The first day of the artistic Spartakiad, the main event, women’s single skating, was not on the calendar. The main troublemaker, not on the ice, but in the mixed zone, was Dmitry Aliev, a figure skater from St. Petersburg who did not stand on the podium at the Russian Championships this season.
Aliyev, 24, took eighth place out of 11 participants in the short program: he ruined the quadruple sheepskin coat by rotating it less and also did not perform the second quadruple; It turned out to be a cascade of triple jumps. . Dmitry received 88.99 points and decent components, and then he went to journalists and made a speech that was quoted.
“Burned? Maybe. We also have the same participants from start to finish. Everything is fine, but only the name of the start changes. I was very excited when I competed with Xavi during the European years… Here, for me , all the exits are the same. They are great, I don’t argue, but I’m so used to the guys that you go out and think… I don’t want to insult the guys, but I don’t have it, you know,” Aliyev said.
Dima continued:
“I recently spoke with my friend, a former figure skater with quite a title, and I realized that the most important competition held in those years was the Russian Championships. And here we have almost all the starts of the Russian Championship. This is good, but in these conditions I don’t feel the rules, many things don’t work for me. But maybe everything will change.”
There was a reaction to Aliyev’s words.
Of course, the figure skater’s words did not go unnoticed – not so much the phrase that became a slogan and which Elena Vaitsekhovskaya called “with a bias towards sex-pathology”, but the message itself about the lack of motivation.
“I would like to stupidly clarify: where exactly, Dima, did you compete with Javier? At the 2018 European Championships in Moscow, the only competition in which you two finished on the podium and where Javier “contributed” more than 20 points to you? A strange perception of reality, to put it bluntly. Maybe that’s why it’s not worth it. It’s definitely not worth hanging out in public, which still supports you. Play with the accents yourself,” the journalist wrote on her Telegram channel.
Dmitry Aliev, Javier Fernández and Mikhail Kolyada with medals from the 2018 European Championships
Photo: RIA Novosti
“When did it burn? – Tatyana Tarasova also did not understand in a conversation with Match TV. — I haven’t skated well this season. Did it burn on September 1st? We need to ask the coach and himself if he can revitalize himself.”
Elena Radionova, bronze medalist at the World Championships, is sure that Aliyev would have spoken differently if he had performed better.
“Dmitry has the right to his opinion, but if this season were a success for him, everything would be good for him. Perhaps these words are not an excuse, but a true inner state, but in any case, if this season had gone better, it would have been happier,” said the former skater.
Aliyev’s coach was quick to clarify the student’s words.
Dmitry’s free program was much better: he performed an inspired clean skate with three quads: Lutz, Salchow and toe loop.
And coach Evgeny Rukavitsyn went out with him to the mixed zone and attacked journalists for the fact that yesterday’s phrase should not have been published, and they completely misunderstood Dmitry’s motivation.
Here are his full words:
“Among you there are many decent and rational people. I have great respect for your profession, but let me comment on yesterday. I know that Dima is a very emotional, frank and loving person. And I’m going to speak frankly: perhaps yesterday not everyone was delighted with the phrase she said. But there was a request: do not print. She was ignored.
Maybe there was a moment when I had to say it. To some extent there was disappointment. We are the only ones to blame for that box office and that’s it. We have no problems with motivation, I want to confirm that. I raise children, no matter how pretentious it may seem: turn on patriotism. And that’s what they are. We had a rough night, let me tell you. I don’t have much to say, I try to stay silent and not give unnecessary interviews, but I’ll start by saying that there are many decent professionals among you.
Yesterday Dima allowed himself to be a little frank with himself, not with global processes: I mean the lack of motivation, I want to compete in the World Championship. No, that’s not what the speech was about. The conversation revolved around the fact that when at national championships (this is also an example, try to listen to me) great athletes are selected for serious tournaments, a hum is heard in the halls, a creak due to tension. Athletes of the highest level, at the moment of ideal form, take some kind of particle of this tension and crunch – adrenaline, whatever – which produces the effect of an exploding bomb in the sense that when the ideal form , and then the person produces super skating. He talks about it: he was waiting, but for some reason this piece was not there.
Dmitri Aliev
Photo: RIA Novosti
It is nobody’s fault. We are happy to travel here, happy to travel here, we had a huge number of different proposals, but we did not even discuss them: conditionally a change of citizenship. We are patriots, we skate here and we skate for Russia and in Russia. We don’t strive abroad, we are happy here, let them envy us, that is the philosophy we live by, that is why I came here now.”
Aliyev denied that he does not respect his rivals
In addition to outrage over the strange formulations about motivation, there was also discontent over the fact that Aliyev allegedly insulted his rivals with his words. However, it actually turned out that this was not the case. Dima also did not remain silent, he honestly hid and clarified the ambiguous moments of his speech:
“My coach says I am a very emotional person. Maybe this is my weakness, I don’t know how to take it and not let this word enter my world. I never follow or read any comments, but this time I found it with my eyes and realized that Tatyana Anatolyevna Tarasova was also commenting on this situation. It even seemed a little strange to me that they were exaggerating and I turned to Tatiana Anatolyevna.
The same commentators: what type of Javier should you compete with? He “brought” you 20 points. But you don’t know the whole world of the figure. I communicate very well with everyone; I’m a sincere guy who can walk up to anyone and say: Vlad. [Дикиджи]speck [Ветлугину]…I even helped someone. It’s not that they are nothing to me and they don’t motivate me. “I compete myself,” said the skater.
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The situation that occurred turned out to be a banal misunderstanding. Perhaps Aliyev should have chosen his words more carefully, but, on the other hand, he did not ignore the existence of a real problem. Unlike other skaters, he does not hesitate to talk about his pain, which, it should be noted, is common to everyone. And it’s probably not worth upsetting Dima just because he was honest with her fans. In the end he fights and does not abandon the sport, proving that he can skate at the highest level and has not yet said the last word in figure skating.
