"The current task is to collect everything in one plate": Zhulin about Sinitsina and Katsalapov, "drunken" blues and judging in gymnastics

- How satisfied are you with the state in which Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov are approaching the Olympic season?

- 50%, because the partner had a back problem.

This injury has been aggravated for the third year in a row, and it is at the stage of pre-season training.

But then the back can be pumped up, and the problem is eliminated.

- The first performance at the Grand Prix stage is planned for mid-November in Japan ...

- First, we will perform at the September stage of the Russian Cup in Syzran.

In any case, we are planning to go there and have already taken tickets.

It is very important for us to perform at two tournaments before the start of the Grand Prix.

Therefore, Syzran is planned first, followed by the Denis Ten memorial in Alma-Ata.

- An unexpected choice.

- We planned to fly to Bratislava for the Nepela tournament, where we went for many years in a row, but these competitions were canceled.

Why it was canceled, I do not know, and this is rather strange: the Junior Grand Prix stage was recently held in Kosice, and this is the same Slovakia.

Therefore, we do not have to choose, we will go to Kazakhstan.

In this case, almost the entire October is a training month, we will eliminate all those flaws that specialists will point out to us after the first performances.

And only then we will purposefully prepare for performances in Japan and at the Russian stage of the Grand Prix in Sochi.

- Do you feel the responsibility that fell on Sinitsina and Katsalapov, together with the status of world champions?

“We don’t think about it at all.

Our current task is to collect everything in one plate.

I really like both programs that were delivered, although I see that there is still a lot of work to do.

As always, there is not enough time, but I think that we will approach the main starts in optimal condition.

- What is harder - a free program, or a rhythm dance?

“I wouldn't use the word“ hard ”here at all.

Everyone works with pleasure.

- Did you stage both dances for your skaters yourself?

- Together with our permanent choreographer Sergei Petukhov.

Anastasia Shumkova, a hip-hop specialist, was hired to work with rhythm dance.

- Have you tried to somehow move away from the style in which your couple has been skating for many years?

- If this style allowed us to win the world championship, why are we going to move away from it?

Trying new things in the Olympic year is a rather risky thing.

Moreover, all the programs that Vika and Nikita played suit them very much.

In general, I think that the combination of Rachmaninov and Paganini, also played by one person - David Garrett, was a very successful hit in both music and character.

Despite the fact that different musical fragments are intertwined in the program - the slow part of Rachmaninoff's Second Concerto and Paganini's 24th Caprice, it does not look like a salad where everything is simply mixed, but as a very integral piece, absolutely in the style that the guys skate.

- Do you have the ability to keep track of what your opponents are doing?

Or has the pandemic created a certain vacuum in this sense?

- In fact, I am a supporter of not looking at other people's plates, but doing my own thing.

We are completely self-sufficient in this regard: we know what we are missing, where we need to add, remove something.

If we succeed in realizing everything we want, the result will come.

- This season the dancers were offered a rather interesting idea to combine blues and street dance in rhythm dance.

It's complicated?

- A very unexpected idea, actually.

Classic blues has a slow fluidity, it's such a slow story.

But when I talked on this topic with Galina Gordon-Poltorak (chairman of the ISU dance technical committee.

- RT

), she said: if we play the blues like blues, this will be reflected in a minus in the judges' marks.

Because the blues, in the sense that the specialists of the International Skating Union see it, should look like street dance.

From my point of view, blues in the format of street dance is a somewhat foreign body.

- Why not?

The couple are having fun and dancing on the street, and, as they drink, the movements flow into the blues.

- "Drunk" blues is an interesting option, but then you need to somehow beat it.

Simply, in reality, the requirements turned out to be not very realizable for us at first.

Imagine yourself: you are performing a very difficult jump from a ten-meter platform, one hundred percent concentrated on somersaults and screws, and you are asked to do it completely relaxed.

So that it would never occur to anyone that it is difficult.

And I would see how you cope with this task.

- So in this, probably, there is the highest class of a skater - to perform the program so that everyone sees not the blocks of mandatory steps and turns, but lightness and mood.

