TAHbKA
Cats and garlic lover
- Messages
- 22,405
Elena Vaytsekhovskaya's interview with Evgenia Medvedeva for ria.ru
We are sitting with Medvedeva near a pond right next to her once home rink. It seems the conversation should be flowing, but it's an illusion. In a couple of hours the skater will board the plane to Frankfurt, then Toronto and then...
EV: Evgenia, did you and your mom find a flat?
EM: Yes, of course. We chose it on the internet. How do you come to a foreign country without having a place to live?
EV: I.e. the flat owner will be meeting you in the airport with the sign and the key?
EM: No, Jason Brown will be meeting us. He'll take us to our new home. And starting 18th I have a detailed training plan.
EV: For almost 3 years you competed a lot and never lost. Now you are starting from the scratch: a new coach, a new life, no certainties whether you'll be able to adapt and what the result will be. Are you worried about a possible failure?
EM: I'm a very down to earth person by nature. I will only regret the result if realize I could have done better but hadn't. I can admit myself some unpleasant things. If I understand it's my ceiling and it's all I can do at that moment I will just as well admit I ended up on a place I should had. My place.
I understand am entering a new life. I've never lived in a different country, never worked with the foreign specialists, never ate unfamiliar food for more than 2-3 weeks. Everything changes. A blank page.
EV: Is it scary?
EM: No. Am looking forward. Am not even thinking right now I can lose to someone. I try to look a couple of years ahead. First of all I want to remain healthy. It's my main goal. I just need to make sure the goal does not change the result and find the right balance. In the amount of work, the food, mental set, physical condition.
EV: All your life before the Olympics in Korea was limited by the rink. You were either practicing, sleeping or getting ready for the practice.
EM: True. During all the years I have been sleeping.
EV: It seems you let yourself go now. You have a free time, an opportunity to try a new life where there isn't that much skating even if only because you parted your ways with the coach and don't have a possibility to skate every day. How do you take that `new' life?
EM: It's not that I let it go. More like I opened my eyes and looked around. Yes, I had a goal - the Olympics. That's what I aimed for, looking forward for the Olympics and nothing else. I hardly had any friends or interests even though am a person with different sides. I never met anyone, I just never stayed really in touch lacking time and sometimes will. There were just practices. But I guess I was growing inside.
At the winter, when I was injured and couldn’t skate all of the sudden I thought: what if I retire from the sports and end up having no friends, no interests, no abilities, no personal life - nothing? And when I opened my eyes after the Olympics the life not as if flowed in a different route, but became a full river out of a stream. I found friends, new interests, perhaps a future profession which I might like and might decide to change 150 times over.
EV: Will you be able to give up that life willingly? To put yourself into the same boundaries and follow your goal? Will you want to?
EM: I will want t. I think I will be able to drop everything for the result. Most important - to keep it real. Not to do things that would hurt me or my beloved ones. I often think that my mom and grandmother sacrificed their lives for my skating. If I feel that I don't live up to their expectations... I don't want to feel it.
EV: I.e. you do feel guilty towards your relatives sometimes?
EM: Very seldom. My parents understand the most important thing is to keep working. There is no result - we'll keep working. There is a result? Great. So we'll keep working. If I don't do what I must - then I feel guilty.
EV: How fast were you able to recover after the Olympics?
EM: It was a long process. My body and mind recover very fast both mentally and physically. But after the Olympics it took a while. Guess I can only now say am mentally fully recovered.
EV: I heard a version you are moving to Canada not in order to keep practicing, but because of the shows opportunities.
EM: Let me reveal a secret: I have enough opportunities even now.
EV: Was Brian Orser you only coaching option?
EM: Yes.
EV: Why him?
EM: Because Yuna Kim. It's the first thing that crossed my mind when I started considering a coaching switch. Yuna won the Vancouver Olympics at the age of 19 and was 2nd in Sochi at the age of 23. I will be 22 in China. Of course, it's not just her. Orser has so many athletes who are called `old' in figure skating, who have participated more than one Olympics. Kim is one of them.
EV: Did you mind him accepting so many new skaters to his group?
