Anya, hi!, says Alina as she enters the room. Nice to meet you. We can call each other by our first names, can’t we?

I’m all in favour of that. I’ve been dreaming of meeting you for ages. It’s a great pleasure. We sit down at a long table and a couple of cappuccinos are brought in.

And it’s a pleasure for me to see that there are people in this country who think about their future in the middle of their sporting career. That’s really good - well done! It’s a pity not all sportsmen think that way. You are still in training, aren’t you?

Yes, we’re preparing for the Trophy at the moment. We’re going to Canada at the end of November to compete for the World Trophy.

Do you have any time left over for training?

I spend most of my time training. We work for five days and rest for one. True, while everybody else is resting, I’m at work.

It must be hard?

For me a change of scenery is the best way to relax. I can’t just lie about at home on the sofa. But when I get really tired it’s impossible to wake me up. That’s why when I have the energy I push myself hard.

If you enjoy it, that’s wonderful. The main thing is for you to get back in form, both emotionally and physically. I know from my own experience that a tired sportsman is no good for anything.

Couldn’t agree more. Actually, you and I have a lot in common. Just like you, my first Olympics were a flop. I’d already taken a firm decision to give up sport after Beijing and throw myself into my profession, particularly since I’d just graduated from University [Moscow State University Journalism Faculty – ed.]. I thought that since I’d failed once there was no point in banging my head against a brick wall. But then, after winning the Games in Beijing, I came back with the team to celebrate our victory in Russkiy Dom.

And we came along to congratulate you that time.

I remember I saw you there, and you were absolutely radiant! So beautiful and smiling – you had succeeded in life! And that gave me hope that perhaps, after all, it was worth getting back into the water again.

Of course it’s worth it. Though I remember when I came back the media were full of headlines about Kabaeva going to fail a second time. And that made me so mad, that I won the Athens gold just to spite everyone. Nowadays I’m partly grateful to those who didn’t believe in me.

Was it hard to get back into sport after Athens?

There were some difficulties. Getting my weight down, self-control…that’s the hardest thing, as you know. For 18 months I’d lived a different life, and then suddenly all that discipline again. I remember going to see Irina Aleksandrovna [Viner – ed.] on International Women’s Day, giving her a bouquet of flowers and telling her that I was starting to train again. And a little later I went to Novogorsk and started preparing. The Grand Prix and world championship were approaching fast. One afternoon while practising in the hall I saw my car through the window. I asked Irina if I could go out and she said “of course”, and I got into the car and went home.

Running away from training?

Yes, but I changed my mind a bit later, and went back. And that’s how, one step at a time, stumbling along the way, I got back into professional sport. Thank God, despite everything my trainer and my mother were always beside me, tirelessly repeating “In years to come you’ll be watching the Olympics on TV and weeping because you couldn’t cope”. But I pulled through, and now I’m happy. I have no regrets.

And if you hadn’t become Olympic champion would life have turned out differently?

Yes, of course. Some things would have been different. And it would have been hard looking back all the time to the Olympics and thinking that I might have won, but didn’t.

Do you often think back to your win in Athens?

Not any more. Only when I visit my Mum. I see the photograph on the wall and think “That’s right! I’m an Olympic champion!” But I don’t really have much time for memories. I’m needed elsewhere. And I think this is very important - to find a role for yourself after sport. I’ve found one. I’m doing something I love, something I enjoy. And I enjoy it because I do it well. But I’ll never completely abandon gymnastics in any event.

Would you like to become a trainer?

Yes, but only for pleasure. I couldn’t devote myself to it the way Irina Aleksandrovna has. She lives for sport, and that’s great. Thanks to her our country wins so many medals! The whole image of Russian rhythmic gymnastics depends on her. But I have a different goal: I’m working on opening an Alina Kabaeva School of Beauty and Grace. It won’t be about professional sport – I just want the girls to have an opportunity to practise gymnastics, to dance, to be beautiful, pliable, self-confident and to develop in every area.

You mean you wouldn’t want your own children to go into professional sport?

Perhaps I would - most likely rhythmic gymnastics. I think it’s the very best and most beautiful sport there is. And synchronized swimming, of course!

You know, there are legends about our trainers still competing to this day.

Yes, because Tatyana Nikolaevna [Pokrovskaya – ed.] used to be a rhythmic gymnastics trainer. These days, the rivalry between our trainers is about who can win the most medals. But this is great for Russia!

Zhenya Kanaeva is picking up all the rhythmic gymnastics meals nowadays. Do you follow her performances?

