- The senior coach of the Russian men's national team, Yuri Kaminsky, refused this season from the training camp in Ramsau. What attracts you to this place?
- Ramsau is, first of all, the possibility of training at altitude.
We have already climbed the glacier several times, however, for the first time in my memory there is so little snow there.
More precisely, such a small track.
Plus the snow is very dirty.
- Does it greatly affect the quality of training?
- Dirty snow can worsen ski glide to some extent, but working on a glacier places less demand on speed - for us now the priority is altitude.
We do not solve technical problems in terms of skiing here.
- Do skiing skills go a long way over the summer?
- I would say that they do not leave, but simply transform a little.
This is not to say that roller skates repeat one hundred percent of the ski movements, but they quite allow you to work on the technique in order to switch to the snow with minimal losses in running quality.
- How sudden was Alexander Loginov's desire to work in your group before the start of the Olympic season?
- It was really unexpected.
Before we started working together, I periodically congratulated Sasha on certain successful performances, on some issues I sometimes wrote off his personal trainer Alexander Kasperovich, but the idea of working together only arose during a personal meeting in April at the Russian Championship in Khanty -Mansiysk.
- You yourself, if I'm not mistaken, trained with Kasperovich?
- No.
But he worked a lot under his supervision when he became a coach.
Alexander Vladimirovich invited me in 2011 to the junior team, which he then headed.
There we got close enough and got to know each other, although I knew him in absentia for a long time - we crossed paths at the IBU Cup stages in 2004.
- Kasperovich, when he was the coach of the Russian national team, was often reproached for the fact that he looked at the training process in a rather peculiar way. I heard that it is quite difficult to work with this specialist in one bundle. You, it turns out, are close to his coaching views?
- People who have high ambitions are always, as a rule, difficult.
And Alexander Vladimirovich always set maximum goals for himself and his athletes.
He is an excellent organizer, and one of his main theses has always been that we lose to foreign athletes, first of all, in organizing the entire training process as a whole.
When everything is clearly structured and understandable, it becomes much easier for athletes to train and prepare for the starts.
As for the methodology, personally for me it has never caused controversy.
But in total we have worked together with Kasperovich for over ten years.
- Is Loginov's training plan still signed by a personal trainer?
- In this regard, Sasha understands very well how to work.
He has a very large training experience, went through the hands of many specialists.
This is his first coach Ekaterina Khaliullina, and Kasperovich, and Nikolai Lopukhov, and Andrei Padin, and Anatoly Khovantsev.
So Loginov has enough of his own knowledge regarding certain preparation processes.
Even if something did not work out in organizational terms last season.
- What exactly did not work out, in your opinion?
- Due to the pandemic, as far as I know, Sasha was unable to fulfill the amount of workload that was originally planned.
This season, we immediately discussed all the work, decided on where we want to move, Kasperovich is constantly in contact with us, knows how the process is going, sometimes expresses some wishes.
- Is your current work with the team your first experience of independent training?
- In 2014, I was the head coach of the Russian youth team, where Anton Babikov, Timofey Lapshin, Alexander Pechenkin were running at that time ... Maxim Tsvetkov then, I remember, did not qualify for team A, and we played at the European Championship in Nove Mesto na Morave.
Babikov then entered the prizes for the first time - he became the third in the pursuit, and Max finished second in the sprint, won the pursuit, and became the third in the individual race.
After the Games in Pyeongchang, he worked for a year under a contract in the Korean national team with our athletes.
- Are you comfortable working in the national team now?
- Yes.
A young and fairly close-knit coaching team has formed in our team, with Pavel Maksimov we began to work together under Kasperovich in the junior national team, and for the last two years we worked for him in St. Petersburg.
Analyst Dmitry Shukalovich actively cooperates with us, who has extensive experience working with biathletes - he participated in preparing the team for the Olympic Games in Sochi.
The main thing is that we all have very good relations with the athletes.
- Is your word in the team a law, or does the coach have to adjust in one way or another for individuals of such a scale as Loginov, Tsvetkov, Evgeny Garanichev and Matvey Eliseev?
- There is no dictatorship in our team for sure.
When we started working, we immediately discussed a number of things: what athletes see their weaknesses, what they want to achieve, what they expect from the coaching staff.
Therefore, in the future, no friction and even more conflict situations arose.
I can't make a single claim to the guys in this regard.
In fact, even Ricco Gross, when he worked in the Russian men's team, noted that Russian athletes should beat the whole world by how selflessly they train.