EM: Not at all. I always skated and practiced in a group with a constant competition. I don't mind that at all. Besides, most of Brian's group are guys. Second he does have a personal approach to each skater and he constantly emphasizes it. Hence he'll have enough time and attention for each. Besides, I like it that there will be so many top skaters in front of me who can give me much more than what I had before.
EV: How were you able to keep in shape taking you had no ice time?
EM: The shape I had at the Olympics I didn't keep and there was no need. I was quite exhausted at the Olympics, I was getting ready to be on the top shape at the LP. I had the minimum weight and the maximum mental readiness. Hence I had to recover a long time after the Olympics.
I gained some weight, but not much. I have facility at home I can use to keep my muscles in shape. As for the actual skating shape no athlete can be on the top without the intense practices. That's what am going to Canada for now.
EV: Have Orser voiced any requests?
EM: No. Think he realized fully well when we spoke in Korea I will be skating to the top of my abilities. I.e. circumstances. If there is an ice - I'll skate. I didn't have an ice in Moscow. I.e. there was no base. I had a couple of hours of ice before the show in Japan and was able to recover some jumps. I really wanted to.
EV: Too much time with no jumps?
EM: Too much time with no jumps. It felt so great when the jumps came back.
EV: I was always curious: what do you think about during the jump?
EM: Everything! Thousands of thoughts cross my mind. I also manage to see what is going on around me and trying to control everything.
EV: Have you discussed the new programmes with Orser?
EM: No. First of all I want to hear different points of view. Not only from Brian, but from Tracey and David Wilson, who will choreograph my programmes.
EV: Do you know those specialists?
EM: I know David, Tracey not so much. It's funny, but I know their athlets much better - Hanyu, Fernandez, Brown.
EV: What would you want?
EM: Speaking of the season in general I plan missing no competitions. The open skates, the GP events. I would love to change my style. First of all I have changed and guess I can't remain the same on the ice. I take the world and the life differently.
Am sure now when I'll get to Canada things in my head will be turned upside down. I want to try something new on the ice. There are so many characters I have never skated, not even tried.
EV: What jumping content will you aim for?
EM: I have some thoughts but it's premature voicing them.
EV: You must be thrilled with the rules change that limit the amount of jumps in the 2nd part of the programme.
EM: Those changes built the base for the future work. If we were told we have to put all the jumps in the 2nd part I would shut up and do that.
EV: Have you always liked the programmes you skated.
EM: I loved my first senior programme where I was depicting a deaf girl. I loved `Karenina'. On the other hand the programme I won my 2nd worlds with I didn't like at the beginning at all. Only towards the end I found it's flavour. I skated it, broke the world record and I loved it for allowing reaching my goals. `Karenina', on the other hand, blows my mind. Especially after those `January stars' where only the dress was lovely. I was all in `Karenina' programme.
EV: Oksana Bauyl's coach once said if the skater is dwelling the character when entering the triple jump he'll finish that jump on his back. How much can you afford not thinking of the elements when skating?
EM: `Karenina' allowed me. When I was skating at the Olympics I let my body do it's job and was all in the character. I didn't even try to imagine I was just skating the LP in the practice. I had this amazing inner freedom. If you only knew what went through my head when I started the steps sequence!
EV: What?
EM: I was skating an asking myself `do you realize it's the Olympics? Realize millions or many a milliard of people are watching you? Understand if you make a slightest mistake all will be gone?` and answered myself `Realize!'. `Awesome?' `Awesome! Let's keep having fun!'. There was no stress.
EV: Have you ever thought why the Olympic champions with the some minor exceptions never made it to the next Olympics? Why Baul, Lipinski, Sotnikova haven't stayed?
EM: I guess it's the fear to lose what you gained in all these years. The will to keeps skating is there, I think, always, just that once the person gets an opportunity to try another life it sucks you in. Not many understand sports and normal life not always can go hand in hand.
EV: I got to meet a wrestler, who after winning the Olympics at the age of 23 retired saying `I don't want the life to go nearby while I practice.'. A familiar feeling?
EM: No, I never had it. I had a normal childhood - I was playing with the other kids, just in the gym and not outdoors, but I had fun. I don't think now the life goes nearby. I graduated the highschool and got accepted to the uni.
EV: When did you learn English?
