What do you like about your coaching team?
Everything. Evgeni Vladimirovitch and everyone else on the team are like family. I never thought of leaving the team. We know each other and understand each other. We have walked together through ups and downs. The coaches complement each other and are not similar to each other.
Which of your competitors inspire you?
Here at the European Championship this is Kevin Aymoz. I like his running qualities and his programs this season. It's a new style and it's great. Time is advancing and new styles are emerging. I also respect and like Nathan Chen. I know him very well and I like his jumps, his worldview and he's a nice guy.
How do you see your development this season?
With every competition I like more to appear, to feel the arena, the audience, to present my programs. I feel more comfortable on the ice. The most important thing is that I enjoy myself, charging myself with my own energy. I like to show what we are developing in training. Maybe I will add a quad for the World Cup, either the Salchow or the Rittberger (loop), I don't know yet. But for that I need a little more confidence.
As you said, you evolved with every competition, but you failed in the free skate at the Grand Prix Finale. How did you overcome this setback?
When I returned from the Grand Prix Finale, I tried to tick this off. Every athlete has a dropout. But I felt myself that it wasn't a problem, just a little dropout that I don't have to take seriously. Of course I wanted to run well there, but it didn't work.
I heard you had a problem with your blades.
Yes, there was something, but now it is pointless to remember it. I simply prepared myself step by step for the Russian championship, no matter what was back then. I got sick before the championship, caught a cold, but still went to training, worked. Until the championship, I got better and had more confidence.
You write poems.
It is easier for me to process things if I write them down on a piece of paper. It is in my soul. If something hurts you want to talk to someone about it, you want to let it out. For me, writing poetry is something that calms me down. I wrote a new poem on the morning of the short program, a love poem. I made up a song yesterday. That happens often, I sing and think of a text for it and sometimes I write it down and it becomes a poem. Our sport is like a song or a poem and we write it (on the ice). We write our program like a poem.
Where do you like to write?
I often make up poems when I'm in the car. I come home, sit in the car for an hour and don't go upstairs and write poems. I am alone in a small space and nothing distracts me. Or I almost always write on the plane. I sit there with nothing to do and remember things and then I write a poem about what was there, how it was, how I felt.
Do you want to publish your poems?
At this European Championship I gave many interviews and showed my poems for the first time. But it is very personal. If that was my work, I could show it. But why am I writing poems? Because I want to process something and I don't want to show everyone that. I liked to show my poems at the EM because a lot of people wanted to see them, but it's not that easy. You open up and you become more vulnerable. The other person knows your weak point and can meet you there later. I was happy to show you and I don't need more. I know people who like my poems and I do it for them. I also started a text, it's called "All about her", that's kind of a story. I am doing this for the first time and I don't know what will come out of it. The story comes from writing. I am in the flow of writing and my fingers are writing by themselves. It's very interesting and cool.
Have you known this girl to whom you dedicate the lyrics for a longer time?
I've known her for a long time. I dedicate many of my poems to her and I can write with my whole heart and soul for her.
I hope that she likes the poems.
I can say that I am genuinely pleased that the poems are accepted. It used to be said that ‚he found it somewhere’ or just ‚thank you ', but now they are received in a special way and that is very valuable.
You are a very sensitive person. To what extent is this an advantage or a disadvantage in sport?
You have to know how to use it. A situation can occupy me a lot and sits in me for a long time. But now at the competitions I'm trying to learn to let go of it, to be a little harder, so to speak. I try not to take anything negative to heart, to push it away from me. I don't want my feelings and emotions to take me anywhere. At the Russian championship, for example, I ended up falling in the freestyle sequence. I knew that I had managed the jumps quite well with the exception of a quad toeloop and I just wanted to do everything in the sequence. But the legs gave way, the emotions rushed ahead, and I couldn't keep up or control myself.
You once said that your program should flow like a river. Why did you choose this comparison?
Everyone has their way in life and follows their path no matter what they do. A river does the same, it flows and flows and never stops. It flows through the mountains and always finds its way and I think it's the same for everyone. You have to find your way, make a decision at the right moment. In the program you also want to show a small part of your life. That's why I had this picture that a program should flow, one should pass into the other. This may be difficult to understand, but that's how I imagine it. It was like that in the freestyle at the European Championships in Moscow, it was different here. I can't find a comparison, but it was different anyway.
Sometimes you live in your own world, forget or lose things like your medal and your phone, sleep through the training. At the Lombardia Trophy a year and a half ago, you forgot the Axel in the program.
And at the European Championships in Moscow (2018) I forgot my skates on the way to training. Yes, maybe I live in my own world, but I like that. I don't do it on purpose, these things just happen to me. In Moscow I had changed and started warming up and then noticed that the skates were not there. But in the evening I ran a good freestyle. The river may carry me in the right direction and to what is best for me. Here in Graz I was on my way to training, waited for the bus downstairs and suddenly realized that I had forgotten my bag with my clothes. But I had my skates with me. I have often forgotten my accreditation, my phone like here on the bus. But such incidents distract me from the stress. There was no fiasco. In Moscow, Evgeni Vladimirovitch laughed and said, 'You are a clown.‘
What are your plans after the EM (Чемпионат Европы?)?
I want to take a break for a few days, go to the sauna, meet friends, talk to my friends like Makar (Ignatov) and celebrate my victory. I want to shed all that tension, go home to my dog. He is with Olga Germanovna (Glinka, choreographer), she sends me photos and I miss him so much. I want to rest a little and then think about my preparation for the World Cup. We have to put together a plan of what we want to do and when.
Thank you for the interview and all the best for the rest of the season.
Tatjana Flade spoke with Dmitri Aliev.
Отредактировано Parisienne (15.02.2020 12:10:18)
