“In the morning, nothing hurts me at all”: Chusovitina - about age, career restart, injury in Tokyo and break with the coach

- It seemed to me that the decision to complete the performances after the Tokyo Games was made and suffered by you to such an extent that there simply could not be any other options.

What made you change your mind and start competing again?

- Nothing that could be talked about as some kind of landmark event.

It’s just that when some time passed after the Games, everything calmed down, calmed down, I myself asked myself the question: why should I finish with sports if I really don’t want to?

Moreover, I still feel strength and even some unfulfillment in myself.

- Nevertheless, you officially announced your retirement in Tokyo.

It turns out, got excited?

- I fell for the conversations of those who surrounded me.

Too many people told me: they say, come on, finish it, and it almost took me in the other direction.

Usually I don’t listen to anyone at all, I do everything as I see fit.

Therefore, when I announced that I was finishing, I very quickly regretted it.

On the other hand, we women are just like that: today she said one thing, tomorrow she changed her mind.

- Having decided to stay in the sport for some time, what did you set as a guideline for yourself, the Olympics in Paris?

- The Asian Games, which were to be held this year in Beijing.

But the Chinese side decided to postpone them to next year.

Of course, this was not the most positive news, since the postponement meant another year of training, stress, the need to deprive yourself of something, change life plans.

Not to mention the fact that the additional season is not one performance, but several tournaments that should bring me to the main start.

On the other hand, it is even good that the cancellation of the Asian Games did not become known at the last moment.

I immediately decided for myself that I still want to compete in this tournament, but I also thought about the fact that there would be less than a year left before the Olympics in Paris, and that it would be wrong not to try to qualify for my ninth Games.

Why not?

- Has it become more difficult to achieve an Olympic license than before?

Yes, and I feel it.

At the Games in Tokyo, she was selected through the all-around.

Now I had to give up the all-around, so the qualification for Paris in the vault will take place for me at the World Cup stages.

Based on the results of three performances, you need to be no further than second place, but the results of those athletes who by that time will be selected for the Games as part of 12 teams and those who qualify according to the results of the all-around will not be taken into account.

In other words, everything is still real.

- Which of the shells in the all-around has become the most problematic for you?

- Bars.

Now all the girls have switched to work in overlays, and only I continue to work the old fashioned way: on bare hands with sandpaper and diluted honey.

The biggest plus of rubbers is that you do not need to prepare the pole before the performance: you jump in and work.

Accordingly, the warm-up takes less time, you have time to rest longer.

But the overlays interfere with me: I don’t feel any adhesion to the pole, I just get torn off it.

As a result, I'm starting to get scared.

- When you have to give up certain elements, what becomes the main reason - fear, or age?

More like common sense.

On uneven bars, I taught Shaposhnikova’s flight for quite a long time, but once I was so torn off the projectile that I miraculously did not get injured.

And I decided that it was just “not my” element.

Such things can be difficult to understand, especially in a situation where everyone around you is doing this flight.

But on the same uneven bars, for many years I did some things that no one else tried to do.

For example, one of the elements with a reverse grip on the upper pole at one time was owned by only one gymnast in the world - American Chelsea Memmel (three-time world champion. -

).

This is a really difficult, I would say, male element, with a bonus of 0.5 points, and I can still perform it.

Alexander Alexandrov taught me this before the 1992 Games.

- I was always sure that gymnasts are taught technical things by personal mentors, and not by the head coach of the national team.

- Probably, the point was simply that Alexandrov, before joining the women's team, worked a lot with men.

And it was easier for him to see some things than for those who for years "cooked" only with girls.

Relatively speaking, to transfer some elements from the men's crossbar to the women's bars.

It was very interesting to train with Alexandrov: we constantly tried something new, and he somehow especially singled me out.

I think that stubbornness, a willingness to work until I achieve what I wanted, bribed him in me.

Such a small impenetrable tank.

- I heard that Alexandrov was not in favor of taking you to the Games in 1992.

And that because of this, he even had a conflict with your personal trainer Svetlana Kuznetsova.

- I just don’t know - I was small.

My job was to keep quiet and work.

Was Alexandrov a tough coach?

“I wouldn't say.

By the way, I was very surprised when, after the Games in London, in the Russian team they began to present him almost as a monster.

Any professional athlete knows perfectly well that without hard work and very severe discipline, there simply cannot be a result.

This is the law.

- How does this fit with the fact that in many countries now even one cannot raise one's voice to an athlete?

“The sport has really changed a lot in this regard.

But to be honest, it doesn’t seem to me that with such an approach as it is now, when the coach must control his every step and every word, a high result is possible.

— I know how seriously you prepared to perform in Tokyo.

Did failure become a strong blow?

- The blow was the story with the flag that I had to carry at the opening ceremony.

This decision was made two months before the Games, but the flag bearer was changed at the last moment.

It was so embarrassing...

- But why?

If I'm not mistaken, at none of the previous seven Olympiads did you go to the stadium at all on the opening day.

- This is true.

I really never did this in my life, because the next day we already started the competition.

But in Tokyo, I really wanted to take part in the ceremony.

After all, I really thought that these were my last Games, that such an opportunity would never again be presented in my life.

Tune in to it, burned with anticipation.

It seems to be such a small thing...

Why?

I perfectly understand your condition.

- It felt like a bucket of cold water was poured on me in public.

Not that I felt sorry for myself, but it was insulting.

Moreover, for the sake of those Games, I had to work extra for a whole year, to wait for them.

