“At the age of 15, I still couldn’t master the quadruple”: Gumennik - about jumping and music, medicine and computer science, faith and anger

- In one of the interviews, your mother talked about the times when the family had to live in a communal apartment in rather cramped circumstances.

When you grow up, understanding how much is spent on figure skating, does it impose any obligations in terms of achieving results?

- Well, yes, when so much has been invested, sometimes you think that perhaps most of the efforts are already behind.

And it gives some additional motivation.

I don’t remember very well those times when we lived in a communal apartment, because I was very small, but I never even thought about what I owe to someone.

I have a very good environment.

Everyone believes in me so much that I myself understand: I have someone to try for.

- In order to - what?

- First of all, simply because I like to ride.

Of course, not always and not every workout is a pleasure, sometimes you have to force yourself to endure.

But, for example, I like to jump clean quads in training, and for this you need to constantly maintain a certain level of form.

I also wanted to add that any person has a need to strive for success and recognition in a business that requires enormous efforts.

I satisfy this need with figure skating.

If we talk about some kind of sports result, my goal is major international competitions.

World Championships, Olympic Games.

Usually everyone says that they dream of the gold of the Games, but I am slightly expanding this topic for myself.

Because I understand that the Olympics happen once every four years, and such a chance may not come and be realized, even if absolutely incredible efforts are made.

It may be trite to be unlucky at the right time.

- You grew up in a rather unusual family for a professional athlete, where children are brought up in the best traditions of Orthodoxy.

Where kindness, love for one's neighbor, humility are put at the forefront.

But big sport is not a very kind story in many respects.

Was there an internal contradiction in connection with this?

- There is no direct contradiction, although I admit that big sport can incite people to some kind of envy, selfishness, pride, or some other not very pleasant qualities.

You just have to try to contain them.

Absolutely difficult situations, so that they went against my faith and upbringing, I did not happen.

- Before entering the institute, you graduated from an Orthodox medical gymnasium.

Why was the further choice made in favor of informatics, and not medicine?

— In fact, initially I chose medicine.

Passed exactly those exams that were required for admission to the university.

I even applied to Moscow State University, although I knew that, most likely, I would not pass.

I failed.

Accordingly, I began to think about what to do next.

With regard to medicine, I came to the conclusion that it would be too difficult to combine study and sports, since you need to attend lectures and seminars, and not study in absentia.

Plus, the training is quite long, and I like bioinformatics and genetics.

I began to think about how to develop in this direction, and decided that it was worth trying through computer science.

I have not yet fully decided on my future profession, but after graduating from my bachelor's degree, I hope I will have a fairly wide range of choices.

- I have been following your performances for several years now, and the feeling that with all your ballet and musicality you calculate every movement, every step on the ice does not leave me.

Is this an illusion or is it really true?

“Maybe it's just too much concentration.

I rarely count.

If you skate the entire program cleanly, you don’t need to count anything at all.

When mistakes happen, they are usually the same ones that happen in training.

That is, I already know in advance where to transfer which cascade in this case, how to redo this or that jump, if somewhere it didn’t work out.

“Have you ever been lost in this regard?”

- This happened, of course.

When you skate the free skate, the physical load is so great that at the end of the program it becomes quite difficult to think.

I remember in Moscow, at the fourth stage of the Russian Grand Prix, the last combination I was going to jump was a triple lutz with a triple toe loop and a double loop.

And only at the last moment, already entering the first jump, I remembered that I already had a triple sheepskin coat, and switched to a double one.

- At the second stage of the Grand Prix, you jumped the final lutz combination with two loops.

At the December jumping championship, they issued a series of quadruple and five triple loops in a row.

Why so much love for this jump?

- At one time, when we were just starting to master the triples, my sheepskin coat was rather unimportant, I could not jump it.

I first learned salchow, then rittberger.

When I had to start learning the “three-three” cascade, I still didn’t succeed with a sheepskin coat.

Therefore, we began to train the loop “rittberger - rittberger”.

So it turned out that this cascade became my first and I mastered it very well.

- Last fall, Evgeni Plushenko, speaking in the show, made 21 Bedouin jumps in a row.

Is it possible to repeat this?

- Once, for the sake of interest, I also jumped Bedouin in a row.

