"There should always be an irritant": Lebedeva on Koneva's defeat, a cool head and a downpour at the Sydney Games

The most intriguing event of the third day of the Athletics Week was the women's triple jump competition, where the duel of the 34-year-old world champion, Russian Ekaterina Koneva and the 25-year-old Vitebsk resident, winner of the 2017 European Youth Championship Violetta Skvortsova was anticipated.

The Belarusian athlete jumped to 13.85 in the first attempt. Koneva got this result with her third jump (13.87), but in the same round Skvortsova managed to break away, fixing 13.98, and Violetta's fifth exit to the sector turned into a championship 14.13.

Additional interest in the women's triple final was dictated by the fact that the daughters of Olympic champions Irina Privalova and Tatyana Lebedeva performed in this type of program. Neither one nor the other claimed high places in their discipline (Maria Privalova remained eighth, Anastasia Matveeva showed the seventh result), and this made it possible to take advantage of a unique situation: to watch the girls' competitions under Lebedeva's commentary. An athlete for whom there are no secrets in the triple jump, as well as in the long jump.

"Physical strength in the triple jump is not the main thing," Tatiana explained to me in a low voice during the competition. – It is much more important to keep a cool head and be able to thoroughly follow the instructions of the coach. Take African Americans, who at different times performed in the triple. Physically, they were noticeably superior to us, they were always perfectly prepared, bouncing off the track like cats. But the nervous system has always been a vulnerable point - in Africans it is too mobile. And everyone knew: if an African-American opponent suddenly became nervous beyond measure, he could begin to "walk" a run, and in this case, jumps, as a rule, go wrong. It is clear that this is not a general rule, but I have observed such situations many times.

Although there were exceptions. For example, the Cuban Yamila Aldama could be. And two-time Olympic champion Françoise Mbango has always looked like a person who is exclusively on her own wavelength. She knew how to blinker herself, abstract from everything around her and not react to anything. In the sector, the athlete sometimes switched off to such an extent that I, looking at her, did not cease to wonder: how can such a calm person jump at all? Our appearance is explosive.

- It turns out that courage is a hindrance for a jumper?

- Absolutely not. It's just that it also needs to be controlled. Competitions are long, six attempts, and you need to be able to control emotions, not let them break the process.

- I think you, like the rest of the audience, expected to see that the tone of the whole tournament in the triple jump would be set by Ekaterina Koneva, and not Violetta Skvortsova. Still, Katya has been performing at a high level for more than ten years, jumping over 15 meters. But everything turned out a little differently. What, in your opinion, is the main problem? Except for rain and headwinds, of course.

- I think the fact is that Katya has not competed for a long time. You lose the habit of starts, you lose the feeling of serious rivalry. You seem to have known your competitors inside the country for a long time and well, they cease to motivate. But if an athlete does not have a strong irritating factor, there will be no result, this is the law. Opponents force you to train in a completely different way, thanks to this you begin to feel your own strength, and as if wings grow behind your back.

But when you stew in your own juice for a long time, the motivation to grow and move forward begins to go away. It becomes not so easy to get involved in a serious struggle. Who knew that Skvortsova would prove herself so powerfully this season? Now we see that it is a really serious competitor. Although I remember it at one time not so much for jumping as for the story of the anthem.

"Remind me?"

- In 2017, Violetta won the European Junior Championship in Italy, and instead of the Belarusian anthem, the composition of Bosnia and Herzegovina was included in the awarding ceremony. And she left the pedestal. Then this video collected an incredible number of views and comments on the Internet. As a result, the organizers had to hold the award ceremony again. In subsequent years, I did not see any particularly outstanding results in this athlete at the adult level. But this season it really blossomed. Textured, good girl, with long arms and legs, a potential medalist of the future Olympic Games, I would say. But I think that at the Znamensky Brothers Memorial next weekend, the competition between Skvortsova and Koneva may turn out to be much more acute. Just like that, Katya will not give in.

- The high result of the Belarusian in the penultimate, fifth attempt is a tactic, or a happy coincidence, what do you think?

- It happens in different ways. At one time, I never tried to give my best in the first jump. I didn't try to reach the maximum speed, I did everything very carefully, I controlled my every movement. First of all, the task was to clearly perform the takeoff, not to step over the bar when pushing off, to make a good test attempt, in other words. You can take risks and turn on recklessness in the finale. But there is no single recipe here: it happens when everything coincides in the first jump.

"What's it like to jump in bad weather?"

- If you take my own experience, at the Olympics in Sydney I lost just because of this. I'm still sure of it. At those Games, we did not find ourselves in the easiest conditions of the Australian spring, when it can be 20 degrees during the day, and by the evening the air temperature began to drop rapidly. In qualifying, I showed the best result, I made the first of the evening attempts as usual carefully, and I didn't even worry when the Bulgarian Tereza Marinova jumped to 15.20, because she herself showed 15.32 shortly before the competition and felt great in all training sessions, having already arrived in Sydney. And then the downpour began.

"I still remember those piercing Sydney rains.

- The competition was then stopped for some time, because there were no umbrellas in the sector. But I managed to get almost completely wet and cold. In this case, all the energy of the body begins to go not to jump, but to warm up. Plus, a strong headwind has risen. In general, everything is one to one: the spikes got wet and became heavy, and no matter what I did, it was no longer possible to show the result.

- Spare shoes are not provided in such cases?

- Then it was not - FILA made only one pair for me. I then tried to treat the defeat philosophically, telling myself that they don't win the Olympics for free, but after those Games, even when it was supposed to be extremely hot, as in Spain or Greece, I began to carry a huge trunk with me, where everything was simple: two or three pairs of shoes, six pairs of socks, windproof windbreakers and pants. I must say, it helped me more than once in England. It's raining, everyone is getting wet, and here I am - hop! I opened the bag after another attempt - and in a second it was all dry.

- When you have your own child in the sector, does it make it very difficult to watch competitions?

"I wouldn't say. I can't influence the result, can I? Well, yes, sometimes you want to push a little, stir up your daughter, shout: "Wake up, start competing!". At the same time, I understand that Nastya herself must learn how to perform, find her own eyeliner scheme, understand how to control her own state, gain experience in this regard, in other words. I understand perfectly well that my daughter is under a lot of pressure from the fact that she is constantly compared to me, so the only way I can help during the tournament is to support. Like a mother.