“Our initial conversations with the I.AM started two years ago, at the end of the Olympic season. But at that time because of difficulties with the documents it didn’t work out.” Davis and Smolkin about trainings in Montreal
Big interview with Diana Davis and Gleb Smolkin.
original source: Sports by Maya Bagriantseva
In a big interview with Maya Bargiantseva, Diana Davis and Gleb Smolkin told about past three seasons in their careers. I will divide the translation in two parts, first is about training in IAM Academy, new programs and life in Canada. Here’s a translation of some of their comments.
“Q: How did you end up in Montreal?
Gleb Smolkin: Our initial conversations with the academy started two years ago, at the end of the Olympic season. But at that time, I had significant difficulties with my documents — I couldn’t leave the US, so it didn’t work out.
At the end of last season, we tried again. We were interested in training in a large group, on the same ice as our competitors — we are ready for competition and healthy sparring. There are many teams there that we aspire to be like. And finding ourselves under such a coaching team was simply a dream.
After the World Championships, the Georgian federation contacted the academy and obtained preliminary consent. Then, Diana and I had several calls with our future coaches. As soon as we got a positive response from them and agreed on all the details, we moved to Montreal almost immediately.
Q: What is the training schedule like at the academy?
Gleb Smolkin: There is a special program where you input all your needs for the upcoming workweek: appointments, studies, or urgent matters. And the coaches plan the schedule keeping that in mind.
Diana Davis: This helps to organize an efficient schedule at the academy: there are many skaters and aligning their schedules is not easy. Typically, we have two ice training sessions per day, totaling 3.5 hours of ice time daily.
Gleb Smolkin: You could ask for more, but we are still getting used to the new system because our training sessions used to be shorter before. For now, we have more than enough in terms of both workload and coaching attention.
Q: What about off-ice training?
Gleb Smolkin: During the start of the summer, we worked a lot in the gym, but now we spend almost all our time on the rink. Additionally, there is choreography, dancing, and hip-hop — all that could be useful in new programs.
Diana Davis: We had several acting lessons, focusing on specific performances. We also did a lot of work on lifts on the floor to make them look effortless and natural during performances.
Gleb Smolkin: Ice training takes place on two rinks: both have good ice and are quite warm — not as much as Eteri Georgievna’s place in Moscow, where it’s like a sunroom, but still good, nothing to complain about.
Diana Davis: We also sometimes go to the gym and delve into pilates. Everything is still new and unusual — for instance, they are currently teaching me how to breathe properly.
Gleb Smolkin: Yes, it sounds strange, but we are learning to breathe differently. Diana has mild asthma, so proper breathing is very important here. And pilates helps improve joint mobility and relieve muscle tension, so we can train at full strength the next day.
Diana Davis: There’s a lot to learn from other skaters here, everyone has their own approach to recovery: some prefer the sauna, others go for general physical preparation in the gym; some are fans of stretching, while others opt for ice baths.
Gleb Smolkin: Training sessions on the ice start early, which was also unusual for us. The first ice is usually at 7:30, and most major teams train on this schedule. There are also no long breaks between ice sessions here, some skate for three hours straight, but that’s still hard for us. We noticed that if we skate two sessions in a row, we start to “lag,” overwhelmed by too much new information. Patrice Lauzon noticed this too and now schedules a short break for us to catch our breath.
Q: Who among the coaches works with you the most? The team is quite large.
Diana Davis: It’s not like you work only with certain specialists and you’re the “project” of a particular coach. Everyone works with us.
Gleb Smolkin: Patrice Lauzon and Marie-France Dubreuil spent most of the summer with us, but other coaches worked with us as well. In August, Romain Haguenauer became actively involved.
He choreographed the rhythm dance for us a long time ago, but because he is extremely busy as a choreographer – putting together programs for many teams and singles from the academy – we didn’t start working on the dances with him until late summer.
Diana Davis: Our main coaches are assisted by skaters who were competing themselves very recently. When we first came to the academy, Guillaume Cizeron worked a lot with us, and now we are often on the ice with Jean-Luc Baker.
Gleb Smolkin: He has incredibly accurate and helpful advice, and he can offer a lot from a male perspective: how to lead a partner, how to properly create space around her, and how to interact as a pair.
Diana Davis: Kaitlin Hawayek, his partner, also coached us. It’s very interesting to work with skaters of such caliber – you want to make the most of their experience.
