Petrova&Tikhonov最新访谈

俄国的PT在世锦赛后接受的一篇访谈，文章的抬头挺有意思的“The second are also heroes”，这么多年，这队俄国的老将也够不容易的。他们的自我认知也让我们多少了解他们世锦赛时的感受、现在的状态、心态和下赛季去留等问题，还有大篇幅对COP的评论，PT也不否认他们是从中受益的一队，还提出如何适应COP的见解。既然是对本国记者的访谈，人家不免会谈到中俄之争的话题，看来确实和申赵关系不错，gpf时还受申赵之邀吃了顿中式大餐，不过老赵的英语还有待加强呀。祝愿这些依然在场上拼搏的老将们都能在奥运赛季里得偿所愿!

Interview from St.Petersburg magazine "Gorod", by Vladimir YurinovThe second are also heroes How subjective is the judging in figure skating Figure skating is a subjective sport. Even ISU officials understand this – not long ago they introduced a new scoring system which, however, also caused many arguments. If the scores included audience’s opinion, Maria Petrova and Alexei Tihonov from St.Petersburg would be out of reach in the pairs competition. Nevertheless Petrova and Tihonov are somehow “labelled” as “always second” (although once they were World Champions). - You started to participate in competitions rather late .. - Alexei: We started to skate together in 1996. Masha used to skate with Anton Sikharulidze, and I nearly retired from sport and skated in Tatiana Tarasova’s show. We were just on tour in England when Masha and Ljudmila Velikova called me and suggested to skate in pair. - Maria: Then we skated for about a month. Everything seemed to be OK. And then Alexei suddenly disappeared … Where? - Alexei: It happened because I didn’t know for myself at that moment if I wanted to return to competitions or not. As a result, I was discouraged by some minor difficulties and I, let’s put it so, escaped … - Was Masha offended? - Maria: At first I was just frightened. Lesha didn’t say anything to anyone – just disappeared. And when it all cleared up – of course, I was offended. But in two years it was he who was convincing me to skate in a pair. It took long to persuade me, at first I said definitely “No”. - Alexei: During these two years I realized that I could not live without competitions. Though I was not bad in the show. And I was trying to convince Masha to skate together cos’ I understood that I wanted to skate only with her. - Did you expect that you would win the European Championship already in the first year? - Maria: We didn’t expect, but we believed. We were already “grown-ups” to start. I was 21, Alexei was 27, and it’s quite “middle-aged” for figure skating. - Alexei: In the beginning, only Mahsa, Ljudmila Georgievna and me believed in success. The rest were sceptic. Until we won the European Championship. Though we were also lucky. Had Lena and Anton not withdrawn from the competition due to Elena’s illness, the best placement for us would have been the 3rd place. The judges were unlikely to place another Russian pair higher. But when it was announced that Lena was ill, the pairs that were ahead – the Poles, the Germans and the French - felt that they had a chance to win – and began to fall. About the same happened on this World Championship after Plushenko’s withdrawal. - And did you win the World Champions in Nice next year also by chance? - Alexei: We were deliberately fighting to win. We skated well that season and though we didn’t show our best in Nice our performance was cleaner than the rest’s. - What changed after that? - Alexei: The only mistake was the feeling that since we were world champions we should skate better and better. There was a moment when I started to force our training. And I pressed on Masha, and she was still injured at that time… - Maria: Maybe we should have worked wore quietly. Therefore our next season was a total failure. - In figure skating national hierarchy affects significantly the scores. And the Russian figure skating federation never counted on your pair. - Alexei: All these years we have been the second pair in Russia. First behind Lena and Anton, then

Wish them to win a medal at the Olympics!