Alexey Kuznetsov: ‘I hope Minakov’s gold will add one stake to the swimmer of Sintez sports club’

“Sofia Diakova's results are growing”

Alexey, from discussing the golden performance of Andrei Minakov who you coach, I suggest moving on to assessing the start of Sofia Dyakova, your pupil on the Tatarstan national team.

She set a Russian junior record, reaching one final (8th place) and falling just short of the other (9th place). Moreover, she, like Minakov, has her own 4^th-place medal, since she participated in the preliminary heats in the 4x200m relay, which ultimately finished fourth.

By the way, in Budapest, Diakova competed not only in the World Championships, having previously competed in a match meeting with the Hungarian national team. This is for juniors, to whom our swimming federation has always provided the opportunity to compete at the international level. I remember that Alexander Shimin went to London for a match meeting with the local team.

16-year-old Dyakova is still a junior. Are there any concerns about overloading her with competitions?

Fortunately, there is an understanding that you can't embrace the immensity, and she had to give up some junior competitions, the same Russian championship, in order to recover normally. The results are growing, she has a fighting spirit, with her personal coach Svetlana Chepik they are doing everything step by step to progress. Moreover, there is Ksenia Misharina from Moscow they began to compete in domestic starts with.

And who was with Chepik before?

I can remember Nikita Korolyov, Rinat Mustafin, Aygul Sagirova.

Alexey Kuznetsov (right, at the podium).

“We will analyse the changed technique of swimmers' exit from the turn”

It turns out that for Chepik's pupils this is not the first start in Budapest, since Nikita Korolyov already started at the 2017 World Championships, and, like Diakova, finished fourth in the relay. Only 4x100m freestyle, and then his coaches were Maxim Dedlovsky and Vasily Tsyganko.

Yes, then the Hungarians jumped above their heads on home water, eventually swimming to the podium. The experience of international starts is that you can't relax here. When at the Russian Championship or Cup in the preliminary starts you don't have to give it your all, swimming quite calmly in the morning. In Budapest, just to get into the final eight, Sofia had to give it her all both in the morning, in the preliminary start and in the evening. And she showed stable seconds, revealing that she has already reached a certain result, with which she can compete at the world championship.

It seems that Hungary has become the centre for holding competitions at the FINA and LEN level — it is holding the fourth championship, starting in 2017.

This country has always been among the leaders of world swimming, there are good athletes, and a pool, and experience in holding competitions, which often contributes to the development of the sport. In general, high results in swimming are a combination of good coaches of promising athletes, a scientific school. And in this regard, participation in international competitions is very important.

The World Weightlifting Championships ended, which dispelled the myth about the need for constant international training. North Korean weightlifters won 9 gold medals out of 20 at the World Championships, both men and women, after a break in international competitions since 2019. Almost completely changing the team since then and saturating it with competitive athletes in almost all categories.

An interesting observation, I will need to discuss it with my weightlifting friends. In the meantime, I immediately recall how James Guy and Adam Peaty shot up at our World Championships, and then the England team as a whole, which began to be prepared for the start of the home Olympics in 2012 in London, under the guidance of Russian coach Andrey Vorontsov. Then it was a targeted preparation, as, apparently, was now being conducted by the DPRK weightlifters. As for the suspension from international competitions, we discussed this with colleagues during the period when I was studying in graduate school, and we were concerned that we would begin to lag behind during the suspension period. Swimming is a constantly improving technique, which was noticeable in the current championship, when American Gretchen Walsh, Jordan Crooks from the Cayman Islands, Swiss Noah Ponti, studying in the USA, performed exits in a completely different way. These are all heroes of the current World Championships, champions, and we will analyse their changed exit technique, when the water is hit from the shoulders. And this is not always possible to examine in detail from a TV camera, you need to watch somewhere from the stands, being on the side of the pool. Well, I have already started talking about the specifics.

“Some leaders of world swimming miss the end of the year”

This specificity, understandable to professionals, is what gives the gain of hundredths, tenths of a second, which at competitions separates champions from prize winners, and prize winners simply from finalists. In conclusion of the conversation about the World Championship, short water is more about turns, and you can’t predict anything about long water.

Yes, there is little smooth water in swimming in the 25-metre pool, and this applies to those very exits from the water that I talked about a lot. It is also necessary to note here that in the post-Olympic season, some leaders of world swimming skip the end of the season, preferring to rest after the Olympic load. I noticed this at the post-Olympic World Championships in Canada in 2016, where our Alexander Krasnykh won the entire set of awards.

I will note that the same Americans came to Budapest as the second or third team, and easily took first place in the team competition. Although previously almost no attention was paid to short course, and the same Michael Phelps, with all his versatility and a large number of starts, only started in the short course at home World Cup competitions.

You are now the head coach of the Tatarstan team, if possible, evaluate the results of the year.

We are now competing in the team competition with Moscow and Kaluga for 2nd place after the undisputed leader St Petersburg. We finished 4th at the last national in short course championship, against the background of the fact that Andrey Minakov did not come to the start, Ralina Gilyazova, Alexey Merzlyakov started with an injury, and we were just a little short of the third overall team championship. We will sum up the results after the final start of the season at the Salnikov Cup in St Petersburg. But these are details, and based on the results, it is necessary to understand that Moscow and St Petersburg are places of attraction for representatives of the swimming world, they are primarily striving there, in particular, to study at specialized universities. Another thing is that these cities have certain problems with water, when there are only a few municipal swimming pools, and the rest are privately maintained.

“The national team receives an influx of promising swimmers from districts”

The same situation is in water polo, once a match with St Petersburg's Baltika was moved to Kazan, since the pool was out of order after competitions or demonstration starts in water-motor sports.

In this regard, our situation is much better, including due to the implementation of the programme for the construction of swimming pools in the regions of the republic. Our national team receives an influx of promising swimmers from the regions, and not only from the cities of Almetyevsk, Nizhnekamsk, Chelny. The problem is that coaches are not always ready to go to the regions, and we, as the swimming federation of the republic, find a way out in holding some master classes, fortunately there are people who are ready to work on a rotational basis.

I would also like to point out such a plus as the presence of the Volga Region University of Sports, where people come, and there is an opportunity to build a pyramid, starting with the Olympic Reserve School, the student team of the Volga Region University and the national team of the republic, which is under the auspices of the federation. Not all students of the Volga Region University join our team, some compete only in student competitions, but there is a part of swimmers who choose the Tatarstan team. There is also an influx of coaching personnel, which continues to be the main problem at the federal level. Both in quantity and quality.

How are things going in Sintez? At the peak, there were four swimmers in the sports club, and now swimming is inferior even to divers, of which there are three at the sports club.

Sofia Diakova is not yet old enough to join the team, and I hope that Minakov’s golden success will allow us to add another swimmer to the sports club. From our side, we need to demonstrate high results. There are promising athletes to include in the championship team. It will be necessary to achieve decent results by the summer, when the period of expiration of old contracts and signing of new ones occurs.