Alina Zagitova: “One fan has sent me a bouquet of a thousand and one roses”

“And then I broke my arm around the wrist. All because I’ve been falling on this arm a lot during the new jumps study. After this I went to the competition with a special light splint, and also broke my leg there” – the Olympic champion and the star of “The Scarlet Flower” ice show Alina Zagitova recalls her way to victory.

-         Alina, you turned 20 years of age recently, in May. To this moment you’ve achieved everything that every figure skater dreams of, by winning all the titles. You’ve won Olympic Games being of 15 years old, National, European, and Worlds championships. I can’t even imagine what else you can wish for yourself given this list of achievements… By the way, how have you celebrated your birthday?

-         I went to Dubai. I was alone there, without my family, but then my friends which I train with in Eteri Tutberidze group, Daria Usacheva and Anna Scherbakova, arrived there. It is the first time I celebrated the birthday without my family, I missed them a lot.

-         Was there any present that made a big impression on you?

-         When I arrived back in Moscow, there were a lot of gifts waiting for me, including those from my fans from different cities of Russia. I am extremely pleased. They even gave me a certificate for flying in a hot air balloon! Generally, fans throw toys on the ice after every performance of mine. Sometimes there’s big ones – it happened that there were teddy bears bigger than me. One of the fans once has sent a bouquet of a thousand and one roses. To be honest, I don't even know his name. I am given a lot of flowers. Sometimes they are brought to the “Khrustalny” ice rink where I train. Once there were delivered 14 bouquets of 101 roses. I am grateful to all my fans, they support me, their love is always with me.

-         Alina, for several seasons you have been taking part in Tatyana Navka's ice shows. How did it start?

-         I have known Tatyana Alexandrovna for quite a long time, I have always admired her numerous achievements in sports and, of course, ice shows, which she produces. And when I suspended my sports career and stopped competing, Tatyana Alexandrovna invited me to participate in the “Sleeping Beauty” ice show. Now the “Sochi Park” theme park is hosting “The Scarlet Flower” ice show. From August 6, for a month, I will be performing on the ice in the main role of Nastenka. I invite everyone who will be at Black Sea coast to visit our amazingly beautiful show.

-         Isn’t it hard to bear with the rhythm like this, when you perform on the ice on a daily basis?

-         I got used to it. I can say that such a tough schedule isn’t planned now in Sochi in contrast with the number of shows that was in St. Petersburg on winter. There we performed once, twice or even thrice times a day. This time there will be one day off per week for me. But I’m not going to visit the beach, swim and take a sunbath. I must be focused on my performance on the ice. For me it is my job that’s on the first place, and then the other things. Last year in Sochi I also performed in the “Ruslan and Lyudmila” ice show, and I swam in the sea only three times in two months. Although I had a free time from the morning till 7 PM, but I prefer not to visit the beach during the day so that I can more easily concentrate and perform in front of the people.

-         The life of your father is also closely connected to the ice. Please tell us about your parents. Are you aware of their love story?

-         My dad Ilnaz Zagitov was an athlete, a hockey player, he played for different clubs, for “Izhstal”, “Neftekhimik”, “Neftyanik”, now he works as a coach. Dad is five years older than mom. I know that my parents met each other in Izhevsk. As long as I remember, they were introduced to each other by their friends. It was my mother's first love, and my father’s too. Until now they are together. Their relationship is an example of a real great feeling. They are devoted to each other, dad is very attentive to mom. My parents have never had a quarrel in our presence in our lives - my younger sister and I have never seen such a thing. Mom, Leysan Zagitova, herself really wanted to go in for figure skating at one time, but her family did not have money for this. But now she has also got involved into the sport, you can say she is my manager. Mom has three beauty salons in Izhevsk. That's why I love to ware makeup, take care of myself. All this was instilled in me by my mother. Now she is more involved in my doings, and her business is at the second place.

-         Let's remember how your path to victories began.