When I can. I’ve heard she did very well at the world championship, that she won six gold medals. That’s great!

Kanaeva first made name for herself when you had a knee injury before the 2007 European Championship.

That was just coincidence. Though Irina Aleksandrovna says that there’s no such thing as coincidence, and actually she is right about that as well. The thing is that I was training in track-suit trousers – always fighting my weight – and as I was practising the trousers came down a bit and ended up covering my knees. I had to do a split jump and then land on my knee. During one of the sessions I landed and my costume somehow twisted my leg, and there was a crunching sound. And after that my knee began to give me serious trouble. Viner had already included me in the team for the European championship, where I was supposed to perform in one event. We got to the final rehearsal, I jumped, landed and said “That’s it, Irina Aleksandrovna, I can’t do it”.

And the trainer took her favourite sportswomen off the starting blocks?

Irina Aleksandrovna was always fair. She would never include me in the team if she saw that I wasn’t on form. She explained that she didn’t want both of us to be ashamed. And that’s when she put Kanaeva in, and Zhenya won the European Championship with the ribbon.

Then at the world championship you failed to qualify for the individual all-round event.

Yes, I’d fallen seriously ill during training – I don’t even want to think about it. And then I said to myself” “Alina, stop! No more.”

Amazing! Zhenya Kanaeva now has a chance of winning her second Olympics – do you feel any jealousy?

Absolutely no jealousy at all. She might win another gold for our great country. That’s really good.

In an interview with “Sovetskiy Sport” Kanaeva said that you are a huge role model for her. Most of all she admires your work with the ribbon etc. As far as plasticity of movement is concerned, she puts Irina Chaschina in first place. What would you single out in Kanaeva? And what is the fundamental difference between the two of you that Irina Aleksandrovna keeps talking about [in an interview Viner said that the only thing Kabaeva and Kanaeva have in common is that they are both Olympic champions – ed.]?

Zhenya and I are completely different gymnasts in everything we do. In the same way that there are no two identical people, there are no two identical sportsmen. Kanaeva has everything, but she also has something to strive for. She still lacks artistry, but I think experience will help her to develop.

They’ve recently begun scoring role interpretation separately in your kind of sport. And there are also some new developments in synchronized swimming: we’ll be swimming with accessories at the next competition.

You’re kidding!, laughs Alina.

You just never know what they’ll come up with next! So far the accessories are not mandatory, but they are permitted. In our national theme programme we’ll be performing to the music of “Gypsy Girl”. We’re planning to swim with playing cards, because gypsies are masters at telling fortunes from cards. We’ll be pulling the cards out of our swimsuits as we go through the choreography. It won’t be long before our two kinds of sport are absolutely identical apart from the venues!

All we need now is to fill our gymnastics halls with water, jokes Alina. But it’s very hard to perform with wet ribbons. In Athens, for example, the humidity was colossal and there was air conditioning everywhere, so the ribbon got blown about and it was impossible to work with it.

You don’t need to perform with the ribbon any more – you have so many other things to do. It’s all very serious here, I comment on the formal surroundings in which Alina works: absolute silence, sound-proofed doors…a complete contrast with the wonderful smiling gymnast sitting opposite me.

I have two offices. One in the Duma, and the other here, in the Public Council of the National Media Group, where I work on my own TV show “Steps towards Success”.

Plenary sessions – these are words I only hear on TV!

But I take part in the process itself. At first it was hard to understand these internal procedures, but I have a great team who help me make sense of everything. There are five of them and I really value them: in the Duma, in the Foundation, in television – they’re a pillar of strength for me. We’re making progress together despite all the difficulties.

Can every Olympic champion become a people’s deputy?

I think all Olympic champions have already done so much for their country that they can try to do even more at a different level.

Was it difficult to make that leap from sport into public life?

It was all so fast, I had no time to realize what was happening. There were moments when I was worried, of course, but I managed.

What’s the main thing in your new job?

The main lesson I’ve learned from politics is that you can never help everyone. In politics you have to be able to say “No”. I’ve learned that, and now I never raise people’s hopes if I know it’s impossible to do what they’re asking.

What the biggest problem in Russian sport?

Not enough specialists. I was in Rostov region recently, and there are lots of people there who want to do rhythmic gymnastics. But there are no trainers. They’ve built a sensational sports centre with superb working conditions: good pay, an apartment that becomes your own after five years on the job. But nobody from Rostov wants to go and live in the country.

Outside politics you are actively involved in charity work.

Yes, I’m proud of my foundation and the projects we’re working on. One of the biggest is a sports complex in Tskhinval. Let me show you the model…there will be a swimming pool here, and halls for the gymnasts, the wrestlers and the weightlifters.

