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DMITRY Bilozerchev: "IN RUSSIA MY HELP nobody needs"
Interlocutor Elena Vaytsehovsky
The famous Soviet gymnast would like to share your experiences with the Russian athletes, but so far does not find understanding in our heads
This year he is almost 50 and half of his life he lived in the United States, which left in January 1994, more out of desperation. From the inability to create its own international gymnastic center, which wanted to collect all the greatest gymnasts of the Soviet Union disintegrated. Donkey Bilozerchev then in Portland, near Seattle, opened his own club, went to work. Then, as something altogether disappeared from sight. Since our last conversation with him took almost 19 years ...
Dmitry Bilozerchev and his family. Photos of Dmitry Bilozercheva archive
Coaching REPUTATION I have a very HIGH
In a phone call Dmitri said, while in Ireland. Immediately he said:
- I am here at the invitation of one of Dublin's gymnastic clubs. I spend a two-week seminar.
- And who is engaged in Portland your club?
- So the club no longer exists, I sold it. The fact that shortly before the Olympic Games in Athens, I was offered a very interesting five-year contract at Ohio University. Here we are with his wife and took the decision. Not only began to sell the house, because they knew that the opposite is true. In Ohio, then there was a very good gymnastics club at the university, which needed highly skilled trainer. By the way, one of our guys became Olympic champion in Athens.
- Who exactly?
- Paul Ham - he won the all-around and was second on the crossbar. I coached him and his twin brother Morgan, who also was in the Olympic team and the team got the silver. A few years later, another student of mine, Raj Bhavsar, performed as part of the US national team at the Beijing Games and won a bronze medal. But after the Games, my contract ended and we went back to Oregon. Private room, I have not already become open. I do not want it all over again from scratch start. In addition, in my time quite seriously I trained son.
- Alex handed, far as I know, great expectations.
- Yes. He was US champion in the youth championship, played at the Pan American Games. And in 2012, he missed the Olympic team - was spare, but a year before those games are absolutely beat all the guys that went to the national team. That did not want to continue to train for another four years - went to Los Angeles.
- Do not attempt to dissuade his son from leaving the gym?
- Do not see the point. In America, there has always been a certain policy, which is not allowed to rise too high is not "their" athletes. Before the youth level - for God's sake. But the above is already problematic - are not allowed. The same applies to coaches. All the suits, when a capacity of a foreign specialist consults or works on the sidelines in the club. But to become the national team coach is almost impossible for a foreigner.
Looking at it from over the years, I have, in fact, came to the decision not to have individual athletes, and engage in consulting activity.
- You get a lot of invitations?
- Highly. Coaching reputation I have in America is very high, and have a summary of the International Gymnastics Federation, all know that for many years I have successfully worked with the boys and girls, including those who spoke at different times at the Olympic Games. Same Carly Patterson, for example, started with us in the room in Portland, then we gave it to Alexander Alexandrov, and already from him she got into a gymnastic academy Valery Liukin Evgeny Marchenko and he became in 2004, the Olympic champion.
Now my job is reduced mainly to the fact, to put this or that athlete basic training, to make a combination, tell the coach what you need to pay special attention. Lately I've been working a lot with foreign athletes, coaches who are forced to go to a particular collection or competition. Or, is the main coach simply can not cope with the number of athletes and need help. So, food and help.
- One does not fit in my head that you and your erstwhile ambitions ceased to strive for personal results and resigned to the fact that your work is signed by someone else.
- Just for many years I used to it. When Alyosha finished the exercise, of course, I began to think what to do next. Call to Russia Andrei Rodionenko said that if I can do something to help, happy to have worked in the team. Rodionenko listened to me, said: "Yes, of course, I will call you." That's all over and done with. I therefore concluded that in Russia my help is useless.
And demand is still great in America. Wanting a lot, constantly have somewhere to go, including abroad. A lot of work with the national teams, and generally speaking, his ambition I certainly satisfied not with any coach athletes perform at the Olympic Games, and even win a medal there.
- When did you do the last time was at the Olympic Games?
- The student performed in Beijing in 2008.
- I'm not asking about the student.
- I myself have nowhere never traveled.
- And I would like?