-         I started skating at the age of five, but I tell everyone that at six or seven, because my dad played hockey for different teams and we have been moving from one city to another. And only when I was in Izhevsk, I started to comprehend figure skating professionally, then I was six or seven years old. And at twelve I ended up in the Tutberidze group. At first I went to Moscow with my mother, but then Eteri Georgievna said that my mother shouldn’t be near me so that she would not distract me from training, although this has never happened. And then my grandmother Nadilya, my mother's mother, came to Moscow. She lived in Izhevsk, worked for many years in a cosmetics store, and held the position of manager. My mom is her only child. Unfortunately, my grandfather is no longer with us, he passed away early. My grandmother behaved as a devoted person, she is a beautiful woman, and many men were flirting with her. But she was telling everyone: "I had the only husband, and I don't need anyone else."

She devoted a lot of time and energy for her family. My grandmother has always been a great help to my mother in taking care of me. She took me to training, to classes. I remember how in Izhevsk she picked me up after lessons at school, but there was no money for a taxi, and we had to walk for a very long time with three bags - in one there were textbooks and notebooks, in the other - skates, in the third one - a sports uniform. My grandmother felt sorry for me and dragged everything on her. So, in Moscow she came for help and said: “I will be with Alina.” Oh, and she had a tough time. When something didn’t work out for me at the rink, I was in a bad mood. And then my grandmother scared me: “That's it, Alina, we are packing our bags, we are coming back home to Izhevsk.” Sometimes she really packed the things and put the bag outside the door, and I dragged it back. Now all this is remembered as a funny story.

I am very grateful to my granny, she was alone with me in Moscow for six years. At first we lived with our relative, because there was no money for a rented apartment. And every morning we went from “Rechnoy Vokzal” metro station to "Belyaevo" to the ice palace "Khrustalny" (editor’s note – “Rechnoy Vokzal” and “Belyaevo” are located on the opposite sides of Moscow). I got up at 7 AM. The training was starting at 10 AM, and only at 11 PM I was returning home. People who watch skaters' performances on TV sometimes don't even realize how much effort has been given. We have a sport where you can’t show how hard it is for you, but you need to do everything with ease. Therefore, it seems to everyone that skating is not difficult at all, but in fact there is a lot of work behind it.

 -         Haven’t you ever wanted to leave Eteri Tutberidze, to return home?

-         To leave?.. No, but actually she kicked me out once. As Eteri Georgievna says, I was lazy. Until the age of 12, I trained in Izhevsk – a small city, so there were not so much of requirements for us. And at the moment when I got into the Tutberidze group, it seemed to me that I was making the best out of myself. But seems like it wasn’t enough. I was not used to such loads yet, I did not understand what they wanted from me. But then I started to get some of the triple jumps (I didn’t make them in Izhevsk). And then in training, I broke my arm around the wrist. I went to the competitions with a special light splint, and broke my leg there. I returned home to Izhevsk with two plaster casts to recover from injuries. Time has passed. The casts were removed, I had a little practice in my hometown and went to Moscow. And at the very first training session, Eteri Georgievna told me: "I'm kicking you out." Of course, I got upset. But what can you do about it? I switched to another coach at the same rink - Anna Tsareva. I am also very grateful to her, because she took me through such a difficult period. But a lot of things were going not so good for me. Then I decided to return home to Izhevsk. My grandmother and I bought a bouquet, came to Eteri Georgievna to give flowers, thank her and say goodbye, saying: “We are leaving Moscow, thank you for everything.” And she says, "Let's try again." I don’t know why she made such a decision, probably it would be better to ask her.

-         It was a great decision anyway, without it the world would have never seen your success. Tell a bit about your coach Eteri Tutberidze. They say she is tough.

-         I think you can’t gen anywhere without the toughness, without it there would have not been such results. Also Eteri Georgievna doesn’t work alone, there is a group of coaches: a choreography coach, and a director of the programs, Daniil Markovich Gleikhengauz, and Sergey Viktorovich Dudakov, he helps a lot in jumps training. Success is about the right team and stability. We practice every day. I return home tired. The mood isn’t the best. At such moments, after hard training, I don’t really like to make contacts with people, though my parents want to talk to me about how the practice went to know some details. I answer: “Mom, dad, I can’t talk.” In fact, I’m no prize myself, I’ve got a complex nature. Now I have already moved the whole family to Moscow, as I wanted. Because I have really missed my parents here, they used to come only for the New Year, and then I saw them in the summer only. And I decided to move them here at all costs. But now, in the summer, everyone is resting, dad and granny are in Izhevsk with my sister, and my mom and I are still in Moscow.