Different sports side by side - that’s nice. I always dreamed of a base where the sportsmen weren’t isolated from one another.

I can understand that. In Ramenskoe [main base of the national synchronized swimming team – Ed.] there’s not enough socializing, smiles Alina. Last year the foundation set up a hotline on the Common State Examination – it got up to 8,000 calls a day. Questions from pupils and parents were answered by professors in the main subjects. And we’re also opening rural libraries and internet rooms for children with disabilities.

Have you ever thought of helping the paralympic sportsmen? Russia will soon by hosting the Winter Olympics, after all, and the facilities for handicapped sportsmen are hopeless, especially compared with the European countries.

Things are gradually changing. There are a lot of new sports centres in Moscow with changing rooms and toilets designed for paralympians. You can’t do everything at once. It’s such a huge country! I think Sochi will be really well organized. A country like Russia shouldn’t fall flat on its face.

It would be nice to think so. But there’s still Vancouver before Sochi. We won’t find it easy without the female skiing team.

I saw Tretyak in Kazan. He told me how they used to play in woolen costumes that shrank after washing and gloves that were full of holes. Then he remembered going to Finland in Soviet times. According to him, the kids playing hockey in their backyards were better dressed than the Soviet national team. But our guys won! So it’s nothing to do with the uniform. This is in answer to your question about drugs. What do we need them for?

You think our skiers were set up?

Why do the Chinese and Americans never get caught for taking drugs? But our guys always do? Russia needs to do some work in this area. A lot of money is spent on labs, but so far it’s not doing any good. I can’t say anything definite about the skiers, but I can tell you what happened to me in 2001. At the world championship after the Goodwill Games in Australia Chaschina was given a second drugs test and I wasn’t, although I had won. Then my Australian result turned out to be positive and the team medal went to Ukraine. In some events the Bulgarian girl Simona Peicheva, who had come second, gave up the gold and said I was the one who deserved it. It was just grown-ups settling scores and we got tangled up in it all.

Your third area of activity is journalism. What attracts you to TV?

Well, first of all, I’m the chairman of the Public Council of the National Media Group. I always wanted to know what TV was like on the inside, because you can use TV to educate society. It’s not like selling oil or gas! What we offer is what people will watch, and not the other way around.

Were did you get the idea of “Steps towards Success”? [Alina’s own TV programme – Ed.]

I saw how the media, especially TV, were treating our stars: cheap sensationalism and glamour everywhere. There wasn’t a single programme that showed what famous people have to go through to achieve success. And that’s where the idea came from. My guests open up when the talk to me. Sometimes they even go too far, and when I check through the pre-screening version I have to cut out bits that are “not for public consumption”. I never get tired of repeating that I will stand firm and not go chasing after audience figures.

Despite what you say about “cheap sensationalism” and “glamour” you’re a public figure and there’s a lot of interest in you, of course…

I just live my life and do my job. Naturally, I don’t like reading all sorts of rubbish about myself, and it upsets my family even more. But I know how this business works: somebody spreads a good rumour, it gets watched and the viewing figures go up. But there’s no point in fighting it…changing the way you behave because of someone else, or going into hiding. I’ve no intention of doing that. It’s not worth it. I run my own life. I’m a very open person and very forgiving. The only thing I can’t stand is rudeness.

Where do you hide from the hardships of public life?

In the country. The autumn forest is so beautiful. When I’m walking in the forest all sorts of ideas come into my head. I note them down. And sport is also a wonderful way to relax. I train or run at least three times a week. And I talk to my family – my Mum and little sister. Two years ago I learned how to ski, and I was so happy that I’d mastered a new skill. You can’t imagine how much I’m looking forward to winter! And I love the sea. Actually a combination of mountains and sea is just sensational!

How do you spend your leisure time in Moscow?

Books. Reading before going to sleep is a must. And I listen to music: I adore Relax-FM! Just recently I came across some romances set to music by Tchaikovsky and thought how beautiful they were. These days I always prefer the classics, though at school I couldn’t stand them. There’s obviously a time and place for everything.

You hardly ever give interviews. Why did you agree to talk to a correspondent from “Sovetskiy Sport”?

How could I refuse an Olympic champion?

I’m only a world champion as yet.

Freudian slip, Anechka, God willing. “Sovetskiy Sport” is my kind of thing! I’ve come from the world of sport and I’m always open to anything to do with sport. .

Source: “Sovetskiy Sport”

A.Nasekina

31 October 2009 No.165 (17961)