Something like ten times, probably happened.

Then the head is spinning out of habit.

- It just seemed to me, judging by your last skates, that you have some kind of problem with the Bedouin jump.

- In competitions it is difficult to do it with the highest quality.

By the end of the rental, you get tired, you start to save energy, so you perform the same Bedouin somehow smaller, in a lightweight version.

If I jump it separately, it will turn out much better.

- Not so long ago, answering a question about the prospect of a five-jump, you said that it is possible if you make an under-rotation in the initial phase.

Do I understand correctly that your favorite loop is not the element where such prerotation is possible?

- But why?

You can steal half a turn during repulsion on all jumps, except for the Axel, perhaps.

There's no more than a quarter to do.

- You have a very good centering in rotations and a very correct grouping in jumps.

Whose merit?

- When I first came to Veronika Anatolyevna (Daineko. -

), we very carefully began to analyze all the jumps, starting with single ones.

And with Rafael Vladimirovich (Harutyunyan. -

) they also did a lot.

Five years ago, when I left the school of Alexei Nikolaevich Mishin and did not yet know where I would continue my career, I flew to Harutyunyan in Los Angeles.

For the next three years, I didn’t have such an opportunity, but we decided to try to study with him online.

— Can you tell us a little more about your collaboration?

I know that your aunt took you to Harutyunyan for an internship.

It turns out that she was familiar with the coach?

- Not.

Rafael Vladimirovich was already a very famous specialist, he worked with Nathan Chen, and I always liked this skater more than others.

So I set out to find an opportunity to come to Harutyunyan not only for training, but for watching.

I really wanted to hear what such a specialist would say about my skating.

Parents helped to find the coordinates, phoned ...

- It is unlikely that you then expected that training with Harutyunyan would be free for you?

Have you thought about what such a trip could result in?

- I didn’t have my own money at that time, so I really hoped for my aunt’s help.

When we arrived in Los Angeles, Rafael Vladimirovich immediately treated me very well, which, by the way, strongly supported me.

I was already 15 years old, and I still could not master the quadruple - I only jumped triples.

Which, in principle, is not very good.

At the age of 15, single skaters usually already perform quads, as well as a triple axel.

- Was it very depressing?

— It was unpleasant.

I remember that in St. Petersburg I often came to training and did nothing else, I just tried to jump this triple axel.

I understood that I had very few chances to make this jump at the competition, since it didn’t go out in working mode, but I stubbornly inserted the axel into the program with some illusory hope: what if it works out?

But Harutyunyan, despite all my jumping problems, immediately said that I was very talented and that I would have everything, just a little later.

And that he has absolutely no doubt about it.

It gave me a lot of confidence back then.

- Is Harutyunyan's idea to start jumping a triple axel from the "boat"?

- Yes.

At first it was very difficult and unusual to make such a call.

It feels like a completely different jump, but the old sensations that have been memorized over the years are sitting in the muscles.

Therefore, it was not so easy to rebuild.

Later, I thought that perhaps the coach's idea was just to distinguish between the previous version of the jump and the one that we began to study.

So that my old mistakes are completely gone.

• RIA News

• © Alexander Wilf

— What does your cooperation with Harutyunyan look like now?

- I periodically call him, ask for advice on certain issues.

Rafael Vladimirovich suggests in which direction to work, what to pay attention to.

This, of course, is less effective than face-to-face training - the speed of information exchange is not the same.

After all, I, too, cannot always convey in words the complete picture that I have.

Perhaps Harutyunyan would have noticed something else in my training if there was an opportunity to visit him again.

- Many Russian specialists are quite jealous when their athlete expresses a desire to work with another person.

Not your case?

- Probably not.

Veronika Anatolyevna was and remains my main coach, and, of course, she wants me to progress and my results grow.

After all, coaches also get some experience from such cooperation.

And probably, they always understand what exactly goes to their athlete as a plus.

- Two years ago, you gained quite a lot in growth.

Did it affect the jumps?

- At first, yes.

It seems that the sensations on the ice remained the same, but he started to jump - and it turned out to be something completely different.

Almost at every training session I had to re-grope for technique, and this search took a lot of time.

Plus, there were injuries.

