“The lack of carts and shovels was replaced by jumps”: Samarin on New Year trees, sports adrenaline and skipping the Olympics

- Two years ago, after the failure at the European Championships in Graz, you said that this “kick” turned out to be extremely timely, since the next two seasons are extremely important.

And then everything went awry: a pandemic, a failed selection for the Olympics ... Didn’t you want to finish with figure skating?

- I thought about this even before the start of the Olympic season.

I understand that sooner or later I will have to finish the sport anyway, but I’m not ready to leave yet.

I just began to think more seriously about what to do next.

Now I am finishing my studies at the Master's program of the Academy of Physical Culture.

- Do you want to become a coach?

- In terms of further work, a lot will depend on how much demand for me on the ice, let's say.

In this regard, I am always open to proposals, and I really want to have such proposals.

But this reasoning is more for the future, since sport is a story that has not yet been completed to the end.

Despite the fact that I did not succeed in everything planned and desired, my hands do not give up.

I still do what I love, and while there is such an opportunity, I want to take more from this business.

So that later, years later, not to regret some unrealized moments.

- It is quite obvious to me, as a former athlete, that all your achievements on the ice have been developed not so much due to natural talent, but through colossal, sometimes painful work.

That is, constant violence against oneself.

What is there to love here?

- It seems to me that the attitude to training as violence persists until the age of 16, that is, until you are too old.

With age, you begin to understand what and why you are doing.

Someone at this stage finishes with sports, goes to study, but those who remain do it quite consciously.

- And what's the fun?

- Yes, in everything!

I have been on the ice for, consider, 20 years, and, apparently, a certain addiction has been developed during this time.

You can no longer do without training, although, of course, sometimes it happens that you come home and want one thing: to lie down, look at the ceiling and that no one touches you.

But there is competition, adrenaline, the audience, the feeling of a good skate when it happens, the expectation of marks in the kiss and edge zone side by side with a coach who feels the same feelings as yourself.

You will not get such emotions anywhere else.

And in life after sports, it seems to me that athletes lack this most strongly.

Whatever you do.

- One of the features of this season is that there are no clear, understandable and familiar guidelines.

What are your goals?

— I have two new and unusual programs.

Free - in general, one continuous mystery, continuous flirting with the public, which I am not too used to.

When I performed this program at the test skates at Megasport, there was a moment during the step sequence when I stopped for a while, playing out some movements, but in fact not doing anything special at all.

And at that moment I suddenly caught the reaction of the audience and felt how much this reaction was starting to turn me on.

For me, the entire program is about that.

That's why I love riding it.

What about jumping?

At the tournament in Megasport, you didn’t get along very well with them.

- We will continue to jump them.

I won’t say that my content is some kind of extraordinary, but it is quite competitive at the present time.

In jump predictions, I don't want to go too far.

I have no desire to show as many quadruples as possible, although at one time Svetlana Vladimirovna (Sokolovskaya. -

) tried to do this with varying success.

Apparently, at a certain age, you begin to understand that there is not much point in chasing quantity.

It is much more interesting to ride when everything is balanced.

- I heard from your coach how sincerely you were happy for Mark Kondratyuk when he won the Russian championship and qualified for Beijing, but surely there was a huge disappointment from your own result?

“There was a lot of devastation, that’s true.

It's hard not to get into the tournament to which you have been going all your adult life and to which, in fact, all your work has been directed for many years.

After all, we all, one way or another, skate for the Olympics.

And when, at the most decisive moment, your “trailer” suddenly unfastens from the train, and for the second time…

Was it harder to realize this the first time?

- Incomparable.

I can hardly even describe in words what I felt then.

Perhaps one of the reasons for this perception was that at that time I was, in fact, yesterday's junior and my head was not working very well yet.

It really felt like the end of the world had come.

I coped with that condition only thanks to the coach.

Last year, everything was perceived a little easier.

More mature.