- Yes, in principle, no reason. I know all the athletes know all the combinations, many European artists trained in America, with the US youth national team I was on a training camp in Japan, where together with our Japanese team was preparing for the Olympics. Not to mention the fact that everything that happens in the world of gymnastics, can be found on the Internet. And just to go to the Olympics tourists ... I have time and something it is not, and expensive. In addition, when some athletes go to some games, others continue to prepare for the next, and with them, too, someone has to work. That is how I often work in Los Angeles in the Hall Arthur Hakobyan. He's got only forty girls engaged. And of course, all of them conveniently when necessary to train with a man whom they have long known and who knows them. So from the inability to drive the audience to the Games I do not suffer.
- Also Hakobyan you with someone from their past sporting life communicate?
- Almost all. With many children constantly encounter on the American competitions, summer camps. Vitaliy Scherbo, for example, there are good gymnasts youth level, which we periodically intersect at the training camp in Colorado Springs. With Liukin almost vizhus - he is a busy man and always traveling. But with male coaches who work Valera in the hall, I will contact very tight. The main influx of gymnasts in the youth team right now they provide.
Consulting work is more popular in America because the coaches are fairly divided. A coach can not and should not be one. He should learn from the experience of others, to share his. But the possibility is often collected at the training camp, as it once was in the USSR, not here.
LIVE established life, but this is changing burdens
- I remember how much you've been dreaming about how to build a hall in America. How much effort is exerted to ensure that this hall was the work normally. Was it not a pity to sell?
- Of course, I'm sorry. At the same time I was very interested to get into university sports system, to see how the gymnastic clubs work there. We all thoroughly discussed at home and decided in general unanimously. In this regard, the wife has always been for me a close ally and friend.
Try by all means at any cost to save room, sacrificing all the rest, we Olga did not see sense. We've except Alyosha has two daughters. Alice 18, she finishes the second year in college - a very good student at school and came back two years earlier than is customary in the United States. Maschke eight. Studied ballet.
- In Portland there is a ballet school?
- As many as two - Russian and American. We first gave his daughter in Russian, but it took six months - did not like.
- Why?
- For six months of the child is not taught any choreographic position. But in the American school, oddly enough, it turned out to be very good teachers. All those years that Alex trained seriously, I almost all the time gave him. And in the hall and at home. But when he decided to finish with the sport and left, I realized that life can not consist of a gym. What is much wider and very fleeting. And the main thing in it - the family and friends.
Of course, there are people who are willing to spend in the room for twenty hours, there are club owners who just almost around the clock tied to your business, but I'm not one of them. Maybe just because it all in varying degrees, has passed. And quite deliberately I decided to spend more time with their children. They need me far more than the athletes.
- What has been dictated by your desire to return to Russia? Really would like to work in the Russian gymnastics?
- How to explain here ... On the one hand, gymnastics - this is what I understand best. Experience in this respect, I am in America I was great. Here, after all we have to do everything yourself. I worked all when I had my own room. Organization halls, organization of the work of trainers, drawing up training programs budget. In America, it is very difficult to get through - all of which I too have experienced the hard way. I believe that in the men's gymnastics in this country, I did a lot. But to conceive a new hall, as I said, I do not see the point: this I have simply may not have enough forces. And to do something big, and not for anyone else, but, after all, is still wanted for his country. To work with the national team, for example. I am absolutely sure that would help. But it does not depend on me.
It is clear that Russia is not easy, but what is happening in our country, attracts me still larger than life in the United States. I do not like American education, the level of medicine every year also falls, as well as the qualification of people in various fields, in general, a lot of problems. Yes, I demand, I live for a long time an established life, but it bothers me.
- You are not afraid of even the fact that in the case of moving the children have been forcibly taken out of American life?
- Our family is very far from the typical American families. Children are brought up differently, think differently, well spoken in Russian, Alice is going to do now month to go as an exchange student in Moscow, we have retained the Russian citizenship. Although I coach, probably quite unknown in Russia. Probably all already few remember that there was a gymnast.
- Well, why? And remember, and wonder and worry. By the way, it's true that some of the initial stages of his American life have you had a problem with alcohol?
- All his problems with alcohol, I decided 25 years. Now I'm almost 50. That can not quit smoking. Does not work.
Arch for us was Karabas-Barabas
- Performances of the current Russian national teams cause you any emotion?
- Some things seem to me strange. For example, I do not understand how you can not think about the elementary things. It is understood that five times in a row to win the all-around world championship as Kohei Uchimura won, can only be a great gymnast. In this kind of program had simply no competition. But otherwise it is possible to win against anyone. Just practice this requires a completely different way.
- Would you say that Russian gymnasts little work?