EM: I haven't really learned it. Just understood I have no choice?
EV: What do you mean?
EM: just that. I saw the foreign athletes my age or a bit older chatting with each other every competition and thought: I want to talk to you so badly, but how? Once I tried, than again.
I learned 3 words one trip, then 5 trips in another. Then read on the internet how to construct a phrase, learned some more words. I haven't even noticed but suddenly I was able not only to chat, but give interviews. Of course I make mistakes. I stumble, use a wrong grammar. But am understood. And I understand people.
EV: Is it hard for you to admit you don't know something?
EM: Not at all. There are so many things I don't know and can't do. And am not ashamed to admit it. Because it's true.
EV: How long can you keep it without figure skating till you feel uncomfortable?
EM: Little. Very little. I can't even keep still - my muscles hurt and I feel physically uncomfortable. When you don’t skate for a long time the same happens. My legs hurt. My personal peeve - when I have a day off and there is no ice my head hurts so badly, I almost feel like stacking myself in the fridge. Guess there is something in the ice that I can't do without. Besides, mentally it's hard for me to stay still.
EV: How fast do you lose your abilities when you don't practice?
EM: Very fast. You stop feeling the edges. Skating and understanding you go on the autopilot: sitting on the edge, gliding - the mind understands what needs to be done, but the legs just go sideways. As if the contact between the brain and the legs is slightly lost. You want one thing and find yourself elsewhere. My most stupid falls were because of that. The marks on the knees and elbows..
EV: Back to your departure to Canada: you must have considered how expensive your new life will be
EM: Mainly it was my mom's concern. It was her job to understand whether we are ready.
EV: And once your mom said you were ready...
EM : I understood I have to grab my skates and off to Canada.
EV: Have anyone tried to talk you out of that decision?
EM: Frankly? No one at all
We are sitting with Medvedeva near a pond right next to her once home rink. It seems the conversation should be flowing, but it's an illusion. In a couple of hours the skater will board the plane to Frankfurt, then Toronto and then...
EV: Evgenia, did you and your mom find a flat?
EM: Yes, of course. We chose it on the internet. How do you come to a foreign country without having a place to live?
EV: I.e. the flat owner will be meeting you in the airport with the sign and the key?
EM: No, Jason Brown will be meeting us. He'll take us to our new home. And starting 18th I have a detailed training plan.
EV: For almost 3 years you competed a lot and never lost. Now you are starting from the scratch: a new coach, a new life, no certainties whether you'll be able to adapt and what the result will be. Are you worried about a possible failure?
EM: I'm a very down to earth person by nature. I will only regret the result if realize I could have done better but hadn't. I can admit myself some unpleasant things. If I understand it's my ceiling and it's all I can do at that moment I will just as well admit I ended up on a place I should had. My place.
I understand am entering a new life. I've never lived in a different country, never worked with the foreign specialists, never ate unfamiliar food for more than 2-3 weeks. Everything changes. A blank page.
EV: Is it scary?
EM: No. Am looking forward. Am not even thinking right now I can lose to someone. I try to look a couple of years ahead. First of all I want to remain healthy. It's my main goal. I just need to make sure the goal does not change the result and find the right balance. In the amount of work, the food, mental set, physical condition.
EV: All your life before the Olympics in Korea was limited by the rink. You were either practicing, sleeping or getting ready for the practice.
EM: True. During all the years I have been sleeping.
EV: It seems you let yourself go now. You have a free time, an opportunity to try a new life where there isn't that much skating even if only because you parted your ways with the coach and don't have a possibility to skate every day. How do you take that `new' life?
EM: It's not that I let it go. More like I opened my eyes and looked around. Yes, I had a goal - the Olympics. That's what I aimed for, looking forward for the Olympics and nothing else. I hardly had any friends or interests even though am a person with different sides. I never met anyone, I just never stayed really in touch lacking time and sometimes will. There were just practices. But I guess I was growing inside.
At the winter, when I was injured and couldn’t skate all of the sudden I thought: what if I retire from the sports and end up having no friends, no interests, no abilities, no personal life - nothing? And when I opened my eyes after the Olympics the life not as if flowed in a different route, but became a full river out of a stream. I found friends, new interests, perhaps a future profession which I might like and might decide to change 150 times over.