Q: How do you find life in Canada after America? From the outside, it seems these countries are not much different in everyday terms.
Gleb Smolkin: No, it’s different here. After five years in American small towns, we returned to a metropolis. At the very beginning of our career together, we trained in Moscow for a year and since then had forgotten what life in a big city was like. Here you have to account for traffic jams: if the navigator in Montreal shows it takes 10 minutes – it often takes 40. If we talk about everyday life, we’ve moved several times before, so the process of packing and buying pots and pans is not scary.
Diana Davis: Montreal is a beautiful city, even if you talk about the quality of food. The same vegetables and fruits are incomparable with those in America; restaurants here are tastier. We found a shop with Eastern European products – we go there for cottage cheese and the food we miss.
Gleb Smolkin: The food here is more similar to what we were used to in Russia. Americans have their own tastes, and it is not always possible to adapt to them, but in Montreal, the approach to food is more European. We live downtown to make it convenient to get to our two rinks. Our district has many small cafes where you can eat deliciously and inexpensively. So yes, there is a difference from the USA.
Q: Who in the family does the cooking?
Diana Davis: I do, but I only got serious about it recently. The first thing we bought in Montreal was a frying pan, so now I fry meat and can also make cheese pancakes and crepes.
Gleb Smolkin: Diana cooks very tastily. Fish, fish soup, but steaks are what she does best. For us, this is ideal food because athletes need protein – it helps cope with high loads. On my birthday, Diana baked a sour cream cake, made pancakes with fish, so we welcomed our guests decently.
Diana: Davis In Montreal, it’s just a bit harder to live with dogs – we have two. Previously, we could quickly walk them near the house before training, but now we have to go to the park. But it’s more fun for the dogs here; many skaters have pets.
Q: How come you have two dogs?
Gleb Smolkin: Honestly, I don’t quite understand it myself.
Diana Davis: The first one appeared during COVID. For me, it was a pretty tough period, I had also broken my leg – in general, it was not very easy emotionally. I was home alone and more and more thought about having a dog. I had been dreaming about it for a long time but couldn’t decide. That’s how Truman came along. Then I decided that we urgently needed a female dog: Truman was more attached to me, and I wanted Gleb to also receive plenty of doggie love. And my plan worked: Shanté simply adores Gleb!
Q: How is the beauty industry in Montreal? Have you figured out where to go for a manicure and haircut?
Gleb Smolkin: This is our barbershop (points to himself and Diana – Sports).
Diana Davis: I color my hair myself, and Gleb cuts it.
Q: Gleb?!
Gleb Smolkin: It started during quarantine when all the beauty salons were closed, and there was no way to get to a barber. At some point, Diana and Eteri Georgieva came to me with the idea that I should try it. There is a superstition that a mother shouldn’t cut her daughter’s hair, so they pressured me and now I’m pretty good at trimming ends. It turns out neat, Diana doesn’t complain.
Q: How do you spend your weekends?
Diana Davis: We may go for a walk, sometimes go for a massage, and definitely study English.
Q: English? You don’t seem to have problems with the language.
Gleb Smolkin: Honestly? I want to speak the language really well, as if it were my native so that there’s absolutely no barrier. We study with a teacher, Diana – to feel more comfortable both on the rink and with journalists.
Q: When you interact with the press, it’s noticeable that Gleb protects Diana. Diana, do you feel that?
Diana Davis: Yes, of course. I always feel his support.
Gleb Smolkin: Probably, it’s because we’ve often faced negativity directed at us — especially during the Olympic season. I’m a gentle person; I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I won’t tolerate certain things either. And I won’t let anyone hurt Diana. We are athletes; our job is to skate, so I won’t bother interacting with people whom I don’t think it’s necessary to interact with. I consider it a waste of time. However, we always speak politely and very properly with all journalists.
Q: Gleb, what is Diana like for you?
Gleb Smolkin: Warm, gentle, and very kind. If we talk about sports, she has a very strong character. She has an inner core, and I never worry about her in competitions. I know she will cope, get ready, and everything will be fine.
Q: And what about Gleb?
Diana Davis: Calm and caring. He always supports me, even when it might be hard for him himself. Also, he’s sensitive, although you wouldn’t say that from the outside. He looks like a knight who has everything under control. “I can handle everything” — this is his motto; he never shows that something has affected him.
Q: How did you decide on getting married?
