How would you rate your incredible victory?
- In the morning, the amount of points was more.
But basically I'm happy.
- Only 0.1 points separated you from the world champion Evgeny Kuznetsov. Tracked during the final, how is the struggle between you?
“I always look at grades.
- What does it give?
- Understanding how many points a particular jump should make in order not to lose.
All this happens at competitions on a subconscious level.
I just know the coefficients of jumps very well and quickly calculate what marks I need to get in order to get the required amount of points.
- And so with every jump?
- Yes, and for a very long time.
- What then prevented you from calculating the final synchronized jump at the Olympic Games in Tokyo in the same way, where you extremely unsuccessfully jumped onto the board?
— Nerves, pressure, own condition.
I just couldn't handle it all.
- In other words, it was pounding so that it was impossible to think?
- Let's just say it was only my fault.
Purely my mistake.
- Such blots usually get stuck in the head for a very long time.
- This is true.
I remember the jump itself to the smallest detail, I remember how I jumped the board, I just hoped until the very end that even in this variation I would have enough height.
It wasn't enough.
- Everyone immediately remembered that it was this mistake in the attack that happened to you in the Olympic season for the third start in a row. It turns out that the failure of the final jump was not an accident?
- I really had problems with the attack that season.
— What were they?
- Swoop is, whatever one may say, the basis of any ski jump.
Everyone does it in their own way, but I prefer to go a little behind the “rivets” - it’s more convenient for me.
Well, in that particular case, I put my foot in the wrong place in the final step.
Too close to the edge of the board.
- How justified is it to carry out an attack on the verge of what is permitted?
- There is certainly a certain risk in this, but if the attack is successful, the jump is much higher.
And if you still manage to keep your shoulders in the correct position in the repulsion, it becomes very easy to perform rotations in general.
- You were born in Stavropol, you started jumping in Penza, now you are training in Kazan, and all this time - with the same mentor. I must admit that I am confused by your movements.
- Everything is very simple here.
Mom used to do diving in Stavropol and brought me to the pool at the age of four.
In 2011, my coach Pavel Muyakin was invited to work in Penza, and he took all his students with him.
I was 13 at the time, but my mother didn't mind.
Well, then we, as a whole family, also moved to Kazan after the coach.
- Those two years that you spent without parents in Penza, are remembered now as freedom or, on the contrary, strict control?
- That period, of course, added independence and organization to me.
I didn’t think about any kind of freedom at all in those days, to be honest.
In everything obeyed the coach.
- And at what point did you begin to perceive yourself as a professional athlete?
- Probably, in 2014, when I first went to the adult European Championship in Berlin and became fifth on the ten-meter platform.
- Do you remember your first training camp with an adult team?
- Yes.
This happened a year earlier, in 2013.
It was not very difficult for me to adapt among adults, since I grew up in the same pool with Zhenya Kuznetsov.
I remember very well how he and Ilya Zakharov competed at the Olympic Games in London, so both were a certain guide for me.
- Did you think then that the time would come, and with one of them you could be in a synchronized pair?
No, I was thinking about something else.
That I really want to beat them both and I will definitely beat them one day.
- When at the beginning of 2019 you quite unexpectedly turned out to be Kuznetsov's partner in synchronized ski jumping, did you work together quickly?
— It was a difficult period.
Zhenya and I were very different in physique, I am much lighter, so I didn’t always manage to jump up to him in height.
Then I spent a lot of time in the gym, gaining weight in order to become a little bigger and heavier, but not always, however, I succeeded.
But since I had to devote more time to the springboard, I made a lot of progress as a ski jumper.
Prior to that, he considered his main type of tower.
- When you combine two projectiles, does it contribute to progress or just takes twice as long?
- In adolescence, it seems to me, it is necessary to try both shells.
It really develops the jumper.
It’s just that later, when serious results are already beginning, you have to choose a specialization in order to concentrate on one thing.
I stopped jumping from the tower just in 2019: the coach and I decided that in a year the Olympics would be right to throw all our strength into one projectile.
- Did you later regret that you refused to jump from the "tens"? Still, the high altitude gives the jumper a very special feeling.
- Just in this regard, I like the springboard - there is more adrenaline.
If you correctly performed the attack and correctly pushed off, there is an incomparable feeling of freedom.
You are completely relaxed.
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- How can you be relaxed when you are doing one of the most difficult programs in the world?
- I can do it.
Favorite jump - 3.5 "Averbakh" (3.5 turns back from a run).
Everything is there: complete relaxation and a sense of flight.
This is probably why this jump has always been the most stable for me.
Both from the tower and from the springboard.
- What are you looking for in the air?
— I see during the rotation almost everything.
In each pool I look for a guide for myself in order to clearly understand how to open.
Most often, I focus on the disclosure on the scoreboard.
And instantly I make a decision - to hold the jump or to open up early and reach myself at the entrance with my hands.
“Rear” entrances to the water are better for me - in them I completely control myself.
And in the "front" I can skip water.
- What trait of your character is least liked by your coach?
- I'm lazy.
I always want to do fewer jumps in training.
I try to work not on quantity, but on quality.
Somehow I taught myself that I should perform all the jumps well the first time.
- Some experts build work this way: not according to a given number of repetitions, but until the first successful attempt.
We also train like this.
Sometimes we perform a certain number of each jump, sometimes we jump in series, sometimes for maximum accuracy without warming up, that is, simulating competitions.
- The most terrible situation that has ever happened to you in diving?
- Tokyo Olympics.
I actually meant something else. At least once in the process of jumping did you have to experience fear, fear of hitting a projectile or water?
- These are just working moments that happen to everyone.
And you beat against the water, and the legs in the group sometimes fly out, and you can slip.
Don't pay attention to them.
- I can't help but ask one more question: for several years you flatly refused to communicate with journalists. Was there a reason?
- Not.
I just didn't want any publicity.
There was no desire.
I still don't like it too much, but I have to.
“It’s strange to even hear this from a person with a model appearance. Advertisers should not give you a pass.
- All this was also.
Filming, advertising.
True, it still seems to me that it was not my appearance that attracted attention, but my nails when I painted them black.
At the Olympics, by the way, he also jumped with black.
- Why?
- I just liked it.
Then it passed.
- How far do your current sports plans extend?
- Jump as long as your health allows.
Injuries are cumulative.
- That is, the transition after the end of the classical career in high diving does not threaten you?
- I can’t go into high diving, my back won’t allow it.
There was an injury many years ago, which was long forgotten, but not enough to test the strength of the spine.