Son about father.
September 26, 1988 at the Seoul Olympics Sergey Litvinov won the hammer throw competition, putting an end to his long journey to gold at the Games. Today, exactly thirty years after that final, his son, Sergei Litvinov Jr., also a thrower for the national team, remembers his father, whose Olympic record still stands.
Generation of boulders
– Why did father choose a hammer? Not a cannonball, not a spear, not a disk?
– Initially, he was engaged in freestyle wrestling, but at some school competitions Igor Timashkov, an athletics coach, noticed that his father, while still a teenager, took a junior ball weighing either four or five kilograms and pushed it fifteen meters. Without technique, without training experience, just using innate speed and strength qualities. Timashkov began to persuade him to switch to throwing, but his father did not want to leave the wrestling fraternity, there was a completely special atmosphere there. This went on for several months. Then the freestyle wrestling coach began to convince him of the rationale for the transition Vladimir Stashkevich, and in the end they finally persuaded me.
– Did he highlight any particular season when he entered the world elite?
- Yes, 1979. By this time, he was already a fairly strong hammerman, but due to wild competition, he did not shine in the leading roles. In July, my father won the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR with a score of 77.08, and after that the head coach of the hammer team Anatoly Bondarchuk I sent him to several international competitions to see if he could handle it. He did it - he became second at the European Cup in Turin, won the international tournament in Zurich and the World Cup in Montreal. After this, Bondarchuk began to take his father seriously and subsequently defended him in all controversial issues, although he was never his personal trainer. In this regard, Bondarchuk can be used as an example: his personal students Yuri Sedykh And Yuri Tamm were at the core of the team, but he never singled them out or pushed them through, taking advantage of the position. He was absolutely fair, he could push one of his own if he thought that he was not ready.
Photo: © personal archive of Sergei Litvinov
– How was Sergei Litvinov Sr. unique and different from his competitors?
“They were a truly stellar generation; the USSR national team brought together the hammer throwers. There were years when in a season more than 20 Soviet athletes threw over 80 meters. In this intense competition, those results were forged that no one can reach now. My father’s main rivals both in the national team and on the world stage were Yuri Sedykh, Yuri Tamm, Igor Nikulin. This was a unique confrontation, it has no analogues. They not only encouraged each other, but also shared training methods, were constantly at the same training camps, and communicated very well. This exchange of information and findings helped everyone progress.
But they were completely different physically. My father is the shortest, only 180 centimeters, while Sedykh is 185, and Tamm is 191. Speed has always been considered my father’s advantage; he was very fast and explosive. Well, plus technology, which the current generation of throwers is far from achieving.
– Was silver at the Moscow Games a victory or a defeat for him?
– My father was only 22 years old, extremely young by the standards of throwing. He approached those OGs in excellent shape, but due to a lack of experience, he made a mistake that may have cost him gold. Two weeks before the Olympics, in training, he threw at 84 meters, despite the fact that the world record, which belonged to him, was 81.66. But then I decided that I needed to add a little more, to practice. Having qualified quite easily, the day before the final I did a full training session and, without having time to recover, found myself completely exhausted at the main competition. Came out, made only one normal attempt at 80.64, and it brought silver. Given the potential, of course he was disappointed.
Photo: © personal archive of Sergei Litvinov
– Where were the coaches looking?
– At the Moscow Games, my father was practically alone. His personal trainer Timashkov took to drinking and dropped out before the end of the year. Bondarchuk was busy with his students. Actually, it was then that the turning point occurred, after which my father, according to him, began to train on his own, without a mentor. I don’t know how everything was there, probably someone helped him after 1980, but he already believed that he was working on his own, he wrote the training plan himself. And I didn’t repeat that mistake again.