Gleb Smolkin: It was March 2022, and we had just returned from the Olympics. All these events started happening in the world, our team was suspended, and it was clear that the season was over. By that time, we had been living together for a long time, were a couple off the ice, and had even discussed our future together. And I realized that I didn’t want to wait anymore — with everything happening in the world, there was no point in waiting another year or two, as we thought.
Q: Wait, was there a proposal? An official one?
Gleb Smolkin: Of course. First, in Michigan, where we were living at the time, I asked Diana the big question — I needed to be sure she agreed.
Diana Davis: We registered our marriage in Las Vegas because I was born there, and we stayed a few more days.
Q: Was there a dress, a veil — was everything ceremonial?
Gleb Smolkin: No, the real wedding is still ahead; we think about a big ceremony for family and friends. That’s our dream — no one could come that time; at the registration, there were only family friends of Diana’s who helped a lot in her childhood in America.
Diana Davis: Yes, they kind of married me off. But now, we’re thinking about having a wedding in Georgia and gathering all our loved ones there. I have many relatives in Georgia; I think it would be a very beautiful story.
Gleb Snolkin: Right now, we’re focused a bit on other things, and it’s not the time for such a huge event. Additionally, it’s not very clear how we can gather all our loved ones in one place at one time. We’re thinking about it, but we’ve put the idea on hold for now.
Q: Do you feel that the media environment around you has become calmer?
Gleb Smolkin: If we didn’t read the comments online, we probably wouldn’t even know that something special had happened. Of course, it all reached us, but we tried not to react. Now, it seems, indeed, there is a bit less written and mentioned about us in Russian public forums.
Diana Davis: Although we see, of course, that we still are a target for comments. If there’s an opportunity to poke us, they will definitely remember us. But we’ve gotten used to it.
Q: Before, you encountered sharp comments only on Russian websites, but after moving to Montreal, you get them from foreigners too. Are you ready for that?
Gleb Smolkin: I think we were already being discussed on Twitter before. They discussed our parents and our scores. The American social media audience is similar in some ways to the Russian one, but different in others. Maybe that’s why we don’t have Twitter, and we’re not very familiar with the American audience. In personal messages and social media comments, we usually receive something positive — at least now. Obviously, during the peak of our transition, we received harsher and more unpleasant things. But now, having skated for Georgia for a year, if they write to us, it’s mainly words of support. We’ve become less interesting to people and thank God.
Q: Who choreographed your free dance?
Diana Davis: Marie-France Dubreuil did, and there’s a whole story behind it. In the spring, we started looking for music for the rhythm dance and brought several tracks from the 60s and 70s to Patrice Lauzon. And he suggested: “Listen to Led Zeppelin, maybe you’ll like something.” We played several tracks while he was there and we liked it. Later, Marie-France brought another song she had long wanted to create a program to and we really liked it too.
Gleb Smolkin: Basically, everything seemed to fall into place for the rhythm dance, and we started working on it, but we had a bit of a snag with the free dance. The coaches didn’t really know us well, and it wasn’t very clear in what style to create the program. At the same time, it had to look organic — it would have been strange to start our collaboration with experiments. Then the coaches suggested keeping Led Zeppelin for the free dance — to make it a complete story, not just two and a half minutes of a short dance where everyone just watches the elements. We agreed because Marie-France came up with so many different nuances that it would have been impossible to cram them all into the rhythm dance. And we really liked the choreography.
Diana Davis: But because of this, we were left without music for the short dance — we didn’t have any backup ideas.
Gleb Smolkin: At first, we thought to pick some more original music. But then we realized we would immediately lose to duos who come out with well-known hits that the audience is ready to sing along to.
Diana Davis: Also, both routines had to differ in style, and since we had rock for the free skate, we needed to find something completely different for the short dance — in both style and appearance. Moreover, at that moment, many songs we were interested in were already taken — for instance, one track is now used in the rhythm dance by Madison Chock and Evan Bates. We have a big group, and music at the Montreal Academy is not repeated, so we had to look for something new.
Gleb Smolkin: Then we suggested the song “Lady Marmalade” to the coaches—Marie-France initially reacted cautiously. For her, it’s very important that the choreography is done tastefully. But Romain supported us and immediately started suggesting ideas on how to choreograph the dance.
Q: How are relationships with other skaters in the group? According to social media, they know how to have a good time.
