“To keep the paws intact”: Shubenkov on priorities for the season, unwillingness to quarrel, Coe’s tricks and the romance of hurdling

- Children who grew up in sports families tend to dream of an Olympic victory from a very young age.

Your mother competed at the Games in Seoul and almost reached the medal in the heptathlon.

You are categorically unlucky with the Olympics: you lost the first one without reaching the final, you missed the second one due to suspension, and you were forced to withdraw from the third one due to an injury.

Games - a sore subject?

And was it at some point in your career a psychological problem?

No, it wasn't really a problem.

Moreover, since we are talking about sports families: my family has always seemed to me the most ordinary, I did not suspect that it was sports.

There was no talk that sports, the Olympic Games, should come first.

Rather, on the contrary: I learned much better that I should study.

And to enter a "normal" institute, not physical education.

Moreover, my mother, having gone through big sports herself, was not at all eager to see me on the track.

Sports were more of a side activity.

For the general development, for the organization of leisure.

Additional activity in your free time from school and college.

At what point did you realize that this is a profession?

- At the age of 18, when I went to the European Junior Championship and took second place.

There I thought that, apparently, hurdling will become my main occupation for some time.

- At the Games in London, already being the European champion, you ran in the preliminary race for 13.26, but failed the semi-finals.

Feelings left over from that season, remember?

— Shock.

It was not easy to understand that at the age of 21 I could become a European champion and get to the Olympic Games.

When I first started doing this, it never crossed my mind.

As well as the fact that I will someday become a world champion.

And I didn’t set myself such goals, to be honest.

Although he participated in the selection for the Games back in 2008 as a junior.

- This reminds me of the story of a colleague who, at some local high jump competitions, set the bar to the level of a world record, either knocked it down, or flew lower, but proudly wrote in his profile that he was attempting to storm the record result.

- Well, yes, there is something similar in this.

In my opinion, 14 seconds at the Olympic selection in Kazan is even close

did not exchange

almost for the first time then ran high adult hurdles.

As for the London Games, well, yes, to some extent, the 12th result in the semi-finals was a disappointment, perhaps even a strong one, but now for me the Olympic Games no longer have an aura of holiness.

There is no longer a sense of exclusivity.

Just a big big start, cool competitions in which I would like to participate and win, but if it’s not destined, it’s also okay.

- Are you sure that by saying all this, you are not subconsciously protecting your own psyche?

- Maybe it is, and this is really a kind of defensive reaction, but it seems to me that it's not about the psyche.

It just so happens now that the Olympic Games, like the World Championships, are turning into a kind of private brawl, where people in the leadership first make decisions at their own discretion, and then prove in the courts that they have the right to do so.

- You, as a person with a legal education, should generally be very protested by everything that is happening in sports now.

- From a legal point of view, it is very interesting for me to see how sports organizations, whether it be the IOC or World Athletics, in fact, make the decisions they want.

They have unlimited powers, which they prescribe to themselves.

They can cross out some point, and accept the completely opposite.

It seems to me a certain wildness.

- Did you meet in 2020 with World Athletics President Sebastian Coe?

- Yes.

- Did you have the feeling that you were communicating with a person who took an active anti-Russian position?

— I wouldn't say.

His position is as much anti-Russian as it is pro-British.

Coe is primarily concerned with protecting his own interests and those of his organization.

And this automatically means protecting the interests of WADA and the IOC.

- So the personal meeting turned out to be a waste of time?

In a way, I think it has become useful.

Coe definitely didn’t have heartburn to us personally.

He is a cunning politician.

With one hand he punishes, with the other he has mercy, here he forbids, here he distributes statuses.

And it turns out that you can’t dig from any side.

It seems like he is not against Russia: he is making contact, some commissions are working.

But essentially nothing changes.

- Is money at least to some extent capable of compensating for missing the Olympic Games?

“I'm not sure that anything can even compensate for this.

After all, we also tried to come up with some alternative starts with high prize money in return.

- I mean something else.

There are professional sports leagues such as the NHL and NBA, there is the same football, the top of which safely does without the Olympics, and this example convincingly demonstrates to the world that for a certain part of the sports community the Olympics may not be of any interest.

It seemed to me that in athletics the day was not far off when world-class stars would want to concentrate their activities exclusively within the Diamond League.

And the Olympics will simply be relegated to the background.

- Oh no.

Athletics is still the central sport in the Olympic program.

Taking it and destroying it with your own hands is like harnessing the cart before the horse.

The problem is something else.

The fact that the IOC does not pay athletes.

By the way, I remembered the story of how a couple of years ago quite a few events were excluded from the Diamond League for the sake of television - a triple jump, a steeplechase, some kind of throwing.

And Christian Taylor (two-time Olympic champion in the triple jump. -

), who naturally did not like all this, decided to create a whole trade union in defense of his interests.

I understand that by doing this he solved purely personal problems, but at the same time he raised the question: why does the IOC not pay its athletes?

- I would answer this that in modern life the title of Olympic champion is perfectly monetized.

- Not everywhere.

In Russia - yes, in America, probably, too.

All the same, it turns out that athletes, speaking at the Olympics, work for their employer for free, despite the fact that in most Western countries they invest their personal funds in their own training, having no guarantee that the money will be repaid somehow.

But in general, everyone has their own problems.

We are worried that we do not have a permit, we are racking our brains on how to get to the Olympics, and in the USA people are wondering why they are not paid by sports federations.

Why are there no grants or subsidies?

Why do some competitions provide prize money, while others do not.

- Is the inability to play in commercial tournaments a significant blow to the budget?

