David Belyavskiy talked to Sergei Smyshlyaev of RIA Novosti at Euros and answered the questions that his fans submitted.
Q: There were two questions about the gym you opened. First – does the work at your gym satisfy you? Second – what’s the goal of the gym: recreational gymnastics or preparing athletes for the national team?
A: You know, I’ll explain this first: it’s not just my gym, and I’m not the only one working there. I delegated it to the guys, they are managing it, because I believe that you can’t combine those two jobs, it won’t work. You have to spend a lot of time. You either do one thing well or another one, you can’t do both well. I’d rather earn less money from it but there will be results there. Or I’d need to give up training and only work at the gym. That’s my opinion.
Q: The next question literally continues the topic: for how long do you plan on staying in gymnastics? People were also interested what are your plans for after Tokyo?
A: For how long… As long as my health allows it. What, do you want me to retire already? [smiles] I want to compete, I like it. I seem to be good at it, for now. I don’t see any reasons to retire. The only thing is that I want to be home more now. My daughter started walking.
Q: And another question from the fans continuing this topic: for what sport you plan to sign Alyssia up?
A: She’s attended a gymnastics class already, at our gym. She went with her mom, the class is called “Baby”, the kids are crawling there, doing all sorts of stuff. Anyway, it’s better than sitting at home. I can’t say that she’ll definitely do elite sports. If she’ll want it – she’ll do it, if she won’t want it – she won’t do it. If she’ll like it, I can’t forbid her from doing it. Or the opposite – to force her, like, “your dad was like that, you need to do it too!”.
Q: Do you plan on becoming a coach in the future?
A: If I’ll need to, I can become a coach, I think. But I don’t know how good a coach I’d be. [laughs] It’s rare that a good athlete becomes a good coach.
Q: Why parallel bars?
A: It’s one of my favorite events. I guess it’s just going better for me. Actually, it’s an interesting thing: as a junior, I was good at tumbling events. I took second place on vault at the European Championships. Then I started getting a bit better on pommel horse, a bit – on bars. Everything was constantly changing but lately, it stabilized.
Q: People are asking about the meaning of your tattoos and whether you plan on getting more?
A: Yeah, I’ll get “sleeves” so that my whole arms will be black. [laughs] I’m joking. I don’t really oppose tattoos or like them a lot. If I’ll want more, I’ll get more, if not – then no. I’m not obsessed with them. I only have one tattoo, and you can look up the meaning online, it’s not hard.
Q: Do you plan to ever compete a p-bars dismount – double pike with a full twist? You showed on Instagram that you can do it. You’d have one more named element and a very difficult one.
A: I’ll say right away: I almost never compete at competitions where I could afford doing this dismount. I’d have to downgrade my routine in order to do this dismount because with my difficult routine I just won’t be able to do it. If they’ll send me to some World Cup where I’ll need to do only parallel bars with the 6.0 difficulty and to submit this dismount – then sure, I’ll do it.
Q: Have you ever worked with a sports psychologist?
A: No. This seems like BS to me. My coach is my psychologist. A coach has to be a psychologist, to set you for the competition. You’re working with him your whole life and he has to see in what state you are, when it’s better to say something to you and when it’s better to leave you alone.
Q: When you do your routines at competitions, do you consciously control each movement or do you turn your mind off, relying on the body memory from the training?
A: The thing is when you start thinking during a routine you’ll definitely make a mistake. You can’t think at all. That is, you go out, everything’s been repeated many times. Yes, you can make some corrections, to change a hand placement. But not during an element. If you’ll start thinking during an element, you’ll definitely make a mistake, I’ve seen it many times in my own routines. During a routine, I can think about something completely unrelated, I’m doing bars and I’m like “Oh, there are so many spectators!” This happens, too.
Photo: Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation
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