“Sometimes it’s very scary to jump into the water”: Ternovoy about a head injury, long legs and a childhood idol

- For several years now you have been called perhaps the most talented young jumper in the country, but at the same time, the recent Russian Championship in Penza, if I am not mistaken, was only the third start in your career, at which you performed all your jumps without a single breakdown.

- Don't be mistaken.

The first time this happened to me was in 2016, and also in Penza and also at the Russian Championship.

The second time I managed to cleanly perform the entire program in 2020 at the Russian Cup.

This is really memorable: in most cases at least once, but I was wrong.

- Do mistakes happen on a particular jump?

— I wouldn't say.

Although the most problematic element exists - this is three turns back, bending over from a handstand.

I was very glad that I succeeded in this jump in Penza.

- Did you try to find the reason why the errors occur?

Analyzed, yes.

I have a slightly problematic start in hand jumps - there is not enough sharpness, plus long legs ... I twist it, but it's very difficult.

Since all this sits in the subconscious, a psychological burden is also added.

But I'm trying to work on it.

- You started jumping in Penza with very good and experienced specialists - Tatyana Lukash and Alexander Borisov.

Why did you decide to leave?

— Moscow means other opportunities, career growth.

For these reasons, I decided to try to change my sports life, after consulting with my parents.

He began to train at CSKA with Raisa Galperina.

Was it a difficult decision?

— To be honest, yes.

Yes.

We thought for a long time, could not decide on this step.

Moscow loves money, life in Penza is much cheaper.

Moreover, dad did not move with us, he stayed in the city.

Only my mother and sister and I left.

The first three years we rented an apartment, which took almost all the funds, and it was a really difficult period.

And then we were lucky - we found a very profitable offer and bought our own spacious housing.

Mentally, it was also difficult.

The thought constantly pressed me: what if nothing comes of it?

For the sake of what then I left for another city, changed the coach ... My parents also added pressure.

One way or another, they constantly discussed: am I training correctly?

Will I be able to achieve a result, reach a serious professional level?

My mom and dad didn’t go in for sports, so, naturally, I had to explain some things to them.

- What exactly?

- That I have a professional coach who has already trained a world champion and an Olympic medalist.

That Raisa Dmitrievna knows perfectly well what and how to do.

Well, then the first high results appeared, thanks to which I myself also internally calmed down, I realized that we were moving in the right direction.

And no longer reacted to any conversations at home.

- Many people think that you have long earned the right to compete at the main competitions, and that only some kind of bad luck prevents you from getting into the national team.

How do you see your own career?

– Perhaps, in some ways I really wasn’t very lucky, but rather, something was simply missing.

Skill, experience, psychological stability.

A little here, a little there.

Perhaps that is why at the most crucial moment I lost.

And not at all because the stars somehow got up wrong or a bad judge was caught in the brigade.

Which of the failures is the most offensive?

- Championship of Russia before the Olympic Games in Tokyo.

I lost five or six points to Viktor Minibaev, I did the final jump very well and even had time to be glad that I got to the Games.

And it turned out that no.

I lost quite a bit, and according to the conditions of selection, the second place did not allow me to be on the Olympic team.

I left those competitions for a very long time, I was psychologically completely devastated.

- So much wanted to go to the Olympics?

- Highly.

And I still want to.

Also on russian.rt.com “I didn’t expect it at all”: Polyakova - about being elected to the FINA commission, leaving for the USA at the age of 17 and her attitude to the fight for medals

- Have there been periods when you wanted to quit training?

- Oh yeah.

A perfect example is the Russian Championship when I was 15 years old.

Shortly before that, I got a knee injury, treated it for a long time, and each new doctor made his own diagnosis, different from the previous one.

I continued to jump in order to somehow have time to prepare for the competition, but nothing worked.

I didn’t have any strength, so I didn’t twist the jumps, but they continued to drive me: “Come on, come on, come on ...” That's when I really wanted to give up and leave the sport in general.

- What kept you?

— Parents.

They never forced me to continue training, but somehow they managed to find the right words at that moment.

Is the scar on your head a taboo topic?

No, no one has ever asked me about it.

- As a former diver, I understand the nature of the injury very well and I know that very few people return to the platform after such a thing.

How long has this happened to you?

- After the 2018 Youth Olympics, when I was already training in Moscow, the coach and I decided to complicate the free program - insert two new jumps into it: one and a half turns averbach (back from the front rack.

) with three and a half screws and three turns averbach from a handstand.

By that time I had already done three and a half turns back from the front stance, and I liked the idea itself: all over the world, three Averbakh jumps at once, that is, the third class, have never been done on the tower by any athlete.

It would be beautiful.

In my opinion, a spiral jump could look especially impressive: I am thin, my legs are long ... So I caught fire.

- And stood on the tower on your head?

- There were no problems with the "screws".

But when we began to work out the beginning of the jump from a handstand at a low height - from a three-meter platform, I flew on my head.

Before that, there were also cases when I jumped close to the edge of the platform, but not critically.

And here…

In fact, I still don't know how it all happened.

According to those who saw it, I strongly touched the edge of the tower with my head, lost consciousness and went to the bottom like a stone.

But I don’t even remember how I climbed the tower.

The last thing that remained in my memory was how I stood under the shower on the side of the pool and prepared to jump.

Then - a click ... and blackness.

I came to my senses in the doctor's office, there was blood everywhere, everyone was running around, waving their hands, shouting something.

