“I don’t treat Teresa as an unattainable idol”: skier Stupak about competition with Johaug, Vyalbe's weaknesses and motherhood

- What is Ramsau for you - a place where you feel comfortable, or a place where it's hard?

- It depends a lot on the weather. Every day we ride a glacier, it can be very windy, very cold, and if ice-covered snow and rain are added to this, training is given very hard, solely on the moral and strong-willed. We ride for a long time ... Sometimes there is such a strong fog that you stretch out your hand and don't see it. But if there is a sun on the glacier and a perfectly cut ski track, you don’t notice the time at all. You can ride for two hours with pleasure, or three. In general, the weather here has changed a lot over the past few years. I remember how we came to Ramsau as juniors, here in May it was 20-25 degrees Celsius. And this year, at this time, the snow did not even completely melt. And now it’s not too lucky in terms of the weather. I hope that the next camp in Val Senales will be better.

- Almost all training camps for this season are planned at your best.

What is your relationship with her?

- Who knows?

Height is such a thing when a lot depends on your own state, how ready you are.

- On the eve of our conversation, I asked your coach Markus Kramer about the reasons for the not entirely explainable decline at the World Championships in Oberstdorf.

He outlined his version, but advised to ask the same question to you.

- Marcus and I are not that agree on the same point of view, he just showed me a graph of my heart rate at the training camp where I had to force the preparation.

- After you got sick?

- Yes, right after the Tour de Ski.

Then I stopped understanding everything at all: my health, my body, in which direction we are moving.

You know, this is a state when the head is ready to train, wants to show great results, knows what is needed for this, and the body resists it and, as it were, says: "Sorry, not today."

A breath of fresh air in that state was provided only by a job well done.

But I could not reach the optimal level for myself.

- According to Kramer, it was a mistake to start three times at the World Cup in Falun.

- Perhaps.

It's just that then we did not even have a speech about missing some starts.

Yes, I came after an illness, but Markus and I were sure that I needed these races in order to quickly feel competitive conditions.

Only after a while they realized that this was not necessary to do.

Plus it was cold in Falun, there was quite slow snow.

All these seem to be nuances, but they affect the result, the physical condition.

It's a shame, of course, that in Oberstdorf I didn't manage to show my maximum, to run the way I did before the World Cup and immediately after, but, to be honest, I don't worry about this anymore.

I drew conclusions.

- Could you compare your inner state before the birth of a child and after?

What changed?

- We recently talked about this with friends who also recently became mothers, and I said: it seems that we are outwardly the same, but in fact, completely different people. Having a baby, of course, changes everything. Physically, I have become more resilient. Pregnancy is generally a story about endurance. It is difficult physically, difficult mentally. Before my son was born, I watched the races and just gnawed my fingers with impatience: I really wanted to somehow adjust the time so that I could return to the team as soon as possible and start training. I thought about how cool the atmosphere is, how everyone is trying.

But when Arseny was born, there was no sport in my head at all.

There was only the thought that I can’t do anything, I don’t know anything, that I’m probably a bad mother ... Probably all women go through this state in one way or another.

At least all my friends had such thoughts.

Therefore, I forced myself to drop all thoughts and concentrate on the child.

- Succeeded?

- For a while, yes.

I fully managed to feel that it is not so easy, it turns out, not to sleep at night, to step on my throat in so many moments.

Even now, when I am far from my family, sometimes I put my child's interests above my own, I very much feel my responsibility to him.

I try to be close to him at a distance, to communicate a lot.

I still can't do a lot, I am constantly learning something.

Perhaps, in someone's opinion it is generally wrong that I am constantly on the move, but in this regard, only the opinion of my family is important to me.

I am the best for them, and it feeds me a lot.

- When you resumed training a year and a half ago, were you not afraid that you might not have time to recover properly?

What will you have to miss the entire pre-Olympic season?

- I told Marcus right away that I would be back.

- Nevertheless, the coach was shocked by your eagerness when you called him two weeks after giving birth.

- Well, yes, I remember that.

I then called and asked to write me a training plan so that I could start preparing for the Russian Championship.

He tried to somehow convince me that you need to start rolling in very calmly, but my eyes are burning, the desire to train is just bursting ... But in the end, we did not force the process.

Marcus watched this very closely and periodically slowed me down.

- If you remember the most successful races for you last season, any of them stand apart?

- This is the pursuit race in Toblach, which took place on Arseny's birthday.

He was one year old, and I woke up in the morning with the feeling that something good was bound to happen today.

- That is, you could not have won that day?

- It turns out that way.

I also remember the second race I won in the Engadine.

