- You have performed at the Grand Prix stages in Canada twice in your career, but you have never opened the series in the USA. Do you have any anticipation in this regard?
Alexandra Boykova:
We are really looking forward to the start of the competition. We missed you. Thanks to those Canadian stages that you mentioned, we are already to some extent accustomed to the fact that at the beginning of the season we have to fly far and long to the competition, respectively, we roughly know the health problems that we have to face in such cases. ... But the most important thing is that these competitions will take place. Therefore, I want to quickly be in Las Vegas, go out on the ice.
Dmitry Kozlovsky: The
North American audience is generally very friendly to us.
In any case, tremendous emotions remained from the trips to Canada.
We would love to go there again as tourists.
If we talk about the current trip to Nevada, we all watched American films, we know a lot about this state - in this regard, American culture has not passed us by.
It is clear that the competition is in the foreground now, and for the audience it is primarily a show, and I think the American public will appreciate it.
In Las Vegas, it seems to me, they understand a lot about the show and should receive the skaters very, very well.
- All previous competitions in Las Vegas were held without an audience.
Boykova:
They sent us an information release, in which it was mentioned that tickets for the tournament are on sale, which means there will be an audience.
Kozlovsky:
Judge for yourself: all the NBA games are now being held in front of spectators, at the September US Open Tennis Championships, 100% of the stands were generally recorded, so figure skating in the United States is unlikely to be offended.
- This is not the first time that I have paid attention to the fact that Dmitry is very closely following what is happening in world sports. Do you watch the same skating competition where your pair is not competing?
Kozlovsky:
I watch all these events exclusively within the framework of what interests me.
I simply don’t have the opportunity to sit in front of the TV or computer for days and watch everything.
I treat figure skating purely professionally: I note some ideas, discoveries - in a word, everything that we can use in our training.
- Can you give any specific examples?
Kozlovsky:
Yes, of course.
First of all, these are couples and dances.
I watched with great interest the performance of Gabriela Papadakis and Guillaume Sizeron at the tournament in Finland.
They always have interesting transitions between elements, interesting supports, choreography, interaction in pairs.
Before that, Sasha and I also followed the performances of Vanessa James and Morgan Sipre, when they skated together for France.
In my understanding, this pair showed very progressive skating, saturated not only with elements, but with many small "chips": original entrances to elements, exits from them.
Boykova:
I would say that all the programs of Vanessa and Morgan were very “tasty”.
Filled but not overwhelmed.
After all, there are often programs that are perceived not as skating, but as acrobatics.
Kozlovsky:
Sasha is right: there should always be a balance in any program.
James and Sipre kept this balance.
They even entered acrobatic ligaments into their performances so that the general outline of the program was not violated, the presentation did not suffer.
- And what about the pair James - Eric Radford?
Kozlovsky:
It is very difficult to talk about this now.
Eric is an Olympic champion, a bronze medalist in an individual tournament.
He and Megan Duhamel won the world championships twice, that is, he has much more awards and titles than Vanessa.
Although the partners' experience of international performances is colossal.
But it’s interesting to watch how the athletes develop during the season, and Vanessa and Eric have still held only two tournaments together: one in Canada and one in Finland.
- This season you have two programs staged by dancers - Nikolai Morozov and Alexander Zhulin. Which of these productions is more difficult from a dance point of view?
Kozlovsky: The
short program is more complete with elements.
There are seven of them, but that's not even the point, but the fact that the short program should always shine as much as possible, be not just cleaned by the skater, but licked.
After all, it is no coincidence that they say here: in the short program you can not so much win as lose.
It is like a business card, an indicator of the skill of athletes, skating skills.
The same track, which, by the way, is not in the free program, in figure skating is nothing more than a demonstration of professionalism.
Actually, the whole short program is primarily about this: in 2.5 minutes you must not only do everything you have to do as well as possible and show high-quality skating, but also convey the image.
Therefore, the short program is always more difficult.
- Sasha, do you like being a swan in this program?
Boykova:
I like it very much.
But it was difficult.
This primarily concerned hand choreography, which each of the specialists explained to me in different ways.
I looked at different ballerinas, listened to everything they told me, but this only added to my inner panic: what to do with all this?
Now, it seems to me, we have found some middle ground, but it is still difficult: the shoulder blades are very heavily loaded from ballet movements, this is constantly monitored, but I felt the effect as soon as I started to move correctly.
It seems to me that absolutely all athletes who have ever skated Swan Lake had the greatest difficulties with hand choreography.
- You were announced for the Panin-Kolomenkin tournament in St. Petersburg, but at the last moment you refused this start. Why?
Kozlovsky:
We have been declared for this tournament long ago, but in the course of preparation, certain adjustments are always made.
This time, the exact dates of the competitions and their schedule were not known for a long time, but when this information nevertheless appeared, we realized that this start, for a number of reasons, did not fit into the preparation schedule too much.
- Has anything changed from a technical point of view in your programs since the opening of preseason rentals?
Boykova:
This can be seen in Las Vegas.
We really changed some points, some of them may seem insignificant to someone, but they really affect the quality of skiing, the quality of the elements.
Kozlovsky:
Programs tend to roll over during the season.
I can recall our own experience two years ago, when we rolled our James Bond.
The first reviews were just awful: a strange program, about nothing, images are not conveyed at all, and the skating is so-so ... But a month later, when we showed the program on Skate Canada, the reviews were extremely enthusiastic.
What is the reason for this?
I think that just with the fact that the program rolls in, athletes begin to feel it completely differently.
Sometimes it takes more time, sometimes less, but the fact that the perception of the same production changes during the season is a fact.
- From all that has been said, I conclude that only the little things are being finalized, and the main technical elements have remained the same.
Kozlovsky:
We have two working versions of an arbitrary program: a more standard and more complex one.
The development of the program in terms of complexity is mainly due to jumps, so the standard version is a parallel triple salchow and a cascade of three sheepskin coats.
And the second option, on which we have been working intensively with jumping specialists from the very beginning of the season, is a cascade of salchow-oiler-salchow, and a solo jump is a sheepskin coat.
We really hope that in the course of the season the new jumping combination will roll in and become completely "ours".
- Have you already got your suits for the Olympic season?
Boykova:
Just before the flight, there was the last fitting, so we fly to Las Vegas fully armed.