Although for a while I didn’t even train.

Couldn't force yourself?

- Rather, I did not see the point.

He came to the rink to help with the little ones, while Svetlana Vladimirovna and Mark Kondratyuk worked first at the training camp, and then at the European Championship.

The First Channel Cup loomed somewhere very far away, especially since I had no idea whether I would skate there.

In a word, I had several months to somehow switch, look around, think.

- Did you have any occupation that allows you to really escape from professional problems?

- Studying became such an occupation for me, especially since almost immediately after the Russian championship it was necessary to urgently prepare for the winter session.

After all, I didn’t have the opportunity, like most other students, to go to college every day, but at the same time I understood that it was impossible to start, I had to try to pass all tests and exams promptly and well.

It really took my mind off a lot of negative thoughts.

Like the winter shows.

I skated in the play "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", which was staged by Pyotr Chernyshev and Ari Zakarian.

It was also a new experience for me.

• Alexander Samarin

• RIA News

• © Alexander Wilf

- Have you ever skated in performances before?

- Somehow it didn't work out.

And this time we worked mainly on open park skating rinks, wandered all over the Moscow region.

Sometimes there were two performances a day: we arrived, skated the show, jumped on the bus, and after a few hours you go out on the ice in another city.

And you never know what conditions you will be in.

Sometimes during the entire performance it snowed and had to ride almost on snowdrifts, sometimes props got stuck in traffic jams - carts, stones, picks.

I remember that we arrived in one of the cities due to traffic five minutes before the start of the performance, there were no props, everyone was in shock, we barely had time to change clothes, in general, we had to improvise right along the way: to replace the lack of carts and shovels with jumps to make the audience bored did not have time.

I won’t say that I’m ready to ride in such shows all the time, but at that moment, psychologically, it just saved me: for a week and a half I just plunged into a completely different reality, disconnected from everything.

I didn’t always even understand what city we were riding in: at seven or eight in the morning a bus picked you up, at midnight or even later you return home, fall into bed, and early in the morning the alarm rings again.

- And do you watch the television "Ice Age"?

“There is simply no time for that.

Now, if I were invited to this project ...

- Would you go?

- If it was combined with my training schedule, I think so.

- Many current skaters treat this show as a product, what to hide, second-class.

— I look at it a little differently.

Firstly, this is a performance in front of the audience, that is, you are guaranteed to get a reaction and additional emotions in return.

Secondly, I would be really interested in trying to skate in pairs.

- In the course of your sports career, did such an idea occur to you?

- In terms of training exercises, we sometimes did some kind of paired runs.

But this is so, for the general development.

Kind of interactive.

Skating in pairs at Lednikovo is another thing.

You have to learn to feel a partner, to master some new elements.

This skill will definitely not be superfluous.

Plus, it's competitive.

Plus - new acquaintances, media exposure and so on.

So, from my point of view, this is quite an interesting project.

- I'm actually surprised that you were never offered to try pair skating.

And you came out tall, and your arms are long, and you are not deprived of strength ...

“These thoughts came to me.

But I was aware that I should have thought about it earlier, not at my current age.

And now - well, where?

Especially since I had back problems.

And in pair skating, this is almost the main tool.

There is no strong back - there is nothing to do there.

- Is the first stage of the Russian Grand Prix comparable in terms of expectations with the first major start of previous years?

- I’m seriously skating not for two seasons or three, but for a lot of years.

I went on the ice many times as part of the ISU Grand Prix, I have been stewing in this mess for a long time, so it’s a little difficult for me to rebuild my mind in the sense that the competitions that are being held now are not the Russian Cup stage.

- Why is the Russian Cup bad in a sports context?

- At the age of 15, I treated this start as very important and significant.

Then it became a passage for me, leading to the main season.

Now, it turns out, it turned out to be important again, since it is a selection for both the national championship and the March final of the entire series.

But this thought takes some getting used to.