- Why then can't you beat?
- I think that there is a lack of some kind of inner attitude.
Psychological comfort, if you like.
So that the guys can concentrate one hundred percent on the performances and show the maximum for which they are really ready.
- What, in your opinion, has been preventing Evgeny Garanichev from showing results for so many years?
- Eugene's strong point is shooting.
Actually, the Vancouver Olympic bronze in the individual race testifies to the fact that a person knows how to shoot and is able to pass all four lines very efficiently.
I think that in this form Zhenya may well be successful now.
He is able to shoot not only accurately, but also quickly.
In more stressful races, it is somewhat more difficult for him simply by virtue of his character: there are athletes who like it when everything is measured.
In this regard, the individual race is ideal for Garanichev.
As for dedication in training, dedication and performance, he is an example for many athletes.
Just a reference.
- If we talk about the team leader, is it Loginov?
- After all, a leader is primarily determined by a sports result.
In this regard, Sasha, of course, is out of competition in our group.
In terms of age and experience, we have gathered adult guys in general: Sasha Povarnitsyn is 27, Semyon Suchilov and Matvey Eliseev have already turned 28.
- Coaches usually don't like such independent athletes as Eliseev. Does he still prefer to work with a personal skiing specialist over the national team coaches?
- Be that as it may, each of our athletes has a personal trainer, and these people, in one way or another, always influence the athlete, even when he is in the disposition of the national team.
I talked with Matvey, and with the people who work with him, and our common goal now is to properly build the training process, to make it as effective as possible.
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- Is it generally important for you that athletes feel comfortable with you? Or is comfort in the national team a relative term?
- I would not talk about comfort here, but about the fact that it is interesting for any coach to work primarily with those who are maximally motivated and want to achieve a very high result.
Sometimes it may not be very comfortable.
- Are there people who have to be forced?
- Rather, you have to find arguments when proposing this or that task.
The guys are all adults.
The youngest Denis Tashtimerov, but he is already 22 years old.
- How many people from your group can really claim for a place in the Olympic team?
- It's hard to say now.
Only Loginov can be named with the highest probability.
He now feels confident enough in terms of shooting, he is well prepared both functionally and physically, it remains, as they say, so that a stone does not fall on his head from the sky.
As for Garanichev, I have already said: if it is possible to solve a number of technical problems, it may well be competitive.
And have a good chance.
It's just that while the selection for the Olympic team is a rather distant story.
- Eliseev?
- Its undoubted advantage is fast shooting.
In terms of shooting, Matvey reminds me of Alexei Volkov, who shot very quickly and, due to the average move, kept the chances of a fairly high result.
- Are there any control competitions at the training camp in Ramsau?
- We will start running control starts in Tyumen.
- Is there already snow?
- I think it will be there by the time of our arrival.
The Tyumen stadium has all the necessary equipment, there is a snow depot, which allows you to quickly prepare the track at the right time.
- From year to year, fans reproach Russian biathletes for not shooting or running. Why, with a few exceptions, can we not reach the speeds at which the fight for medals is being waged?
- Such problems cannot be solved in one year.
And they don't dare for two.
In general, older athletes are more difficult in this respect.
Sometimes there are naturally very fast athletes, like Maxim Chudov once was, now - Daniil Serokhvostov, but we do not run as fast as the same Norwegians.
- So I'm trying to understand: is it a question of selection or the quality of coaching?
- I will not utter the hackneyed phrase that Norway is a skiing country, but the fact that the bulk of the professional methodological literature comes from Norway and Sweden speaks for itself.
We are clearly not at the forefront of this issue.
- I have heard more than once that all skiing techniques are, in one way or another, based on the same principles.
- I partially agree.
The same Norwegians, before developing their own training system, learned many things that we have practiced.
- What are they doing that we are not doing?
- I can only guess.
- Guess.
- Well, for example, many of the exercises that we are now starting to use in the national team for core stabilization and coordination have been used in Norway for many years, starting from childhood.
- In other words, at the start of serious work, their bodies are much better prepared for stress than the bodies of our athletes?
- You can say so.
- What result of your team will you consider successful this season?
- Everyone understands that success is getting to the Olympics and a successful performance.
The maximum number of athletes that we can take to Beijing is six people, but this is only if by the end of the World Cup stage in Ruhpolding (January 10-16, 2022
- RT
) the Russian national team will be in the top three of the overall Cup standings nations.
If we do not get into the top 3, five will go to the Games.