Gleb Smolkin: Yes, we recently celebrated my birthday with a large group. We invited everyone home, although in Montreal, the team is so large not everyone could fit into our apartment, but there were many guests. It was quite an international company: Brit Olivia Smart with Jean-Luc Baker, Alison Reed, Canadian Zachary Lagha, Australians Holly Harris and Jason Chan.
Q: Relationships inside the academy are often described as familial, many top skaters from your team use the word “family.” Do you understand what they mean by that?
Gleb Smolkin: You can feel that the coaches work a lot on the team’s atmosphere. Moreover, the official condition for joining the group is to maintain a friendly atmosphere on the rink. There can’t be petty spitefulness that sometimes occurs in groups where direct competitors skate.
Diana Davis: Moreover, we’re training with adult athletes who understand that we can be competitors on the ice, but that’s no reason to deny each other support. We feel that they’re ready to back us up; we receive a lot of help.
Gleb Smolkin: There are bad days, some difficulties but that’s no reason to lash out at others. We are all in the same conditions; no need to tell anyone about the loads and fatigue — so you want to support your colleagues, not wish them to make mistakes. The atmosphere is very respectful and friendly. Can this be called a family? I don’t know yet, it probably applies to closer groups inside the school, who have been skating here for many years. But this is truly impressive: so many top teams under the same coaches, yet they train together peacefully. In almost half a year here, we haven’t seen even a hint of conflict.
Q: Yet, you are all competitors.
Gleb Smolkin: Yes, in essence, we are chasing each other. But everyone knows how to maintain normal relations and not confuse competition on ice with everyday life.
Diana Davis: It so happened that this season, we and the Spaniards, Olivia Smart and Tim Dieck, will be performing at almost the same competitions. Meanwhile, we interact wonderfully, we really enjoy skating with them and we’re only happy to be traveling together.
Gleb Smolkin: Indeed, we’ve formed good relationships with other dancers not just with this pair. Everyone has something to learn — from entering the season, to distributing the load, to recovering, to performing characters on ice. At the same time, we understand that we need to be careful with that: at some point, it starts to seem like everyone else is doing better. We try not to forget that we also have strengths and need to work on them.
Q: What have you improved in the last few months? Are the changes noticeable?
Diana Davis: I think we have much better understanding between us as partners now, we’ve become more united — I hope it’s noticeable from the outside.
Q: What about in terms of technique?
Gleb Smolkin: Our elements and transitions within the programs have become more complex; the density and intensity of the routines are a lot higher. Our pulse rates in the skate-throughs have definitely increased, haha. There’s a lot of new stuff, and we’re still encountering many things we need to adapt to.
Q: Where do you think you can still improve?
Diana Davis: In confidence and sporting courage. We need to learn to take the ice without doubting ourselves and be able to present ourselves well to the judges and audience. We’ve received positive feedback about our new programs. People say we have opened up in a new way and this style suits us. We’ve never skated anything like this before. Even the costumes this season are somewhat unusual for us. When Marie-France came up with this idea, I was initially hesitant. For the free dance, she suggested a jumpsuit and, honestly, I’m still a bit scared to imagine myself in it on the ice, as it’s my first experience performing in such a costume. It’s interesting to try something new, but I’m still a bit nervous.
Q: Are the costumes being made again at Mathieu Caron’s studio?
Gleb Smolkin: Yes, many skaters from the academy work with him. It’s important to understand: what we debut with at the first competitions of the season may not necessarily remain the same by the time of the World Championships and I’m not just talking about the costumes. We’ll adapt some things, and coaches will definitely make changes. In Montreal, they emphasize the importance of having the programs evolve throughout the season in every sense. We just couldn’t achieve this last year with “Swan Lake.”
Diana Davis: Also, the coaches say they don’t expect skaters to be 100% ready at the first competitions — they mainly want to see the program in action to evaluate its gaps. This applies to the music, costumes, and elements. The main goal is for the peak condition to coincide with the World or European Championships, and not mid-autumn, as it sometimes was with us before.
Q: How ambitious are you?
Gleb Smolkin: We just want to know that we’ve reached the highest possible level for us. Yes, maybe at some point we will realize that this is our ceiling. But how can you not try to jump higher than your head? As long as there’s an opportunity to grow and move forward, you have to do it. We don’t hide that we want to be at the top of the world in dance — aren’t all athletes dreaming about that? If you’re going to do something, you have to work to be among the best in the world. Either you aim for the very top, or you don’t bother doing it at all.”
Related topics: Diana Davis Gleb Smolkin
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