-         It is extremely important for a figure skater to be in shape, not to gain weight. Are you on a strict diet?

-         When I participated in the competition, I barely even drank water. Both during the competition and the preparation periods. We used to just rinse our mouths and spit everything out immediately. Because even one or two hundred grams of excess weight is noticeable for the body of an athlete, the body begins to behave differently. It is harder to perform jumps then. My usual meal is yogurt. I don't eat fatty foods, I've given up sweets as much as possible. Although I love sweets, chocolates. I had a sweet tooth before. But now it's less of that. My granny cooks well. For six years, while living with me in Moscow, she made all sorts of vegetable salads and cutlets for me. She also cooked soups, but I'm not really a fan of them. In general, everyone in our family loves to cook: my granny, my mom, my sister, and I. I like this process, it somehow relaxes me. Especially when I’ve got a time and energy for it. I recently baked salmon in the oven. It was so tasty! I ate a piece myself. Now I managed to more or less normalize my weight, though I had gained a lot of weight at some point before - about four kilograms. It seems to me that even for an ordinary person this is a lot. And epecially for an athlete. Then I began to listen more to my body, and somehow I managed to lose weight.

-         I know that you study at the RANEPA (Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration). Are you in the extramural department?

-         No, I’m a full-time student. I study at the Faculty of Journalism, my area of specialization is "Production and cultural policy". - I study literature, law, history, there’s a lot of things... When I passed my finals at school, for a long time I’ve been thinking what I should do next. I wanted to be a journalist. Because now my life is connected not only with sports, but also with television, and this is very interesting. It is not always possible to attend all classes, it is difficult to combine training on ice and study. But still I try. I have already moved on to my third year in the university. This summer, in June, like all students, I passed the exams. It was very nerve-wracking, of course. But, thank God, everything ended well. I took exams and like the others. Sometimes the teachers paid even closer attention to me than to the other students, so it was twice as hard. This time we passed such exam as law. I tried to study the laws, and there are so many of them that it is impossible to remember everything. But I prepared myself, and I had a tutor to help me. As a result, I passed this exam perfectly. But the university didn’t let me pass physical education exam. Just imagine, there were rumors on the Internet that I was being expelled from the university due to the fact that I had not passed the test in physical education. This is very funny. I mean, I do sports every day and I have got some achievements. I thought that I could be given an automatic credit. I understand that everyone should be treated equally. But I train every day at the ice rink. We have choreography and strength exercises there. We do push-ups twenty times... Anyway, I dealt with the physical education exam - I passed it.

-         Literally every step you take is discussed on the Internet. When you became the host of the show "Ice Age" on Channel One, there was a lot of criticism from the haters. How did you go through this?

-         It was actually a very difficult moment for me. Of course, I'm not a TV presenter. Maybe I was unprofessional at first in this role. But I took criticism so hard then! And now sometimes I don’t understand why people behave this way because I don’t even know them personally. It's still a mystery to me. I even sometimes want the person who criticizes me to come to me, express all the claims in my face and explain them using arguments. Alexey Yagudin helped me a lot to cope with the situation. He has a lot of energy in him, he has more experience, so he was giving advice, was prompting something and, if necessary, was lightening my load. The shooting day on the show "Ice Age" lasted from 9 in the morning to 12 at night. We shot several programs at once, and in the evening I could no longer do anything because of the tiredness, sometimes I raged. I tried not to show it to anyone, but my energy was running out. And in the moments like this Alexei Konstantinovich supported me. I had both speech technique tutors and a psychologist. Actress Anna Glazkova has starred in films and TV shows, worked in theaters in Moscow – she worked with me and helped me in every possible way. She sat nearby the whole day and spoon-feed me with the information, as they say. She suggested with what intonation it was necessary to pronounce the text, where to make pauses. She showed me many different exercises for the development of the speech apparatus, and together we practiced with my “favorite” tongue twisters, especially with those containing hissing consonants: “Shla Sasha po shosse i sosala sushku”, “Tridtsad’ tri korablya lavirovali, lavirovali, da ne vylavirovali”.

