Evgenia Medvedeva: I believed in a happy ending for this season

Interview with Evgenia Medvedeva after her bronze medal at World Championships 2019.

by Petr Pavlov for kp.ru dd 1st April, 2019

Evgenia, first of all our most sincere congratulations. We were worried about you. Did you believe that this season will have a happy ending?

– Yes, there were a lot of difficulties, but, frankly, no one knew what to expect from this season. But we believed in a happy ending anyway. That sooner or later everything had to get better, and we did everything to have a good final at the World Championships. But in any case, I strive to achieve more!

They could make a movie about your season. Were there moments when you stopped to believe in yourself?

– Surprisingly, despite the fact that the season was difficult, belief in myself didn’t leave me. I was surrounded by many people who supported me regardless of the situation.

Your character of a champion cause only admiredation. It is clear that you didn’t give yourself any excuses. Can you relax now? What pleasures, violations of the regime will you allow yourself?

– Yes, I kept my body and spirit in shape in all possible ways. With both nutrition and sleep. For example, I don’t eat meat for a couple of months. Let’s see what happens next. It helps me physically and morally. I feel good! But now in the offseason, when the World Championships have passed I regularly break the regime (laughs). Yes, I allow myself to relax.

What are your plans for vacation?

– Get some rest and work again. That is, like everyone else. We have plans to complicate the program, many new elements, for example, the quadruple salchow and toe loop.

How did Brian Orser assess your performance? What did he tell you?

– Right after the performance Brian told me that he was proud of me. But I would really like to bring him gold medals, so that he would be proud of the first places.

It seems that over the past year you have changed. This is noticeable by the way you talk with the media, how confidently and calmly you communicate with the audience. Do you agree, or you had it all before?

– Everyone changes during his life. This is normal. I just began to treat the publicity as work. I can’t say that communication with the media and public is what I would like to do 24 hours a day, but I understand perfectly well that this is a necessity if you are a public person.

It turned out that fan sites about figure skating are a terrible horror. There, love and pink unicorns face with some incredible amount of hate. How, after reading all this, do not hate the whole world?

– Why are you reading all this? Don’t read that!

It’s impossible not to ask about your rivalry with Elizaveta Tuktamysheva. It was fair, but dramatic. Can you maintain normal human relationships after such confrontations?

– Go to my Instagram, there are many answers. Everything is cool between me and Liza!

The famous figure skater Irina Slutskaya said the following phrase: “Thank God, in our time there was no Instagram, we all would have got into a fight for the whole life”. In your career there are social networks. But you and your rivals are behaving as correctly as possible. How many times have you been tempted to write something bad?

– There is no temptation, I want to write only good things to people. Let the others write bad things.

What do you think about the “children’s threat” – a new group of girls who will participate in senior competitions in the new season? They say they are incredibly strong.

– They are really very strong. I’m ready for competition and I’m not going to step back, only forward!

I want to ask about your fans, there are a lot of them all over the world. How did they react to your performance, maybe they prepared some unusual surprises for you?

– My fans are awesome. I just love them madly. After the World Championships, since my mom was in Toronto, she received a parcel from Russia, weighing more than five kilograms, there were several thousand letters from all over Russia. And it was … just to tears …

Related topics: Evgenia Medvedeva