- No. They work a lot. But you can work in different ways. You can drag the bar from morning to evening, you can land the whole day dig digger and become a well-deserved. But we are, whether we like it or not, is determined by the one and only criterion for how we perform on the platform their combination. In order for a combination of good looks, easy, has been difficult and evaluated with minimal deductions, this combination should be appropriately trained. Estimates put it behind it. And not for the fact that you came to the platform and Popper on the shell like a tank, with the idea - but not fall. From this fall, and often, and also looks like a tank. No ease. And it says that the number of combinations that athletes are doing in training, too little.
I just know all the numbers: How many combinations of artists are doing in China, in Japan, the United States, Russia. If we have this number is three times lower than that of the leading countries of the gymnasts, and even the kind of work the athletes feel heavy, then what are we talking about? Russian gymnasts in this respect even arkaevskim training figures can not approach. For the work that was carried out thirty years ago in the team we have. And do not ask anyone - all the people who know how to work, or a long time away from the sport, either left Russia. The same Rodionenko can be a great leader. But when was the last time with this men's gymnastics business have?
- For some reason, I remembered Leonid Arkaeva, which, working in the national team under his command, all of you be perceived as Karabas-Barabas.
- So he was Karabas-Barabas for us. Just over time you start to look a lot different. Arkaev was a very hard man. Probably, it was possible in some circumstances be mildly. Somewhere in the care of the athletes, to enable them to wise up a little bit, to find them a little different approach. But who knows whether Arkaev softer, we could have achieved such results?
I'm looking, for example, the American gymnastics and see that there is no general figures of this magnitude - the ability to create such a powerful gymnastic car and get her uptime. In this regard, Arch - a great man. I was a huge sports experience working with him. And very grateful to him for that.
- Nevertheless, between you there was a very big conflict, when you left the team and tried to work independently.
- Maybe all these skirmishes could be if, after retiring from the sport I had some kind of a break, a chance to relax, grow up, shut down, at least temporarily from the sport, put his head in place. But now to talk about it? Foolishly, we all make mistakes. We do not like personal trainers, because they are constantly forced to work, but to work - it's hard.
I really realized how important it was only after becoming coach. Constantly trying to explain this to his disciples. When he was in the team, with me in the long run because no one ever talked heart to heart. Because we did the soldiers, and it was not up to talking. I do not think the same Arkaev ever even wondered what kind of person I am, though, to be honest, I am he forgave much of what you do not forgive others.
In the first place it has always been a discipline, he kept us all with an iron fist and is actually a huge thank him for that. I think the same thing will tell you any gymnast who under the leadership of Arkaeva played for the national team. But how do we then hated ...
- Due to what, by the way, as strong American, the issue of women's team victory in gymnastics can be considered resolved before the start of any competition?
- Firstly, a strong coaching staff. The Americans were able to change in women's gymnastics all the training system, from nursery level. Increase the number of classes in schools and clubs, their duration. In the women's gymnastics is much higher budgets. This, incidentally, is one of the reasons why many strong foreign coaches men who came to the US in search of work, very quickly switched to work with the girls. Including so many representatives of the Russian men's top gymnastics.
- Working with the girls, you can make the result more quickly?
- Not in this case. All, as I have said, rests against the finance. If you in the club over a hundred girls, you can afford to invite leading experts, to pay them high salaries, buy good equipment. And what you can afford, if a dozen boys goes to deal with you? Therefore, men's gymnastics in the United States - people who feel a great happiness for the catch at the Olympics some medal. And the coaches continue to leave. The same Scherbo think will work for some time with his youth team, and then spits and starts to work with the girls too.
It is clear that a high level of girls in the United States a lot. Clubs in the country a few thousand, each dealing with more than a hundred, a lot of the most diverse events, so choose the right time five or six people who can fight for victory at the world level, is no problem.
- Screenings in women's gymnastics in the United States is great?
- The fact of the matter is that there is no drop-outs. All continue to work to pay for the lessons, the coach have to respectively remain seized with all athletes, without exception, including those not the most talented, and it forces constantly learning, constantly breaking down. How, for example, to make the result of a single athlete, but it does not hurt other children - all of them to continue to do? I would even say with the height of his experience today that the first ten years in the coaching profession, even if you're a genius, you're in America, only constantly learn how to work. Then it becomes easier.
Dmitry Bilozerchev, born December 22, 1966
The absolute champion of Europe in 1983 and 1985.
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