-         I love your approach. If something goes wrong, you hire the tutor immediately.

-         Maybe it comes from my childhood, my mom used to take me for some additional classes, not only for the practice on the ice, but for instance for stretching, and for tutors related to school education. If something doesn’t work for you, you always need an extra practice.

-         Tell me, are you interested in coaching? Or don’t you think about in in this age of yours?

-         It is interesting for me to work with children. I’ve already conducted master classes along with my coaches in different cities. In Khabarovsk, for example. I liked it.

-         You have got so many interests: there’s the studying at the Faculty of Journalism, master classes, ice shows, projects on television…

-         Yes, I try to self-improve a little bit in everything, to learn new things. During the pandemic, I also passed the exam to get the driver’s license. Now I drive my own car. There was a situation recently: I was stopped by the police for the first time in my life. I couldn’t figure out why, I didn’t seem to break any rules on the road, I wasn’t driving fast, my car speed was about 40 kilometers per hour. But it turned out that the traffic police recognized me and just wanted to take a picture with me. I asked them: “Why are you scaring me like that?” I really enjoy driving. Recently, I have started soap making. I made soap with my own hands and arranged a giveaway on my social media among my fans. It seems to me that this way I transfer to a person, let’s say, a piece of my energy. Also, sometimes I knit when I’m in a mood, I draw, I post pictures with rhinestones. But now I do it not so often. There is not enough time for that.

-         Of course, everyone is interested in your personal life. You were noticed at several hockey games, and immediately rumors appeared that you liked some hockey player…

-         I would like to keep my personal life private. Nevertheless, I can say that there has always been a lot of hockey in my life, given that my father is a hockey player. Since childhood, my mom and I visited his games, and he talked about hockey at home non-stop. I still visit hockey games, and I can’t see that there’s anything out of ordinary about that fact.

-         As long as I know, you’ve got three dogs…

-         First, I got Masaru after winning the Olympics in Pyeongchang, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gave her to me. I was leafing through a magazine at the training camp before the Olympics, and I liked the photo of the dog. I asked my mom: “What if you get a dog like this for me if I perform well at the Olympics?” She replied: “Yes, we will think about it.” Immediately after my victory, I was interviewed by journalists. And they ask: “What do you want most right now?” I replied that I really liked the ancient Japanese breed of dogs - Akita. The journalists were surprised: "Alina, why do you need a dog, ask for an apartment or a car for your victory." But I answered them: “No, I want such a dog.” And Shinzo Abe fulfilled this dream of mine. He personally gave me Masary in a solemn ceremony in one of the capital's hotels. Then my dad worked in Kazan, coached a hockey team there, and my little sister got a little Chihuahua dog. Of course, they took her with them when they moved to Moscow with me. She also lives with us now, very cheerful, mischievous. And recently, literally a year ago, I got a dog Shanti of the Maltipoo breed, it was presented to me by fans.

-         Who walks all these dogs?

-         When I have time, I walk with Masaru, I often take her with me, she starred in various TV shows with me. And small dogs usually use dog pads at home, I rarely take them out. But Shanti loves to go for a walk very much. It happens that in the morning I leave home for training, I tell her: “Shanti, I won’t take you with me.” And she starts to whine so much and looks at me with her tiny eyes so plaintively that I give up: "All right, let's go." Then she sits on the rink and waits for me. I will take small dogs with me to Sochi. And Masaru spends the summer in Izhevsk, in our house, she feels good there with granny. In autumn they will return to Moscow.

-         Alina, I’m so impressed, you’re here, there and everywhere, you’ve got enough energy even for your dogs. Where do you gain this energy from?

-         A good time management! I don’t even know, I just live like this all the time. I want something and I do it. And now, when I’m 20 years old, I think it's time to try everything.

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