier, because the functionality is being developed.

At competitions, by the way, you do the first ligament, which is the most difficult for us, you emerge, take a breath, and immediately understand how everything will go on: your legs will fall off at the end of the program, or it will be more or less normal.

That is, the beginning of the program is always an indicator of readiness.

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- How much blood did you get the Tokyo gold medals?

- The competition itself was completely calm.

Approximately like on Krugly, when you do a full run of the program.

There was not perhaps the usual drive that is present when there are spectators in the stands.

Of course, the period of preparation turned out to be difficult, an extra year of training.

I think the only thing that saved us was that when the Games were postponed and all the bases were closed, we sat at home with family and friends for two months.

If it were not for this little sip of freedom, not this accumulated fresh energy, everyone would be a thousand times harder in moral terms.

And maybe someone would not have resisted.

- Is training in a group a creative process or training?

- If programs are being drawn up, this is, of course, a creative process.

Further training begins.

- Is this a very humiliating process for an athlete?

- Well no. We are not prisoners and not soldiers who cannot leave our post, roughly speaking. To train in this mode, or not, is everyone's personal choice. Whoever doesn't like training, who thinks it's humiliating, just won't stay on the team. Everyone is accustomed to a certain scheme of work, everyone is fine with this. It is generally not customary for us to respond to the coach's comments, to question his words. This has been going on since childhood, from the junior team. There, after all, they are also quite tough in preparing athletes for the transition to the Russian national team. And the girls are ready for it to be tough. Therefore, no one has the slightest idea to somehow resist this: everyone perfectly understands why this is being done.

- One of the figure skating coaches once told me that a skater never looks a judge in the eye when skating.

Where do the synchronized swimmers look when they perform?

- To the judges.

For example, sometimes I deliberately try to catch someone's eye.

In Tokyo, there was a man among the referees at the group finals, so I stared at him at some point.

It seems to me that he was the only one who gave us the top ten.

- I can imagine this look ...

- Well, I was really very formidable.

Directly incinerated him with a glance.

By the way, I didn’t know that skaters don’t look the judges in the eye.

I even wonder why.

- I heard the version that when you cross eyes with someone at the time of the performance, there is a very big loss of energy, as if an additional gateway is opening.

I don't know how true this is.

You are a psychologist by training.

- It seems to me that, on the contrary, it is necessary to look the judges in the eyes, to see their reaction.

We are artists, after all.

When Sveta Romashina performed her "Pretty Woman" and wagged her booty, she also looked into the eyes of the judges, turning her head on purpose.

- My favorite place in that program of hers, by the way.

- So it is everyone's favorite.

- Romashina is a seven-time Olympic champion.

At least theoretically, do you imagine such a probability for yourself?

- Unrealistic.

True, it's unrealistic.

My ceiling is Paris, God forbid.

- Why?

After all, you have already entered the category of athletes who, thanks to their titles, can miss a year, or even two years, then come back and compete at the Olympics.

Then again miss some time, give birth to a child, come back again ...

- It seems to me that in sports it is important to stop on time - to devote yourself to your family, work, some new projects.

The later you do this, the harder it will be for you in the “other” life.

In Los Angeles in 2028 I will be almost 35. I thought about taking a break after Tokyo, and maybe thinking about a child, but that was before the transfer of the Olympics.

And now there is no time for personal life: there are only three years left until the next Games.

Naturally, first of all I talked to my husband: is he ready to let me go from the family for these three more years.

Together we came to the conclusion that yes, it makes sense.

But I don’t think I’ll want to continue after Paris.

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- When Varya Subbotina appeared in the junior team, they almost immediately started talking about her as an athlete who would eventually replace Romashina.

Who will replace you after Paris?

- Good question, actually.

I just recently thought about it.

Varya will probably stay after Paris.

And who will perform with her in a duet, for me, honestly, is now just a blank sheet.

Do not know.

I don't even know who will be in the national team next season - Tatyana Nikolaevna (Pokrovskaya - RT) will make a selection in October, but it is not at all a fact that absolutely all the selected athletes will gain a foothold in the squad.

Someone may not stand it.

- What you yourself will do after sports, do you already know?

- Hair to heal.

It seems to me that I will soon become bald from gelatin - it pulls out my hair terribly and spoils it terribly.

And finally I will get my hair cut ...