EV: Will you be able to give up that life willingly? To put yourself into the same boundaries and follow your goal? Will you want to?
EM: I will want t. I think I will be able to drop everything for the result. Most important - to keep it real. Not to do things that would hurt me or my beloved ones. I often think that my mom and grandmother sacrificed their lives for my skating. If I feel that I don't live up to their expectations... I don't want to feel it.
EV: I.e. you do feel guilty towards your relatives sometimes?
EM: Very seldom. My parents understand the most important thing is to keep working. There is no result - we'll keep working. There is a result? Great. So we'll keep working. If I don't do what I must - then I feel guilty.
EV: How fast were you able to recover after the Olympics?
EM: It was a long process. My body and mind recover very fast both mentally and physically. But after the Olympics it took a while. Guess I can only now say am mentally fully recovered.
EV: I heard a version you are moving to Canada not in order to keep practicing, but because of the shows opportunities.
EM: Let me reveal a secret: I have enough opportunities even now.
EV: Was Brian Orser you only coaching option?
EM: Yes.
EV: Why him?
EM: Because Yuna Kim. It's the first thing that crossed my mind when I started considering a coaching switch. Yuna won the Vancouver Olympics at the age of 19 and was 2nd in Sochi at the age of 23. I will be 22 in China. Of course, it's not just her. Orser has so many athletes who are called `old' in figure skating, who have participated more than one Olympics. Kim is one of them.
EV: Did you mind him accepting so many new skaters to his group?
EM: Not at all. I always skated and practiced in a group with a constant competition. I don't mind that at all. Besides, most of Brian's group are guys. Second he does have a personal approach to each skater and he constantly emphasizes it. Hence he'll have enough time and attention for each. Besides, I like it that there will be so many top skaters in front of me who can give me much more than what I had before.
EV: How were you able to keep in shape taking you had no ice time?
EM: The shape I had at the Olympics I didn't keep and there was no need. I was quite exhausted at the Olympics, I was getting ready to be on the top shape at the LP. I had the minimum weight and the maximum mental readiness. Hence I had to recover a long time after the Olympics.
I gained some weight, but not much. I have facility at home I can use to keep my muscles in shape. As for the actual skating shape no athlete can be on the top without the intense practices. That's what am going to Canada for now.
EV: Have Orser voiced any requests?
EM: No. Think he realized fully well when we spoke in Korea I will be skating to the top of my abilities. I.e. circumstances. If there is an ice - I'll skate. I didn't have an ice in Moscow. I.e. there was no base. I had a couple of hours of ice before the show in Japan and was able to recover some jumps. I really wanted to.
EV: Too much time with no jumps?
EM: Too much time with no jumps. It felt so great when the jumps came back.
EV: I was always curious: what do you think about during the jump?
EM: Everything! Thousands of thoughts cross my mind. I also manage to see what is going on around me and trying to control everything.
EV: Have you discussed the new programmes with Orser?
EM: No. First of all I want to hear different points of view. Not only from Brian, but from Tracey and David Wilson, who will choreograph my programmes.
EV: Do you know those specialists?
EM: I know David, Tracey not so much. It's funny, but I know their athlets much better - Hanyu, Fernandez, Brown.
EV: What would you want?
EM: Speaking of the season in general I plan missing no competitions. The open skates, the GP events. I would love to change my style. First of all I have changed and guess I can't remain the same on the ice. I take the world and the life differently.
Am sure now when I'll get to Canada things in my head will be turned upside down. I want to try something new on the ice. There are so many characters I have never skated, not even tried.
EV: What jumping content will you aim for?
EM: I have some thoughts but it's premature voicing them.
EV: You must be thrilled with the rules change that limit the amount of jumps in the 2nd part of the programme.
EM: Those changes built the base for the future work. If we were told we have to put all the jumps in the 2nd part I would shut up and do that.
EV: Have you always liked the programmes you skated.
EM: I loved my first senior programme where I was depicting a deaf girl. I loved `Karenina'. On the other hand the programme I won my 2nd worlds with I didn't like at the beginning at all. Only towards the end I found it's flavour. I skated it, broke the world record and I loved it for allowing reaching my goals. `Karenina', on the other hand, blows my mind. Especially after those `January stars' where only the dress was lovely. I was all in `Karenina' programme.