Not even so much injuries, but problems associated with growth: some kind of sprains, muscle spasms that did not allow to train at full strength.

- Choreographic skills also change as you grow?

- Less.

In a jump by a centimeter, he led his hand in the wrong direction - and it already turns out not quite right.

There is no such thing in choreography.

- Does the fact that you are in a closer relationship with music than most skaters have any influence?

Yes, it helps a lot.

I don’t know how well I manage to convey a deeper understanding of some works, but I think this is my advantage.

— Who is involved in the selection of music for your programs?

- Veronika Anatolyevna chooses mainly together with the director.

But I can't skate to some music that I don't like.

I know I just won't do well.

Therefore, I take part in the discussions.

It's quite important for me to take music that is very emotionally intense.

So that you can transfer some information in three or four minutes.

Skating under something calm and unobtrusive is not very advantageous.

It's hard for me to express myself under such compositions.

- The famous coach Valentin Nikolaev once said that if a skater, entering a quadruple jump, allows himself to really enter the image, he will leave it lying on his back.

“Two things are very important here.

Firstly, in training, you must also constantly enter into the image, train this state.

And secondly, you need to be able to switch before the jump.

That is, to ride, to do some combinations, being as much as possible in the image, and a couple of seconds before the jump, switch and think only about the jump.

- Two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu used to skate the same works for several seasons.

So it was, for example, with Chopin's Ballad No. 1, with Seimei, and each time Yuzuru skated in these productions in different ways.

Would you be interested in such a development of the program?

- Yes.

It is probably difficult to perform the same program without a break.

And to return to something after a few seasons and somehow with a different meaning to roll it, it seems to me that it would be really interesting.

- Do you associate your post-sports future with figure skating?

- If you're lucky, then probably yes.

But not as a coach.

- A person with your mathematical mindset can always return to his sport as a technical specialist.

- Well, I don't know yet.

I have an advantage: I have been skating for 16 years and I understand everything pretty well.

And in this area of ​​activity, it seems to me, I could do something good.

You can approach your future profession from the side of programming.

Deduce the optimal technique with the help of some model characteristics of a particular athlete, make a video analysis.

- Since we are talking about technical matters, the question involuntarily arises: how much do you agree with the system when, with absolute equality of assessments, the one who has some component above wins?

Do you think this is fair?

I mean, of course, your loss to Yevgeny Semenenko at the Russian Championship - despite the fact that the points you scored turned out to be the same.

- It seems to me that it would be more fair to award two gold medals in such cases.

Because it is logically incomprehensible why points for free skate become decisive, and not for short skate, where the skating technique is more evaluated?

Although this system suits me in principle.

The main thing is that everyone knows in advance by what criterion the winner will be determined if equality in points suddenly happens.

It is clear that a situation like the one that happened with us is extremely rare, but you still need to try at least one hundredth, but gain more than your opponent.

Are you very upset when you lose?

- In Krasnoyarsk, I was not upset, because I received one of the best marks in my career.

Frustration happens when you realize that the results are declining.

- Have you ever experienced anger towards an opponent?

- To someone personally - no.

In general, the aggressive state rolled.

It even helps.

The main thing is not to extinguish the adrenaline, but simply to direct it in the right direction.

On adrenaline, for example, my jump height increases.

That is, I can perform better if I do everything correctly in terms of technique.

And the strength is getting bigger.

- With a high jump, isn't there a risk of twisting the momentum?

- There is.

Not even so much to twist as to fall out of the jump.

Therefore, it is very important to have good technique, which, when applying more force, does not take the body off the axis, but simply allows you to open up earlier and land more comfortably.

Do you still play the piano?

- Sometimes.

Not so long ago I received an invitation from the music school where I studied to play a couple of pieces at a February concert.

Will have to take them apart.

- What does dismantle mean?

- I don’t play from the sheet, so I need to practice before going on stage.

So you're such a guest celebrity?

A well-known figure skater who can still play the piano a little more?

- It turns out, yes.

When I started studying music, at our school concerts one of the jury members was grandmaster Mark Evgenievich Taimanov, who was called the best chess player among pianists and the best pianist among chess players.

Well, then they began to say about me that I am the best pianist among figure skaters and the best figure skater among pianists.