Then they brought me to the hospital, sewed up the wound.

In total, I spent ten days in the hospital, didn’t jump for another two months, and then I put together the program again and became fourth or fifth at the Russian Cup.

“I still don’t understand how you managed to come back from such an injury.

“Actually, I was lucky: I really didn’t remember anything.

Therefore, when the head healed, he simply continued to train, as if nothing had happened.

It’s even surprising: after hitting the tower, everyone, as a rule, tries to get as far away from the projectile as possible.

I did my 3.5 turns of the Averbach sometimes closer to the platform than usual, and did not feel it.

There was no fear at all.

But I never tried that handstand jump again.

Yes, it didn't make sense.

The maximum that this could give me was an additional 0.1 in the coefficient of difficulty.

Not worth it.

- Could you describe how an athlete feels when he first goes on an unfamiliar jump?

“Sometimes it’s very scary.

This has happened twice in my life.

Once, when we were at the training camp at the Round, I did three turns back from the handstand and got lost in the air.

A month later, I went to do the same jump at home in Penza, I can’t express in words what horror I experienced before I forced myself to jump.

The second time I was wildly scared when I came to CSKA from my Penza pool in Burtasy.

And there are low ceilings, it’s dark ... I look at the tower from the side, and there is only one thought in my head: how can you jump down from there?

But I started to train and found with great surprise that the pool, although it seems gloomy, is actually not scary at all.

And it is easy to navigate in it, and it is comfortable to jump.

— Is the tower your only specialization?

- I also jump from the springboard, but just to switch.

You can’t get hung up on one projectile in our sport - your head can boil.

Yes, and it is wrong to jump only from the tower.

This loads the muscles too much, clogs them, respectively, the risk of injury is higher.

- In my time, the norm of jumps for two daily workouts was 100 - 150 attempts.

How much do you get?

- While living in Penza and training with Lukash and Borisov, we jumped a lot: up to 50 times from the tower in one training session and up to 80 from the springboard.

Now I jump less.

30-40 tries.

- Which is more difficult, jumping 30 times from the “tens”, or climbing there 30 times?

— Ha!

Good question.

For a higher education specialist, in my opinion, the second is definitely more difficult.

Until you get up, while you wipe your hands and feet with a towel, and you also need to catch your breath.

It is especially unpleasant when you have to climb a vertical ladder.

And the arms get tired, and the legs become heavy.

- Too long legs for a jumper in the water do not create problems for you?

- Only in one jump - three turns back, bending from the handstand, which we talked about at the very beginning.

But in general, I really like how my jumps look from the side.

Long legs in our sport is always very spectacular.

For this reason, I have always liked the way Ilya Zakharov jumps.

- Does the ideal of a diver exist in your mind at all?

- Yes.

Zakharov.

Ilya is generally my idol, always has been.

And I liked to watch him jump not only from the springboard, but also from the tower.

- Jumping into the water from the tower - is it a thrill or work?

- When something does not work out, there is definitely no buzz.

I want to quit everything at once, go home early from training, not come to the pool at all for some time.

But when the form is typed, the sensations become completely different.

It happens that you land a jump and think: oh, there would be competitions, how people would whistle and clap now ... The ideal entry into the water is also an indescribable feeling.

Sometimes you don't even feel the resistance of the water - you pierce the surface like a needle.

- What gives you more pleasure - synchronized jumps or individual ones?

- When you win in an individual championship, it feels much cooler than a synchronized or team victory.

Therefore, in fact, I devote more time to individual jumps.

- How long did it take to get used to Alexander Bondar in synchronized jumps, with whom you are now performing in a duet?

- I once dreamed of jumping with Sasha.

On the 10-meter platform, he was the leader of the national team, so of course I wanted to try myself in tandem with the best.

And from the very first training, everything began to work out for us.

- Is it difficult to correspond to such a partner?

— I wouldn't say.

When it comes to complex rotations, their own tasks always come to the fore.

Sometimes there is simply no way to focus on a partner - you only think about twisting the jump corny.

In addition, I have not been jumping the adult program for as long as Sasha - only two years.

As for working out synchronization on simpler elements, there are coaches who film each workout on a tablet, show us how this or that jump looks from the outside, we immediately make some adjustments.

Is the ability to rotate quickly amenable to training or is it an innate quality?

- The speed of rotation, oddly enough, very much depends on how strong the hands of the jumper are.

Because it is with your hands that you, as it were, push yourself in the air both in a bent position and in a group.

As soon as I started working seriously in the gym - pulling myself up, doing push-ups, working with iron - I immediately began to spin faster.

This year we did this kind of work at the training camp in Sochi, and according to my feelings, it really gave a result.

- Is your current free program the maximum?

Or is it possible to complicate some components?

- It can be complicated.

Another question, is it necessary?

- And what is your answer?

- Actually, I would like to try to do one jump from the tower.

- Which one?

- Four and a half turns forward from the rear rack.

I know that it is difficult and in a certain sense dangerous, because you have to pass literally millimeters from the edge of the platform in order to have time to unscrew all the turns.

And the second time I don’t want to leave my head on the tower somehow.

But anyway, I think about this jump all the time.

Although it is still far from the thought of ever inserting it into the program.

- Are you going to jump for a long time?

- It all depends, of course, on health, but I would like to be 30 or 35 years old.

Time will tell how real this is.

- Could you formulate in one word what is the coolest thing in your sport?

- Win.