Speaking about the signs of that time, I’ll tell you a funny story. Despite the fact that in Montreal-76 the Soviet hammer fighters occupied the entire pedestal (Sedykh, Spiridonov, Bondarchuk), the management decided that additional control was needed before the home Olympics; they were afraid of competitors from the GDR. Everyone was required to fill out long-term training plans, which were then evaluated somewhere in scientific offices to determine their effectiveness. Father filled everything out as is, honestly. He was called in for a conversation and told that the volumes were insufficient, according to available information, some East German thrower was working more, so the plan needed to be revised. There was no discussion. Bondarchuk told his father to simply multiply all the volumes and indicate in the plan, maybe they will fall behind. He did just that - they fell behind. But at some point, my father got carried away with multiplying the actually performed loads for reporting and indicated so many that when they began to calculate them, it turned out that he would not have had enough days to complete the daily norm. There was a conversation again. And many years later, this story acquired a completely comical tone: already when we lived in Germany, German coaches came to my father, and it turned out that those figures for the training of Soviet athletes somehow ended up with them and were taken at face value. They even tried to work on them. It didn't turn out very well.
From ashes to gold
– The Union hammer team is a crowd of men weighing over a hundred. How did they relax?
– These guys were real rock and rollers, I heard absolutely incredible stories, next to which all the current ones simply fade. But at the same time, they were characterized by the highest professionalism. If it came to competition, they could just sit, drink wine, talk about something and go to bed. Without any spree, because no one wanted to give victory to the opponent. But after the competition, all sorts of things happened, including physical measures of influence on sports leaders who were not polite enough.
– How did the 1980-84 Olympic cycle turn out?
- Brilliant. My father won the 83 World Championships in Helsinki, and by May 1984 he brought the world record to 84.14. And then the USSR boycotted the 84 Olympics, the one where it was supposed to take gold. Having learned about this, my father stopped training altogether and said: “Fuck it all...” At “Friendship-84” he performed without a fuse. There was a certain depression, he almost completely missed the 1985 season, performing only at one start in Rome.
– I rested and became a father for the first time.
– The first is true, the second is not entirely true. Rest was needed, he did not know how and did not like to consciously let go of the load, skip some seasons, throwing half-heartedly. Every year was a shock year for him, and the combination of 83rd, when they were preparing for the World Cup, and 84th, when they went to the Olympic Games, not yet knowing that they would not go, turned out to be very difficult. After a break, he had his best season in terms of results in 1986. Then in Dresden he won the competition with a score of 86.04, setting a personal record and missing the world record by 30 centimeters. Later, at the European Championships he scored 85.74, becoming second. And during training I showed 87.30, which exceeded the world value by almost a meter.
Regarding paternity, he took a girl from an orphanage back in 1984, two years later I was born, and in ’87 my parents took two more, a boy and a girl.
Photo: © personal archive of Sergei Litvinov
– Three adopted children is a serious step, why did he do this?
“At first it wasn’t possible to have a child of our own; she and her mother tried for a long time. We decided to raise an adopted child. Then I showed up. A year later, the parents received a call from the maternity hospital and were told that there was an opportunity to take another child, and they offered to come and see. The father went, looked and took the two. From this act, by the way, you can understand a lot about his nature.
– Raising four small children is not easy.
“Back then everyone lived about the same, but the champions were a little better.” He had his own apartment, car, stable income. Nobody knew that the USSR would collapse. And I don't think the father cared about the material circumstances of raising children. He thought a little differently.
– What happened before Seoul?
“My father fell ill with something, it took a long time to get a diagnosis, he lost a lot of weight, lost about fifteen kilograms, which is a disaster for a thrower. In fact, he was dying; there were problems with blood. Finally, in Moscow they were able to figure out what was wrong, and he was cured, but his form went away. At the first training session after illness, he threw 63, that is, twenty meters less than required. There were two months left before the Olympics, the management wrote him off and decided to replace him with another athlete. Here Bondarchuk intervened and, under his personal responsibility, convinced the bosses that they should be given a chance. They left my father in training, but with the condition that at the control start in Vladivostok, shortly before flying to Korea, he would throw no worse than 83 meters. September 14th arrived, my father came out and threw 83.62. The questions were removed, there were eleven days left before qualifying for the Games, and he was included in the squad.
– How can you choose twenty meters of regression in two months?
- You need to know my father. For him, hard work was a real thrill, he completely immersed himself in it, subordinating everything to preparation for that start. Every step, every nuance was calculated, verified, weighed. I won’t give the exact details, because he wasn’t a big fan of talking about himself in a heroic way, and he didn’t pretend to be Rocky. But the approach to Seoul was no longer the same as to Moscow; it foresaw absolutely any risk.