I swear to you, at that moment I didn’t think about competitions at all, despite the fact that I loved to compete all my life, I always waited for it.

And here, most of all, I wanted to pack my suitcase and leave Japan home as soon as possible.

It became a colossal revelation that like this, in one minute, you can destroy a person, destroy everything that has been built for years.

So I waited for it all to finally end.

Later I watched the video of my jumps - my eyes were completely empty.

It's like it didn't happen to me.

Although in the end I gained more than I lost.

• © Cheng Min / XinHua

- What do you have in mind?

- One of these days in Tashkent, almost in the center of the city, the construction of my Academy will begin, which was decided to be created by order of the President of the country.

I'm going to start taking my kids there.

I’m not sure that I want to train them myself, but I don’t rule it out either.

After Tokyo, I was awarded the title of Honored Coach of Uzbekistan - for my own independent training over the years.

- I never asked you: why, after breaking up with Kuznetsova after moving to Germany, you didn’t even try to turn to the coach for help when you returned to Uzbekistan again?

- It was not the easiest situation between us when Alisher fell ill.

My son was three years old then, we found a German clinic where we volunteered to help, and I was absolutely sure that the coach would not only support me in everything, but would never leave me alone in a foreign country.

It turned out completely different.

Svetlana Mikhailovna flew to Tashkent and believed that I should follow her in order to continue training.

And for me at that moment it didn’t matter at all whether there was gymnastics in my life or not and never will be.

- Now you communicate with the coach?

- Yes.

I have no resentment left, I will be grateful to Svetlana Mikhailovna all my life for my sports life, for my character, for the ability to achieve goals, I love her very much, as I have always loved, I am ready to help her in any situation, if necessary, but at the same time I know that we can no longer work together the way we used to.

There will be no unconditional trust in each other.

And this is important when the coach and the athlete are focused on the result.

Are you aiming now?

- Rather, gymnastics has become a hobby.

Training brings me pleasure, there are no contractual obligations to anyone.

There will be a result - there will be a salary.

- Were you upset by losing the Asian Championship?

- Not.

I was very ill before these competitions, they even kept me on droppers and antibiotics for some time, but I could not help but go to Doha.

In this case, the federation would have to pay a fine.

As a result, I made the qualification, but I simply didn’t have enough strength for the final.

Is this season over for you?

- The only start left is the Islamic Games in Istanbul.

- And what about the October World Cup?

- I qualified there, but decided not to compete.

This championship does nothing for me.

By the next season, I planned to start studying a new jump - the one that Masha Paseka jumped (two-time world champion and vice-champion of the 2016 Games in this type of all-around.

).

I want to challenge myself.

If you go to the World Cup, you will have to take a break and return to the previous version of the jumps.

That is just waste of time.

I don't think you can sit on two chairs.

- What is the main thing in the vault?

- Takeoff speed.

Everything else is a matter of technique.

If a gymnast cannot run well, he will never jump.

I never had a perfect acrobatic background, come to think of it, like many other gymnastic qualities, but the strength of my legs and the ability to run gave me the ability to jump better than others do.

- If on the same uneven bars you are still able to perform ultra-complex ligaments, why did you so easily abandon this type?

Is it just the overlays?

I don't like bars at all.

I am not a biting, so I have to drag a lot by force.

Doing bars for the sake of all-around is one thing.

And to train them as a separate projectile, knowing that there will still be no score that allows you to fight for a medal or at least for a place in the final - why?

I'd rather use my energy to jump.

Does age force you to save energy?

— To some extent, yes.

Although, you know, many people ask me: probably, everything hurts in the morning when you have to get out of bed?

And I don't have any pain at all.

It turns out that I’m still waiting, waiting for age to really begin to manifest itself, but this does not happen and does not happen.

- That is, in the next ten years, the completion of a career is not worth waiting for?

- Well, something like this.

Although it can be funny to listen to my mother talking to Alisher.

He asks how he is doing, and always adds: “And your mother, an old fool, keeps jumping and jumping ...”

- How did you react in Tokyo to the story of Simone Biles, who ended her career in such a deplorable way?

- As for the failure that happened in the competition.

It happens.

Biles in gymnastics - like Kohei Uchimura (three-time Olympic champion and 10-time world champion. -

), like Vitaly Shcherbo.

No one has yet broken his record of six gold medals at the Games alone.

Perhaps such people are born just for gymnastics.

Plus they work very hard.

You can take any pills you want, but you definitely won’t jump from this double somersault with three screws.

- After three days spent in Tashkent, I can’t help but ask: how do you manage to keep weight with such a mind-blowing cuisine?

- Generally there is no such problem.

Moreover, I always said: if you really want to eat a bun, you need to eat it.

All the same, everything in the hall will fly off.

I noticeably gained weight only in puberty - I gained three kilograms, and with my height, this is a bit much.

But she continued to jump, did all her elements.

Svetlana Mikhailovna, by the way, never starved me.

She said only once: they say, it would be nice to lose half a kilo, and for some reason it hurt me so much that I got even better.

But it’s hard: the hands on the uneven bars break off, everything irritates.

The weight is felt every second.

On bars, especially.

Yes, generally everywhere.

On floor exercises, you must turn this weight over your head twice, and on a jump, disperse it.

The most annoying thing is that these are your problems and the coach warned you about them.

- Assuming the incredible, namely, that at the Games in Paris everything works out for you and you win a medal, will you continue to perform?

- In this case, I will almost certainly put an end to it.