Everything turned out very easily there.

Apparently, I was simply "released" after the World Cup: as if the second wind had opened.

Although this state did not last as long as I would like: at the Russian Championship there was no longer such a cool state.

- Are you comfortable training in Kramer's group after Federico Pellegrino and Francesco di Fabiani joined it?

- Yes.

Italians are great guys.

It seems to me that for Marcus this is a certain breath of fresh air.

When you work with the same athletes from year to year, you get tired of it, your eyes get blurry.

- Are you repeating the words of the coach now or do you think so yourself?

- This is exclusively my point of view.

I can see that it can be hard for Kramer to spend so much time away from his family, in a foreign country.

He, like all of us, needs a break, some fresh emotions.

In this regard, there are three new people in the group, and apart from Italians, this is Teresa Stadlober, which is a very good experiment for our entire team.

- I would probably be less surprised to hear notes of jealousy in your voice.

Athletes of your level are usually selfish and require maximum coaching attention.

- In this regard, we are all right: Marcus's attention is more than enough for everyone.

As for selfishness, I, for example, do not care who trains how, what volumes they perform: I am focused only on what I do myself, and I do not like it when they interfere with me.

At the same time, I like it when the people around me are doing well, when everyone in the team is comfortable.

This is exactly how it is with us.

- At what point in your life did you start filming a movie in her?

- In March last year, when Arseny was two months old.

I knew in advance

that I would be dubbing the main character (the film about Elena Vyalba "White Snow" -

): Elena Valerievna told me right away that she simply did not see anyone else in this capacity.

Accordingly, I came home and asked my husband: "Are we going?"

Let's go.

And we went to Kirovsk, where the shooting was going on.

- In the process of this work, did you manage to learn something about Vyalba that you did not suspect before?

- Yes.

There were many such moments.

Many, I think, did not even suspect before the release of the film that Elena Valerievna might have some kind of weakness.

That she can cry from resentment, from despair.

Although even in our competitions it is clear that Vyalbe always reacts very emotionally, especially to victories.

As a leader, Elena Valerievna is a very strong and strict person, but next to her you always feel very protected and you know that all decisions will be fair.

Few leaders are able to stand up for their athletes to this extent.

- Is it possible to come to Vyalba to cry in a purely feminine way?

- Of course!

- Or is Marcus more suitable for this?

- For this, first of all, I have a husband who always knows how to calm me down in a given situation.

In general, I am the kind of person who is not "driven", does not wind himself up on trifles.

But even when something happens and I try to unstuck, Nikita usually says: “What are you?

We are fine!".

And I understand that we are really doing well.

- Teresa Johaug has been one of your main competitors for many years now.

You probably ask yourself the question: how can you beat her?

And is it as unattainable as it is commonly believed?

- I don’t think it’s so. I beat Teresa - in Falun. It may have happened only once, but it was great. Maybe I managed to beat Johaug just because I don't treat her like some kind of unattainable idol. I don't really like to hear that each of us wants to beat Teresa, beat Teresa, beat Teresa. Yes, it's cool, but too narrow in my understanding. When you become so obsessed with one single opponent, it is very limiting. Not to mention that the very idea of ​​becoming better than someone, as it were, initially implies that you are worse. And this, in my understanding, is wrong from all points of view. Therefore, I do not set myself the task of getting ahead of Johaug specifically. For me, she's just one of the rivals, and you can beat her in the same way as the others. I like to think that way.

- Games in Beijing will be the second for you.

Before Pyeongchang, when you didn't know what the Olympics were at all, was it easier?

- Definitely.

It is always easier to perform when no one is counting on you and expecting nothing.

Although I myself already knew perfectly well in which race I wanted to start and for which place to fight.

You can say that she pre-programmed herself for that bronze.

- If the plan of your own performances at the Games in Beijing depended only on you, what distances would you choose?

- Just recently we discussed this with Markus and came to the conclusion that we want to start in almost all forms.

This is actually normal.

When a person starts at each distance, it means that he feels good, is in good shape, recovers quickly and is confident.

If the athlete misses any of the distances, it means that he is not too ready or knows some kind of weakness behind him.

In principle, I already know what I want, I know how and at what distance the relief will be, it's just too early to talk about it now.

- In other words, the process of Olympic programming in your head has not yet started?

- For now, I am tuning myself first of all to enjoy the season.

From the Olympic Games as well.

- By the way, how to interpret your phrase about the Olympic tracks?

Is information about their relief publicly available?

- No, but I have this information.

I would not be me if I could not find out everything that interests me.

- But how?

- I will not say.

Let this remain my secret.