- For example?
“My father knew exactly when and how he would fly to Korea, and how he would sit during this flight. On the day of the final, I didn’t go to the stadium by shuttle from the Olympic village, but booked a car in advance. As a result, this was completely justified - the shuttle was late, and the main rival Yuri Sedykh barely made it to the start of the competition, without even really warming up. But my father had everything under control, he should have taken this medal eight years ago and now he no longer allowed circumstances or force majeure to influence the course of the fight.
12 years old with one heart valve
– Did Olympic gold reduce further motivation?
“Father walked towards this victory for a very long time, and when it happened, there was devastation, a lack of understanding of what to do next, where to move. He missed the season, returned, but already had problems with his back, minor sores had accumulated. I prepared well for Barcelona 92, but there was no longer a bright fuse.
Nowadays, Olympic gold is just the beginning of making money, and then there was no monetization of titles. Victory at the Games was the crowning achievement of a career; many simply quit after that.
– But your father tried to qualify for Atlanta-96.
“That was the swan song.” My mother and I went to Germany, and my father remained in Russia. I did winter training, in the spring I threw it at sixty-something meters and realized that that was it. His back hurt and he was physically unable to perform. After that he came to us, although in principle he was not happy with the move. But it was necessary to raise children, so there was no choice.
Photo: © personal archive of Sergei Litvinov
– How did they greet the Olympic champion in Germany?
- Nobody cared. We lived in Bremen, it is a non-sports city, nothing much is being developed there. My father went to work at a factory, and no one knew who he was or what he won. I started practicing judo, but in Bremen there was no strong team, no good sparring partners. I had to travel to another city. My father switched to the night shift so that he could take me to training during the day. This went on for quite a long time, because I was very passionate about the fight. But at some point, several factors came together: I broke my finger, which is serious for judo, traveling became completely tiring, training in Bremen made no sense, and I asked my father: maybe we should throw a hammer? And when I started performing as a thrower, German experts learned that my father had actually been living in Germany for a long time. The head coach of the throwing team began calling us to training camps, gave my father students, and wanted to introduce him into the German coaching system. For this reason, the father quit his job, and the German continued to feed him “breakfast”. The family lived only at the expense of my mother, and we had a mortgage on the house. By that time, my father had already started training the Belarusian Vanya Tikhon, our people found out about this, they called: “Come on, come back, you will be the senior coach of the Russian hammer team.” We packed our things and returned.
– When did you understand the scale of your father’s achievements?
“I knew, of course, that he was an Olympic champion, but until I started throwing myself, I didn’t understand the level of results.
Photo: © personal archive of Sergei Litvinov
“It all started long before that.” In 2006, the youngest daughter was born; her father was 48 years old. Before this, he had a massive heart attack, after which only one heart valve worked. But my father survived for another 12 years, which is generally not bad, because the doctors gave much more pessimistic forecasts.
After the heart attack, my father treated death quite simply, because in fact he had already experienced it - the doctors brought him back. I realized that there is nothing terrible about death as such, there is no need to be afraid of it. All he cared about was the fate of his two little daughters; they needed him. To stay with them longer, he did everything possible, looked after his health, but was ready for death. That day he was riding his bike home from training, and his heart finally gave out.
Sergey Nikolaevich Litvinov / Photo: © RIA Novosti/A. Denisov
– Why can’t his results be repeated today?
– You know, this is a paradox. Of course, first of all, everyone starts hinting at doping, steroids, and so on. But the fact is that modern throwers are physically more powerful, they throw with force, but those guys were incredibly technical. So far no one has been able to repeat this technique, even I can’t do it, although I am considered one of the most correct in terms of movements.
Hammer throwing is a relatively young sport, it is only three hundred years old, but the way we throw it is not even a century old. The period when my father spoke was especially stormy; that generation turned out to be real passionaries who advanced the results very far. My father was sure that he could throw further because he had made some mistakes in his career. I thought that the results for 90 meters would not take long to arrive. The fact that his Olympic record still stands greatly upset my father; he was in love with hammer throwing as a discipline and was worried that it was in some kind of stagnation. If not to say - in a rollback.
