“At the beginning of the season, I considered this goal unrealistic”: Shpilband on the successes of Davis and Smolkin and their chances to go to the Olympics

- When Davis and Smolkin started skating with you in 2019, many regarded it as a kind of coincidence: the children of famous parents are in America, there is someone to pay for them, and as for the result, it is clear that dancing is a long history.

I don't think that at least one person in the world, including you, admitted that Diana and Gleb would make such rapid progress in two years, breaking into the elite of adult skating in their first adult season.

At what point in the collaboration did you see this potential?

- The story was that Davis and Smolkin told Eteri themselves that they wanted to train in my group.

That is, it was the children's decision.

When they arrived, I saw just young talented guys, do you understand?

In such a situation, it is impossible to predict what will grow out of them in the future.

- I understand you perfectly.

- Therefore, naturally, I could not predict how quickly the guys would start to progress, how quickly they would absorb information. You are absolutely right when you say that nothing is done in dancing in one year. Therefore, our work was initially carried out with an eye to a serious future. We studied the basics of skating a lot, at the same time I tried to convey to the athletes the philosophy of ice dancing, explained where this or that movement originated, how to achieve ease of execution. Of course, all this takes time. But I was pleased to note that children are not only beginning to understand me, but are beginning to actively use it. They absorb every word like sponges. And in this case, the coach gets great pleasure from the work.

- When athletes come to a group where there are already world-class leaders, it becomes easier for them to work, because there is always a great example in front of their eyes to follow.

Who do Davis and Smolkin look up to when riding with you?

- A smart athlete always looks very carefully at everyone around him and learns from everyone too.

Now I have a lot of talented skaters in the group, and it seems to me that Diana and Gleb look not only at them.

They constantly monitor everything that happens in the dance in general: who did what, who did how.

They live on ice dancing, they constantly study, they are completely devoted to the work process, and as a coach, it catches my eye.

Has the pandemic disrupted your training plans in any way?

- Well, of course.

Knocked out very hard.

Last year, it turned out, we missed almost the whole, could not perform.

There was only one start.

- But they could train in almost unlimited mode and not reduce the load, as is done before the performances.

- It's true.

All the basic work, the results of which are visible now, we did exactly at that period.

- At what point did the topic arise in your working circle that Davis and Smolkin could make a jump to the Russian national team not in the next Olympic cycle, but already in this one?

- Honestly, I’ll tell you that at the beginning of autumn we didn’t aim at participating in the Olympics at all.

We just tried to do our job as efficiently as possible.

And the guys from the first start began to progress.

- Allow me to doubt your words.

In my opinion, all of Russia is already aware that Diana's famous mother set this very goal for her daughter.

And I will never believe that the topic of the Games has never come up in your joint conversations.

- It did.

It's just that at the beginning of the season, I myself thought this goal was unrealistic.

Later, when, in addition to really, serious results, there were very positive comments from colleagues and specialists from all over the world, I had the idea that this is possible.

- I understand correctly that if Davis and Smolkin are selected for the Olympics, they will become your only pair in Beijing?

- Quite right.

- You are able to objectively assess: what are the strongest sides of your duet?

- Maybe yes.

But, you know, I am able to admire others too.

It is not that my athletes are the best, and everyone else is not good enough.

Now there are many good duets in the dances, and I see positive and high-quality sides in each of them.

- But you have to think purely professionally, how can your athletes get ahead of those with whom they compete?

- Undoubtedly.

Moreover, I know it.

- AND?

- First of all, it is the quality of skating, ease of skating, ease of execution, interesting and fresh composition, communication between partners, their dialogue on the ice, free sliding and movement of bodies.

That is, a whole bunch of components.

- It seemed to me, despite the very high scores, that in rhythm dance Diana and Gleb glided in St. Petersburg slowly and very carefully.

There was a feeling that people were struggling with some kind of internal stress or fatigue, as if they had not quite come to their senses after a long journey.

There was clearly something that prevented them from rolling backhand.

- The first start number is usually not very helpful to perception.

As well as the performance.

The atmosphere in the hall does not have time to reach the level when it begins to be felt in the air.

You go out on the ice, and the movement continues in the hall: spectators come in, look for their seats, sit down, talk ... This is a difficult thing - the first starting number.

I would like to use the energy of the audience, but it is not.

- So this energy, which figure skaters often talk about, really exists?

- Certainly.

When one athlete performs well, followed by another, it creates both interest and excitement, and creates what we call the atmosphere of competition.

An atmosphere within which something unusual and interesting is happening.

- A purely technical question: throughout this season I hear that the fourth level in the rhythm dance pattern is some kind of outrageous thing, even for world leaders.

In any case, during the Grand Prix series, she did not submit to almost anyone, including Gabriela Papadakis and Guillaume Sizeron.

How does Davis and Smolkin manage

- I do not think that the fourth level in the pattern is some kind of transcendental thing.

It's just very serious work.

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- Is it a matter of technique, or more of concentration?

- First of all, technology.

Ability to very competently perform each of the elements, be it a hauling, twizzle, or crossing.

