“I don’t want to be selected for the Games at any cost”: Garanichev on his career, working with Bashkirov and Loginov's advice

- Last season, which the athletes had to start in conditions of the most severe quarantine, many call the most difficult of all.

How did you survive it?

- It turned out to be difficult, first of all, in terms of training organization.

For example, in Tyumen we couldn't go to the stadium.

And I went to study with a friend Sergei Mishkin in Yekaterinburg.

He plays for veterans, so he runs too.

I lived with him, and trained at Dynamo: there is good territory, an imitation circle, there is a roller skate, and most importantly, the base was not officially closed.

I would, of course, prefer that the terrain of the tracks was more difficult, but in any case it was much better than sitting at home and running on the plain.

Or rollerblading on the roads.

- In Russia, it is generally scary to train on the roads, whether you are a skier or a cyclist.

- It's true.

Although I live in the suburbs, it is still dangerous: many people drive hard.

Then we officially opened Zhemchuzhina for training, but some restrictions remained.

It was impossible, for example, to take weapons on the road.

But I think this is also a plus: the athlete himself begins to think about his problems, about how to achieve the desired result, shows character.

And responsibility is felt to a greater extent.

- In recent years, you have not been able to show the result that would satisfy a person with your ambitions.

In this state, the athlete usually asks himself the question: why am I continuing to do this?

- I also asked him repeatedly, even talked with my wife on this topic.

It’s hard for her when I’m not at home: two children, one six years old, the other four.

Both go to kindergarten, there are some illnesses, domestic problems.

But my wife told me to get all these thoughts out of my head.

She is not going to persuade me to finish biathlon, because she sees how passionate I am about it.

- Can we say that you are lucky?

- The family really supports and motivates me very much.

Although I want to spend more time with children, see how they grow, take them to some sections.

Now we are not going anywhere with them especially because of the coronavirus.

- Have you been ill yourself?

- No.

But I did the vaccination as soon as it became possible.

Not that he was afraid of getting infected, but we are, in a sense, state people.

Sport imposes certain obligations: a lot of trips and contacts.

Therefore, I did not even think that there could be any consequences, as they write about it.

- And they were?

- After the first vaccination - no.

But after the second one it covered sharply.

In the evening I went to wash, and it was then that I began to break - muscles, joints, bones.

And so throughout the night.

Didn't sleep at all, didn't know where to go.

I didn't even go to Moscow for examination, although I was going to - it was carried out just at that time.

But then the condition returned to normal.

- This season you ended up in the group of Sergei Bashkirov of your own free will, or did the coaching staff order it?

- We talked about this with the coaches: they say, we will get together at the end of the season, we will discuss everything.

But no continuation followed.

I was simply told that I would be studying in Bashkirov's group.

I also thought: "Why not?"

Sergei himself ran on skis, he also has coaching experience, including international: he worked in South Korea, then was the mentor of the St. Petersburg team.

Now I can say that Bashkirov is a very thinking specialist who, which is important, he skates along with the athletes, performs similar tasks.

Pavel Maksimov is the same in our brigade.

Can run with us, do strength training, stabilization.

Something to suggest on technique and shooting.

Actually, for us this is an incentive not to cheat once again.

- Is it important for you to have such close contact with the coaches?

- Yes. In my understanding, a team is when a combination of a coach and an athlete is a single whole. You can discuss anything, talk on any topic and be sure that everything said will not go to the side. I look at skiers quite often and see how their team has developed just such a relationship over the years. Moreover, I understand where this is coming from, since I myself went through ski school. I even worked with Oleg Perevozchikov. We, I remember, worked according to our assignments, but at the same time we constantly cooked in the same porridge with adults, who periodically showed us something, prompted, gave certain advice. When there is such interaction in a team, including with a coach, it never even occurs to you to shift your failures onto a mentor. Or to him - to you. Everyone understands: if something didn't work out,this is a common problem.

- All the same, you probably feel that Bashkirov does not yet have rich coaching experience?

- It is felt. And we are developing together. See for yourself: the same Alexander Loginov is a person who is able to write a training plan on his own, and to practice alone for a long time. But he nevertheless chose the team this season too. Because he understands: there you teach someone yourself, and learn from someone, it doesn't matter if the person is older or younger than you. For example, we have Denis Tashtimerov with very fast and accurate shooting, so he motivates everyone by the fact that he is able to work out a stance to zero in 15 seconds, or even in 13. He gets the first shot already in the seventh second. We have been living in the same room since the first training camp, and I can see how strongly Denis strives to improve. It absorbs everything, tries to learn something from more experienced athletes, including me and Loginov.

- What can a biathlete like Garanichev learn from an athlete like Loginov?

- First of all, hard work.

It is clear that Sasha is a great talent, he also performed well in junior skiing.

But he has been constantly progressing so far and continues to do so.

There are no serious freezes.

If problems do occur, he will not show dissatisfaction or shift responsibility to someone else.

If he can help and suggest, he always does it, does not keep it to himself.

- Do you think now that the Russian national team can go to the Olympic Games in a truncated composition, if at the time of the end of the World Cup in Ruhpolding the team does not enter the top three of the Nations Cup?

Then, in addition to the relay four, there will be room for only one athlete.

- If such a question had not been asked, I would not even have remembered about it.