For some it’s life, but for others it’s just research. Someone's life is always behind the victory, and each of us secretly hopes that the next one is definitely not him. Your turn will come.
let this be an isolated incident
What a tax, you can’t earn money on bablacar! They ban you right away if you try to make money. People just chip in on gas and why pay tax for that?! Totally stupid....
Only the dispatcher, as always, did not answer the phone, and people did not know the reason for the power outage and how long there would be no electricity
Uralskaya 188 is a problem with elevators
wow
Yes, there are not enough doctors. The load is colossal. The medical care system is imperfect. And most importantly, there is no motivation for its progressive development. No one understands that it is in market mechanisms that progress and quality lie. Self-regulation of the number of doctors and the quality of their knowledge. Why is it fully equipped in Moscow? Salaries are high, yes! Why? Because insurance companies are robbing the regions. Therefore, the level of healthcare in the regions is low. All money collected in the Pashkovsky district of Krasnodar must remain in this area. That is, there must be a CMO of the district. There must be a manager, the chief physician of the district. He must pay only for medical services for all residents of the region. Regardless of where the treatment is performed. At least in Antarctica, if the patient’s deductions are made to this insurance fund. Pay all medical workers who have the right to do so by law, regardless of the organizational and legal form of ownership. This will create competition in the medical services market and medical services will become better. What else is needed? Let everyone earn as much as they can. But the C-level official doesn’t assign him a humiliating salary of 5,755 rubles. There is a mathematical relationship between the need for medical services of residents of a certain territory and their number. Now, even with an approximate calculation, deductions for CMO do not correspond to common sense. It is necessary to increase them, based on market prices for medicines, medical equipment, etc. What should be the contribution to the health insurance company? This is decided by the administration of each district independently, based on capabilities. Who is the manager? Competitive hiring position. The chief doctor is responsible for the health of the residents of the district, that is, for vaccinations, the environment, proper nutrition, etc. Which will certainly have a positive impact on all indicators of public health. There is no need for Ministries of Health, FMS, etc. Let officials provide medical services.
Polinka, how big you are already. I wish you success in your studies and all the best. Andrey.
stole - drank - went to jail
Irina, you are even worse than these scientists, judging by your comment;)
I have long lived with the firm conviction that most deodorants are harmful to health, so this hygiene product should only be bought in pharmacies, only there you can find a deodorant with a safe composition. I have been using Libriderm for several months (including summer), its composition is excellent and there is no smell of sweat. That is, a good composition is not always a sacrifice to hygiene, they can be friends)
Why don’t the drivers of minibuses No. 28.67 understand this? They continue to be rude and demand cash!
Are there really still players who play and lose...
When you don't know how to do math, it's hard, but you don't understand it. The expected duration is the result of the calculations. And yes, it is growing because mortality in early ages has decreased. Child mortality has decreased. There are fewer suicides. People stopped dying from vodka in batches. All this increases the chances of the average Russian citizen to live to a very old age. If this is not clear, this does not mean that they are lying to you.
Complete idiocy. Another bottleneck has been created. From Dalnaya to the U-turn at Yana Poluyan, the entire left lane is occupied by U-turners, and accordingly, the right lane is a dedicated lane. There remains a middle lane for a huge number of cars in the direction of Dzerzhinsky. And before there were traffic jams here during rush hours, but now it’s just F... some kind. Thank you very much, you are our caring people.
Then I think we need to restore the station to its previous form.
I look at the hammer thrower Sergei Litvinov, a muscular, handsome blond man, and such nostalgia. How similar to dad. After all, his father, the great Sergei Litvinov, is the same one who, decades ago, threw a heavy hammer five meters further than not only Seryozha’s son, but also the best hammer throwers in the world, to whose level Litvinov Jr. is only approaching.
Sergey, you performed quite well for yourself here in Kazan. Third place at the Universiade, a decent result - 78.08. They were not too far behind the Polish champion Pavel Fajdek - 79.99.
Sergey Litvinov: Yes, in principle I am satisfied. This is what I am capable of now, what I wanted.