- Perhaps, but the task is not the easiest one.

Although the way Vika and Nikita are performing the rhythm dance, now I start to really like it.

- This season you did programs not only for your couples, but also for Evgenia Tarasova - for Vladimir Morozov.

Happy with this experience?

- This is not my first work with a sports couple: last year I staged "Malagena" for Alexandra Boykova - Dmitry Kozlovsky, which the guys eventually postponed for the Olympic season.

- Yes, but these athletes, like their coach, did not think to change the music for the production you made?

But when Zhenya and Vladimir did this, an analogy immediately arose with Lisa Tuktamysheva, who two years ago specially went to She-Lynn Bourne to stage a short program, but when she returned, she decided to put it on a different musical accompaniment.

- When Eteri Tutberidze invited me to stage a short program for Tarasova and Morozova, she immediately said that the guys really liked Debussy's Moonlight and asked me how I felt about it. We decided to give it a try. I really liked how we all worked, how we contacted with Eteri, and with Maxim Trankov, and with the athletes, I liked the result. It's just that later, when the free program was staged, it became clear that both turned out in a very similar way. Hence, in fact, the decision arose to make the short program more powerful by changing the music.

I'm not even sure that the same technical outline remains.

But I know that in figure skating there are often cases when the same production, set to different music, starts to play with completely different colors.

Therefore, I do not see any crime in this replacement.

The final program decision should always be made by the coach who works with the athletes every day.

Because it is important for the coach that his athletes show the maximum possible result at the main start.

- Is the Grand Prix series losing its significance in the Olympic season or, on the contrary, gaining additional importance for dancers?

- Doesn't lose exactly.

In my opinion, in order to perform as confidently as possible at the main starts, skaters need to go through four or five competitions.

- Which of the stages with the participation of Sinitsina and Katsalapov seems to you more intense in terms of rivalry?

- To be honest, I didn’t even look who will perform at these stages.

I do not attach any importance to this.

I only know that

my guys do not intersect

with Gabriela Papadakis and Guillaume Sizeron (four-time world champions and five-time European champions.

- RT

).

Since we are world champions, we need to skate without looking back at someone.

- Are you that confident in your couple?

- Definitely sure.

We must not forget, moreover, that even not very successful performances can be of great benefit.

- How was last year's Grand Prix final?

- Exactly.

If you recall that performance, it really turned out not the best for us: somewhere the rotation was underexposed, somewhere it swayed ... And we immediately flew to sixth place.

But at the same time they did not blame the judges, but sat down after the competition and watched the video very carefully.

We came to the conclusion that they punished us absolutely on the case.

And they were very tightly engaged in correcting all the shortcomings.

So tight that they won the world championship.

- In your opinion, judges tend to close their eyes to some flaws when it comes to the strongest couple in the world, or, on the contrary, find fault with leaders more than others?

- It very much depends on the technical panel.

You can discuss this topic for a long time, or you can just remember the results in rhythmic gymnastics at the Olympic Games in Tokyo.

- Do you think that Russian gymnasts were condemned at the Games?

- There was a very strong moment when a journalist asks the Averin sisters right after the speech: they say, it is clear that the Israeli woman dropped the tape, but how did it happen that she surpassed you so much in the total number of programs?

And our girls answer that they could not make their combinations more difficult, because Dina's back hurts, and Arina has something else.

It is clear that I do not quote their words word for word, but the meaning was just that.

And immediately you start to think: maybe there was no anti-Russian conspiracy?

- But the man in the street is sure that there was a conspiracy.

- The layman, as a rule, is not able to understand what the assessment is made of.

Actually, this is the case in figure skating: if you do not thoroughly master the topic, it is absolutely impossible to figure out why someone gets the first level of difficulty for the sequence of steps, and someone the fourth.

Or why the one who fell wins.

Although he fell from one of the quadruple jumps, while the others neatly jumped triple.

But if we are talking about Vika and Nikita, I can say that both the judges and the audience treat them very positively: the couple is beautiful, emotional, charismatic.

They just need to skate well.