EV: Oksana Bauyl's coach once said if the skater is dwelling the character when entering the triple jump he'll finish that jump on his back. How much can you afford not thinking of the elements when skating?
EM: `Karenina' allowed me. When I was skating at the Olympics I let my body do it's job and was all in the character. I didn't even try to imagine I was just skating the LP in the practice. I had this amazing inner freedom. If you only knew what went through my head when I started the steps sequence!
EV: What?
EM: I was skating an asking myself `do you realize it's the Olympics? Realize millions or many a milliard of people are watching you? Understand if you make a slightest mistake all will be gone?` and answered myself `Realize!'. `Awesome?' `Awesome! Let's keep having fun!'. There was no stress.
EV: Have you ever thought why the Olympic champions with the some minor exceptions never made it to the next Olympics? Why Baul, Lipinski, Sotnikova haven't stayed?
EM: I guess it's the fear to lose what you gained in all these years. The will to keeps skating is there, I think, always, just that once the person gets an opportunity to try another life it sucks you in. Not many understand sports and normal life not always can go hand in hand.
EV: I got to meet a wrestler, who after winning the Olympics at the age of 23 retired saying `I don't want the life to go nearby while I practice.'. A familiar feeling?
EM: No, I never had it. I had a normal childhood - I was playing with the other kids, just in the gym and not outdoors, but I had fun. I don't think now the life goes nearby. I graduated the highschool and got accepted to the uni.
EV: When did you learn English?
EM: I haven't really learned it. Just understood I have no choice?
EV: What do you mean?
EM: just that. I saw the foreign athletes my age or a bit older chatting with each other every competition and thought: I want to talk to you so badly, but how? Once I tried, than again.
I learned 3 words one trip, then 5 trips in another. Then read on the internet how to construct a phrase, learned some more words. I haven't even noticed but suddenly I was able not only to chat, but give interviews. Of course I make mistakes. I stumble, use a wrong grammar. But am understood. And I understand people.
EV: Is it hard for you to admit you don't know something?
EM: Not at all. There are so many things I don't know and can't do. And am not ashamed to admit it. Because it's true.
EV: How long can you keep it without figure skating till you feel uncomfortable?
EM: Little. Very little. I can't even keep still - my muscles hurt and I feel physically uncomfortable. When you don’t skate for a long time the same happens. My legs hurt. My personal peeve - when I have a day off and there is no ice my head hurts so badly, I almost feel like stacking myself in the fridge. Guess there is something in the ice that I can't do without. Besides, mentally it's hard for me to stay still.
EV: How fast do you lose your abilities when you don't practice?
EM: Very fast. You stop feeling the edges. Skating and understanding you go on the autopilot: sitting on the edge, gliding - the mind understands what needs to be done, but the legs just go sideways. As if the contact between the brain and the legs is slightly lost. You want one thing and find yourself elsewhere. My most stupid falls were because of that. The marks on the knees and elbows..
EV: Back to your departure to Canada: you must have considered how expensive your new life will be
EM: Mainly it was my mom's concern. It was her job to understand whether we are ready.
EV: And once your mom said you were ready...
EM : I understood I have to grab my skates and off to Canada.
EV: Have anyone tried to talk you out of that decision?
EM: Frankly? No one at all
Last edited:
in the corporate cafeteria, lol.
I agree the weight talk is unnecessary and not where the focus should be. Janny will be fine! Great interview, can't wait to follow her new adventure.
I'd say it's your problem then. Yes, she is talking about two different things in her response, but, when considered on their own, those two parts are very clear and also something that has been talked about both by skating fans on the forums and athletes themselves (specifically, Adelina Sotnikova). First she is saying that the young skaters who have won Olympics fear losing what they have gained - that is, they fear that their results won't be on the same level anymore (for after every peak comes a downfall). Then, she is saying that the opportunities that come with winning the Olympic gold can lead the skater away from skating as the two are hard to combine. Nothing unclear, really. If you don't understand what I said either, then I have a suspicion that no one can help you.