But you know, your father was better with a hammer. Here I would have become a champion, no doubt, I would have thrown 85 or 82 and a half meters.
Sergey Litvinov: I know.
What's stopping you?
Sergey Litvinov: How to explain? I had an injury last year. Nothing too significant - pelvic displacement. Moreover, I moved with my family from Germany to Russia. Everything went smoothly, but it took quite a bit of time, although there were no obstacles, only assistance.
Does your father give you advice, encourage you?
Sergey Litvinov: And very seriously. Still, there is progress. I was fifth at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, and now I’m third at the Universiade. Perhaps my most important achievement. But I understand what you are hinting at so strongly now.
Yes, I'm not hinting, I'm asking. Why was it that at one time all three places on the podium were occupied by Soviet hammer fighters, and now “bronze” is a great success?
Sergey Litvinov: Do you think I haven't thought about this? It was a different generation. It was different from ours. And great. These were sports fans, for whom nothing other than sports, except the hammer, existed. My father told me: they only dreamed of first place, all the rest were already a defeat, a failure.
And even if they were paid prize money, it was insignificant compared to what they are today.
Sergey Litvinov: What are the prizes? The father recalls that it was not customary not only to talk about them, but also to think about them.
Were you fighting for an idea?
Sergey Litvinov: For a clean one. But I confess to you. Now we are also fighting, trying, but such fanaticism... Well, I don’t know. There is none. My father hasn’t been home for years, you know, not for months, but for years. I went to training camp. And how long they and the team sat there, how they gave their all. Winter, summer - they were always throwing, improving their technique.
Is hammer throwing really the type where technique decides a lot?
Sergey Litvinov: What are you talking about? How! And all the modern guys - hammermen admit that the former leaders, and these are mainly ours, were much more technical, let's be honest, we are greatly inferior to them. That's for sure.
Sergey Litvinov: I also think about this all the time. If you want gold, you will have to change a lot. And not only technology - this goes without saying. But how to learn or accustom yourself to devote your whole life to sports? Will I, like a father, be able to give a year to one hammer? It's hard for me to say. After all, family - wife, child. How are they without me if I'm far away? They are used to me being around. Sacrifice your family?
But not for the rest of your life, for a season, for several years.
Sergey Litvinov: You need to decide for yourself whether you are ready for this. I'll try. There's still time. The Olympic cycle is just beginning. For us hammermen, 24 and 25 are not yet old.
Although both Yuri Sedykh, whose world record has stood for many years, and your father won at a young age.
Sergey Litvinov: Bogatyrs. They matured faster. We are in a different era, in a different era. There are so many different things not related to sports that you want to see, understand, experience. But we must refuse. And then we will overcome these ill-fated five meters, which I, for example, concede to my father’s generation. My dream is to go to the World Championships in Moscow. More than a month until the start. Still at home, on our own field. Yes, victory is both technique and mentality. We need to tune in to our father’s wave.
Sergei Nikolaevich Litvinov is one of those people who brought glory to Soviet athletics. He is a guru in hammer throwing - 1988 Olympic champion, silver medalist at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, two-time world champion. His son Sergei Sergeevich Litvinov is a bronze medalist at the 2014 European Championships. Now Litvinov Sr. works as a coach in Mordovia. R-Sport agency correspondents Maria Vorobyova and Andrei Simonenko began their conversation with the great athlete with a question about success in this field.
There are some successes; in the primary and reserve ages there are quite good boys and girls,” Litvinov began. - They become winners of all-Russian competitions. Several Belarusians came with me from Minsk, where I worked before, and took Russian citizenship here. One of them was fifth at the Junior World Championships. This season, Ilya Terentyev became third in America at the World Junior Championships. Well, a year and a half after me, my son returned from Germany. In general, I must say that in hammer throwing, and indeed in all throwing, athletes mature late. Heyday begins at the age of 25, but realistically, plus or minus, at 30 years. That is, in the men's hammer, an athlete will not achieve success until he becomes a man in character and mentality.
- So we have to wait until our boys mature?