- Strong.

I'm not complaining, there is a certain margin of safety, despite the fact that last year I had to spend a lot of money while there were proceedings on my doping history.

But now it is easier to perceive all this.

- Given the age, titles, accumulating injuries, the lack of the opportunity to earn the way it was before, thoughts about ending a career do not come to mind?

— There is such a thing.

But so far, I still don’t see alternatives that would allow me to earn more doing something else.

Plus, I love running.

I can say that I found myself in this profession.

I understand that there is not much left - five or six years at best.

But why think about it now, what's the point?

It's like thinking that someday we'll all die.

What a horror...

- Does last year's Achilles injury somehow limit you?

- Specifically, the injury that happened before the Olympics - no.

I have been actively treating her for five months, and now my left leg feels even healthier than the right one.

- The well-known gymnastic specialist Leonid Arkaev once said that the coach is almost always to blame for any gymnastic injury.

How does this work in athletics?

- To summarize, in 70% of cases the fault can really lie with the mentor, but specifically my injury occurred for other reasons.

I am still sure that it was the result of my entire doping history.

Of course, I tried to hold on, but all my worries and constant stress did not go unnoticed for the body.

Nobody canceled psychosomatics.

When I am not training and, accordingly, I am not nervous, nothing hurts at all, everything is fine.

- You are a member of the ARAF Athletes' Commission, which implies a fairly active participation in the life of the team, defending other people's interests.

At the same time, all my experience suggests that any extra-class athlete is almost always extremely selfish, and other people's interests are in tenth place for him.

Agree, this is some kind of dissonance?

- Certain contradictions really exist here, but one must understand that before the commission of athletes was a rather formal entity.

Anzhelika Sidorova, Masha Lasitskene and I somehow revived her, plus Sergey Litvinov helped us in this, but then it was necessary to fight first with one ARAF president, then with another.

Now the commission has been convened again, but no longer to wage war.

- You fought not for the team, but mostly for yourself, for the opportunity to continue performing and earn money.

- Well, yes, I agree.

The common interest was just that, on the basis of which we gathered.

- While you were trying to get the state to pay off the debt of World Athletics, did you consider the option of chipping in and paying this money out of your own pocket?

— $10 million?

Cool.

I wanted to say now that we would scrape together a million, but no.

Wouldn't scrape.

Now I'm scrolling through all this in my head - it was a harsh year.

True, the thought immediately arises: is it better now, or what?

— What is the most priority for you this season?

- To keep the paws intact.

Starts turned out smaller, but it's good.

It turns out such a post-traumatic year in every sense.

It might even be good that you had the opportunity to save yourself.

Although I can’t say that I started training less or somehow I’m underworking in training.

Even somehow swayed beyond measure.

- Does it interfere?

- Well no.

Extra weight is an extra load on the joints, but if you run, why not run?

- What is the romance of hurdling for you?

Well, except for the fact that it's a "short" sport and is definitely not in danger of being excluded from the big tournament programs?

- And what is the romance of sports?

Don't know.

My distance can probably be compared with a smooth 100 meters, but everything is much more predictable there.

We have a cooler intrigue, and technically hurdling is more difficult.

The most interesting thing, perhaps, is that you have been preparing for some particular start for years, and when it comes down to it, you understand how much it is a lottery.

This element of chance is probably romance.

You constantly puzzle over how to minimize this randomness so that your result depends on what you have gained in training, and not on whether you were lucky with your rivals.

How lucky I was at the last World Championships.

“I didn’t see that run of yours.

- I took second place, but if my “best friend” Omar Macleod, who once knocked me down by accidentally tripping me, had not done the same with the Spaniard, I would not have had any silver.

MacLeod had a kind of crown that year: he knocks down one of the last barriers, he collapses onto the next path and begins to interfere with those who are nearby.

And I ran off the edge.

And safely ran to the finish line.

Is the concept of “fear” present in your discipline?

Fear of knocking down the barrier, making a false start?

- Not.

Too many related tasks.

- In general, is a race a 100% focus on technical issues, or does it happen that the whole life flashes in your head?

- I went through all the stages.

When I was young, I ran for a long time with the feeling that they were shooting, and in the next moment, here it is, the finish line.

When I reached the level of serious results, I talked to a lot of people - with the same Colin Jackson.

He asked how a person who runs for a world record feels.

And everyone agreed that it felt very easy.

When I ran 12.92 myself, I realized that it was true.

What I just did not have time to think in that race.

I ran absolutely relaxed, it seemed to me that I was in control of absolutely everything and could do anything at a distance.

I still remember looking out of the corner of my eye at MacLeod and thinking: here I acted faster, here I sort of broke away, now he will start to catch up, which means we need to move to the right.

When I finished, a thought popped into my head: I probably thought too much along the distance and the result would not be very good.

I looked at the scoreboard - and there ... Probably, this is always the case: when you are well prepared, it seems that everything turns out very easily.

In Cheboksary, in the morning, such a state was, in the first race.

Too bad it didn't last until the evening.

- World champion in pole vault Svetlana Feofanova once told me: "Everyone is an enemy in the sector."

Is it the same in hurdling?

— I wouldn't say.

In general, I think that sport is a unifying thing.

Not a war.

Neither at the Russian level, nor at the world level.

It is clear that we are not friends, but to cook in the same pot and quarrel is at least stupid.

- In one of your recent interviews, you said that you are not considering the option of changing sports citizenship.

And if you were now not 30-something, but 20 years old?

- If grandmother had you know what ... As mathematicians say, the question in general has no answer.