Mikhail Kolyada: Any competition is experience

Mikhail Kolyada told in interview to Tatjana Flade about start of the season, new programs and quad lutz.

Misha, in Bratislava you won, moved from 10th place to the first. How unexpected was it for you?

– It was unexpected. Not everything planned turned out, but at this stage it satisfied me. I emphasize, only this stage, because I know that I can do better.

Honestly, before and during the competitions I didn’t think about places at all, just went on the free program calmly, with a cold head and skated normally. Any competition is experience, because after that you start to understand how to set yourself up, start to pay attention to the nuances, individual moments. Moreover, at the beginning of the season it is important to get used to the public, costumes after a break. It is necessary to pass through this. I hope that later it will be better and better.

Today was your first skate of a new free program with a purely executed quad lutz. How do you feel?

– Good.

Did you expect that?

– I hoped that sooner or later it had to happen. Lutz was on the way, at trainings it turned out well.

How did you make up your mind for the rest of the program?

– It was hard.  But I had a task, the main thing  – skate without popping the jumps, do all the rotations, good or bad, but do all the jumps. Frankly, I’m tired of popping.

What happened in the short program?

–  I don’t know. I haven’t figured it out yet. I was ready for competitions perfectly. But something did not work out.

How did you recover from the unsuccessful skate?

– It was hard. Honestly, I was in some kind of confusion. I went to the hotel room and did not know what to do. The head is empty, no thoughts,  cannot help thinking of that performance. I thought, I’ll go crazy …

But you coped with it.

– I did.  At some point I decided: “Why am I overthinking? This preseason, a test competition, where if not now and here  you can try everything?” The next morning I woke up, and everything was fine.

In the free program you tried to do three quads.

– Yes, three quads. In St. Petersburg, I skated the program with three quads, but salchow didn’t turn out perfect. But I had clean run-throughs. So it is possible and real for me.

Do you feel additional pressure as the leader of our men’s team?

– I try not to think about it, because if you think, you can go crazy.

But when journalists constantly remind of this?

– I don’t read articles and rarely look through the Internet.

Do you know that Yuzuru Hanyu at the competition in Canada broke the world record in short program?

– Of course. What to say, well done! He is a phenomenon. He has a special energy. When you’re on the same ice with Yuzuru, someone “fades”, but me on the contrary, it motivates. I want to be not worse.

Some skaters brought their best programs back this season. Did you have such an idea?

– Skate the same program for the third year? I wouldn’t stand that! Day after day the same music, the same motif.

Whose idea was to make the program to the music of Elvis Presley?

– I suggested, said, why don’t we take Presley? Olga Klyushnichenko – our choreographer brought musical fragments, we chose what we need and decided to make a program. It seems to me that it suits me very much. The singer is close to me by temperament. I look at him and understand how he lived. Of course, I’m not a “rock-n-roller”, but I understand this image.

These competitions turned out to be rather unusual for you. Did you make any conclusions after the first start of the season?

– To work even more, do more run-throughs, because do jumps it’s good, but to skate entire program to music it’s quite a different thing.

Did you callen your coach? (Valentina Chebotareva was at JGP in Minsk with Stanislava Konstantinova)

– We talked. Valentina Mikhailovna said: “Everything can happen, you have to be able to overcome such moments.” At competitions it is impossible to be absolutely insured from everything. It happens, the light goes out at the rink, the suit bursts, anything can happen. We must be prepared for any surprises, off-nominal situations and know what to do next.

Thank God nothing like that happened at this competitions.

–  The situation with my short program is also an off-niminal situation, a embarrassment and this will not happen again.

Was it difficult to perform without a coach?

– When you come to competitions, it doesn’t matter whether you’re with a coach ir not, this is not so important, because any competition sums up the work. Everything that has been done is done. As we say, it is too late to lock the stable door when the horse is stolen. Apparently, in a short program it was our omission. Now we will return to St.Petersburg, analyze and after two weeks we leave for start in Finland.

by Tatjana Flade for fsrussia.ru

Related topics: interview, men, mikhail kolyada, Ondrej Nepela Trophy