Yes. It is also important that other types of athletics have simpler movements. Probably all the people ran a hundred meters, a lap or two around the stadium. That is, these types are natural for any person. How it turns out, that’s another question. And the hammer throw is a complex technical event. Like pole vaulting. In life, no one especially needs to jump over a fence with a stick. Likewise, for a long time now, no one has been attacking bastions, spinning shells, or throwing sledgehammers, as they once did in Ireland. I don’t even know how this entertainment ended up in athletics. What I mean is that our movement is very complex, which requires painstaking development every year. And only experienced, mature people can withstand the psychological stress of medal showdowns. Like I said, guys.
Approximately how long does it take to train a real hammer thrower? And when should you start playing this sport?
You need to spend at least ten years on all this, as in many other professions. If you have talent and character, then this is the minimum period to become a competitive athlete. In other words, a star. But in Soviet times we had such a precedent - Anatoly Bondarchuk, an Olympic champion and coach of Olympic champions, a recognized authority in our sport, began to practice hammer throwing at the age of 28. And he achieved great success in doing so, despite the fact that there were a lot of strong throwers in the USSR, the competition was very high. There are other similar examples. But now the situation has changed: our sports leaders, administrative authorities at different levels want children to achieve success as they wished yesterday. There is neither patience nor understanding that this is not done quickly, especially in our sport. They need it faster, faster, faster. This is a big obstacle to development, and in many sports in Russia. And in hammer throwing in particular. If you now take a 20-year-old person into hammer throwing, who has the prerequisites for progress, then it is very difficult to expect support.
- It’s difficult to explain such things to children - that they are expected to succeed yesterday?
Fortunately, children are simply interested in playing our sport. All your achievements in almost every training session are visible - where the hammer falls. Our sport is a very gambling thing. But it is difficult to explain why management wants to invest in some children and send them to training camps, while not others. When we have to explain, we try to do it in a gentle manner.
The main thing for me is that students know how to make decisions
- Previously, in the same Soviet times, there was no such problem?
There used to be many different sports societies. Everyone had their own interests, every society, every school strived for the best results. Therefore, every first-class student counted. And now comes the requirement: weed out the unnecessary. We begin to argue: how is it possible to “weed out”? Children go to classes, they like it, human relationships have already developed in the team. What, tell them they have no prospects? Unreal. And then, in any case, “extras” are needed. And in Soviet times, only a few became stars, while the rest were good, healthy, developed people. Candidates for masters, first-class students... This was the foundation of a generation of healthy people who, until the age of 50, by and large, did not need to take care of their health.
- At some point you can understand that a child will become a star?
This is the question parents often ask me: will my child become an Olympic champion? And you have to explain in a boring way about at least ten years of work, competition, and so on. About the fact that no matter what talent you have, after 20 years a period begins when progress slows down or even stops. And then you have to go further only through character, using special techniques in order to scoop up a few more percent. After all, even star athletes work at only 3% efficiency. This phenomenon, by the way, was once explained by Academician Amosov, a famous surgeon. He said this: our body has naturally learned to be conservative so that in the event of some extreme illness or injury, it can devote all its strength to salvation. But he doesn’t care about everything else, including hammer throwing, and he doesn’t want to take part in it. Follows the line of reasonable laziness. So we have to deceive him with all these methods, regime, character and will.
I would like to ask you more about your son. Sergei Nikolaevich, you won your Olympics at the age of 30. Your son is now 27...
Of course, both he and I have Olympic hopes. In our country, Bondarchuk became an Olympic champion at 28, and Yuri Sedykh, being his student, at 21. It is important to understand here that an athlete can be a follower, or maybe a leader. Bondarchuk created himself, he is unique without a coach. Along the way, I gained decent experience, so I quickly developed myself as a coach. And Sedykh was lucky - he himself is smart, characterful, talented, plus he had a coach with the same characteristics. My coach lost interest in all this early on, and I had to do everything myself. Therefore, I made many more mistakes than these two guys together. But gradually I gained experience, and sometimes I managed to turn the situation around. But as a pair, Bondarchuk and Sedykh were indestructible. Returning to my son, I will say that he is really only approaching the promising age line. And then we'll see how everything turns out.