Correct positions, correct positioning of the pattern on the ice.

A good base and a correct understanding of the essence of figure skating is very important: how to ride, how to bend over, how to place the skate ... If an athlete understands this, he can apply this philosophy to the performance of any dance, any element.

It's not easy just to tell all this in an interview.

- I'm trying to understand: the class of dancers, if we take the first world "ten", in my opinion, is approximately equal.

But for some, the element succeeds, while for others it becomes an insurmountable obstacle.

How, relatively speaking, does the pair that wins differ from the pair that stays behind?

What are these little things?

Can they somehow be explained, felt?

- You are now touching upon a very difficult issue, namely, the technical assessment of the speech.

This is what the average viewer really does not see.

Let's say the athlete turned around, scraped some kind of turn, which had absolutely no effect on the perception and impression of the program.

But technicians may well not count this turn, and the athlete loses points.

Whether it is right or wrong is difficult to judge.

But the rules are still as follows.

Nothing else was invented.

- Is Tutberidze's character, in sports terms, one huge plus, or is it difficult from a coaching point of view?

And can we even say that Diana Davis inherited the character of her mother?

- Eteri supports Diana 100%.

If every athlete felt such support from their parents, such an amount of energy and love, this would be a huge plus, moreover, for everyone.

- I'm not really talking about that.

A child of famous parents often has a deep, deep thought that he is forgiven more than others.

That somewhere you can cheat, disobey.

“I don’t see that in Diana at all.

And besides, Eteri is in Moscow almost all the time, we are in America.

- By the way, were you not afraid, when you took a pair with you, that a coach with such authority could begin to interfere in work, and much more aggressively than most parents do?

- Tutberidze is not just a competent coach, but also a person with great tact. In relation to me, at least it is so. But, you know, what's the matter ... I'm very interested in Eteri's opinion. She is not at all the last person in our sport, and every time she comes, I try very hard to lure her to the rink so that she looks at the guys, as they say, from the side. Agree, on my part it would be just stupid not to use such a specialist when he is around. But she mostly watches training from the podium. And he never imposes anything on me.

- I remembered how at the Canadian Grand Prix stage you became an unwitting accomplice in the incident with Rafael Harutyunyan, asking him to watch Davis and Smolkin's performance from the rostrum, in connection with which the coach accidentally ended up outside the bubble and was deprived of accreditation.

What exactly were you interested in the opinion of this specialist?

After all, they don't jump in dances.

- Rafael is a coach of such caliber that he can give practical advice in absolutely everything.

He understands above all in skating.

- But you yourself understand no worse in skating.

Why in this situation are third-party opinions, which, moreover, may not be too complimentary?

Or does your own look tend to get blurry after long-term work with athletes?

- You see, what's the matter, I generally like comments from the outside.

Therefore, I always listen to what the judges and other coaches say.

It's important for me.

It would be simply shortsighted of me not to use the experience of people like Raphael and Eteri when they are around.

- Many times I tried to get Harutyunyan to talk about the dance topic, and each time I heard from him that he does not understand anything about you.

It turns out that he was cunning?

- I learned a lot from him - in terms of skating, sliding, using a skate, using arcs and ribs. It's all connected. And in this regard, Raphael and I profess the same philosophy, let's put it this way. He teaches his skaters not only jumping. Skating, as such, is the basis for the performance of all elements, whether you are a solo skater or a dancer. Simply put, everything that we see on the ice arises from the same movement - from the arc. From the arc, jumps are obtained, from the arc, twizzles are obtained, from the arc, rotations are obtained, speed is gained. There are just a lot of these arcs.

- Diana said many times that it is not difficult for her to adapt to any situation in Russia, because even if she doesn’t hear something, she understands the interlocutor’s lips.

It is much more difficult to understand foreign speech by articulation.

Have you at least sometimes noticed that an athlete has to overstep in America and through this too?

- By the way, I think it's good.

Any difficult situation, if you treat it correctly, develops a person, helps him, stimulates.

That is, of course, at first everything was very, very difficult for the guys, I'm almost sure of that.

But they are so close to each other, and Gleb supports Diana so much in everything that a lot has become possible.

On the ice as well.

- To admit, when I saw your joint photo with Marina Zueva at a tournament in Warsaw, with whom you parted not in the best way, I was simply speechless.

The first thought that came to mind: are you and Marina going to resume the collaboration that once shook the entire dance world?

- We were just very happy with the results of that tournament.

I was really sincerely happy with the success of Marina and her athletes Daisuke Takahashi and Kana Muramoto, she also sincerely congratulated me on the victory of Diana and Gleb.

This is fine.

Be that as it may, we devote our whole life to coaching.

- Nowadays, just a lot of coaches say that, at the present time, it is absolutely impossible to achieve great success, working alone or in a narrow team.

Is there at least one tenth of a percent chance that your collaboration with Marina can become real again?

- I have long learned to understand that anything can happen in life.

You never know how this or that situation will turn, and every year life teaches us this in all its manifestations.

- So, never say never?

- Never say never"...