Yes, I understand that there is a quota, that it still needs to be conquered and bypass Germany.

But there is no point in bothering with this now.

Our business is to train, to fulfill the plan, to make progress in shooting and speed.

If this will not happen - what can we talk about at all about the Olympics?

As for the Games, I am not an athlete who dreams of getting there at any cost.

If a person is not ready to fight for a medal, what is the point of sitting in a competition and taking someone else's place?

I left the World Championship in Pokljuka ahead of schedule, realizing that there was no point in staying there.

I was preparing for one race, as a result I ran another.

- But it is believed that the individual is your strong point.

Or do you disagree with this?

- I do not think so.

It's just that I have enough for 20 km, and shooting allows me to cope.

But I like contact races more.

- And the sprint?

- Everyone wants to run him, because he gives perspective.

I ran well - and immediately there are chances in the pursuit, and two disciplines make it possible to qualify for the mass start.

- The contact race, in my opinion, is much more difficult to build due to the fact that every second a situation can occur in which you need to think quickly, rebuild tactics, and adapt.

- On the contrary, it seems to me that it is easier to build it tactically.

First, you immediately understand the state of your opponents.

You see their technique, notice who is breathing and shooting.

And it becomes easier to decide where you yourself can win something.

In skiing, by the way, everything is the same: in contact disciplines, you read the athlete, although he also reads you in the same way.

- And in an individual biathlete is one hundred percent focused only on his actions?

- Mostly yes.

"Twenty" is easier than other distances: the main thing there is to immediately spread the forces into exactly five circles and work out as accurately as possible in the rifle unit.

This is not a sprint where you can drive a penalty loop in 20 seconds.

A minute of the penalty is not so easy to recoup.

But you can't get hung up on shooting, there were a lot of examples when people missed only for this reason.

In a word, there are tactics everywhere, even in the sprint, although it is believed that you just need to run and shoot as fast as possible.

In the same relay, you constantly play tactically.

If you quickly worked at the turn and you understand that the margin is more than ten seconds, you have to break, try to increase the gap.

And when you are walking with someone together, it is pointless to come off alone: ​​the opponent will not let you go anyway, and passing the baton with a minimum gap is also not good, since the second will try to catch up with the first, overtake him, and in this fuse, there is a risk of spending more strength than you can afford.

- The relay, in my opinion, is just the race where you are not afraid to die at the finish line.

- So you still have to get to him.

You can “eat enough” on the first lap so that there is simply not enough strength for the second and especially the third one.

2.5 km in this regard is a long enough segment for the muscles to completely acidify.

- What is the toughest race in this regard happened in your career?

- In Antholz, when I ran an individual there for the first time.

The state of health was good, but it was covered very hard.

Difficult terrain and rather high altitude also affected.

- What is this state when you are covered?

- Muscles turn sour very quickly. It's like walking up a staircase without preparing a dozen or two flights in a multi-storey building. At some point, you just want to stop, because you feel that you cannot raise your leg to the next step. At a distance, this is felt even more strongly: you are constantly in motion, and as the muscles fill with lactic acid, you lose the ability to move your legs and you can not do anything about it. Even from the descent it is impossible to rest, it is good to sit down so that the muscles relax. Instead of relaxation, severe aching pain rolls in. It can cover because of the height, if you start the race too quickly. Perhaps at this moment something happens to the blood circulation: the temperature rises, everything around is spinning, you do not understand anything, you feel sick. Although sometimes it turns out in training.

- Why didn't you start this year in Tyumen at the Russian Championship?

- I caught a cold.

I talked with my personal trainer Maxim Kugaevsky, with Bashkirov, and we decided to skip the individual race, and then decide on the rest of the distances.

But my condition did not improve, and I went home.

I decided that if I didn’t manage to recover by the gathering in Ramsau, then all further preparation would come under attack.

If you come to the mountains sick, you will not recover, you will only aggravate the situation.

- From Ramsau, as far as I know, you are returning to Tyumen again.

Do you live at home when the team is training there?

- No, only at the training camp.

In this regard, I am used to clearly distinguishing between personal affairs and work.

I come home only on the day of rest.

On the same day in the evening I return to the "Zhemchuzhina", there I spend the night and in the morning I get up with everyone for training.

Collection is collection.

And the work must be carried out within a certain framework, regardless of where it is carried out.

- Did you decide so yourself or do you obey the requirements of the coaches?

- These are elementary things, it seems to me.

- Do you have a house or an apartment in Tyumen?

- Own house.

- Lucky.

I know a lot of couples who broke up only for the reason that they could not be in four walls alone for a long time during a pandemic.

- We also sat out a two-week quarantine after the World Cup.

But you're right, the house is much easier in this respect.

Own territory, you can go outside, do something in the garden, do sports.

Even then, when the official quarantine ended, police cars were on duty around the apartment buildings around the clock, making sure that the people observed the isolation regime.

The police also drove on the roads, but I found the opportunity to run cross-country races.

- Inside the site?

- Outside.

I ran into the forest, did not meddle in the city at all.

Once, however, I almost got caught.

I run along the road and hear - the car is driving behind.

Turned around - the police.

I thought they would stop now, I would have to figure it out.

And they drove by quietly and said nothing.

So I ran on.