- Did your son immediately have the makings of a thrower?
Once, as a child, he himself came and declared that he wanted to throw a hammer. To which I replied: let's see what you can do. He had the prerequisites. I slowly led Seryozha from age to age, knowing how everything works slowly in a hammer, that you can’t jump over just desire and you can’t speed up the process. So he grows... And I have hope that something good will come out of him. But from his generation, with whom he started, there is not a single thrower left! Neither in Russia, nor in the near abroad, nor in the world - all those who were world and European champions in youth, youth or juniors - are gone. Taking an athlete from a boy to an adult level, and also arranging everything so that everything works out for him in big sport, is very difficult. I imagine this concept, but, again, not every boss wants to wait until the boy turns 30 and can show something. It's prosaic and boring. I don't give any guarantees.
- Is Sergei similar to your character?
He's different. There are some echoes of the traits of dad and mom, grandfather and grandmother, but overall this is a different person. Here, too, there is a universal remedy that everyone knows, which, in fact, the main thing for me is that all my students, including my son, become independent in their sports path and learn to make decisions. To be or not to be, to go here or there, and to go at all or not? Not many people are able to boldly make one decision or another in difficult life situations. At the same time, there are many coaches who educate talented athletes and lead them to great success, but they still remain followers. When they leave the sport, they don’t know how they did it and what to do next. But independence can and should be cultivated, because leading athletes, when they leave sports, do not sit with nothing. With my son, I pursue this policy as much as possible, he likes it more and more. And those who are younger see that independence is a good thing. Even for five minutes, you can become proud of yourself from solving a problem! And self-esteem is very important.
- Why does a coach need to train a follower student?
This is done deliberately so that students do not leave for another coach. This is protection from competition, but this technique makes athletes flawed. Preparation plans and even individual training must be discussed from the very beginning, giving students the opportunity to think. The fact is that our brain begins to overheat from the thoughts in our head and quickly switches from one to another. Probably everyone has noticed how they watch a movie or read a book, and think about something else. So, you can train this tension of thought, because the longer and more efficiently you think, the greater the likelihood of finding a solution.
Throwing fishing gear is not a problem for me
Sergey Nikolaevich, do you even have confidence that the old traditions that the hammer men laid down in Soviet times will return to our country?
I’m already pessimistic about this, but before I was terribly worried. And then I realized that it was only because of my own ambitions. When our generation performed, there were also occasional successes, and not so that we occupied the entire podium every year. I am glad that I stood at the origins of the movement when we seized a monopoly on the pedestal. And now we have to come to terms with the fact that the decline of hammer throwing has come in our country. I have made many proposals, but no one is interested in this topic under any circumstances. Why? Once again I will say: the result is needed yesterday. And you can take any industry in our country with a similar history. If we did it ourselves, the country could make itself rich and provide for itself for many years to come! But at some point it became easier to buy. And now laziness kicks in - you have to start somehow, someone has to do it, but no one wants to. In my form, I take all possible steps, but it’s impossible to move everything from a dead point in volume.
We will, of course, extend our tradition of asking a frivolous question at the end of an interview to you. Has the ability to throw a hammer come in handy in your life?
When do you need to unwind something? I have been interested in fishing for a couple of decades. So, throwing gear is a nice thing for me! It was not difficult: you navigate in space, feel the weight of the sinker... But this answer is in the style of a joke. And so I’ll get a little smarter: any sport, any hobby is subject to certain laws. Even the banal collecting of stamps teaches one to be disciplined and develops character. Why does any state invest money in sports? There's just no choice. If a child doesn't have a hobby, he'll just be on the street. And from here troubles will come... And we get a simple scheme: family (if there is one, of course), public organizations (kindergarten, school, institute) and hobbies. That's all that can be listed. You can bring in religion, but different regions attach different importance to this matter. But in essence, a person has no more opportunities to become a human being. And, in my opinion, this is the practical purpose of any sport, not excluding hammer throwing. Plus, in my form, there is also a huge safety margin in terms of health: I still manage to lift, throw, and carry many things not so badly! I’ll say this: sport doesn’t prolong life, but it definitely can make it active rather than passive.
Loading...