On February 6, 19-year-old Russian freestyle skier Anastasia Sminova won the bronze medal in the Women's Snow Skiing Mogul Skiing at the Beijing Winter Olympics. It was the first Olympic medal won by a Russian female athlete in the sport since 1994. What the specific situation is, let's find out in the interview below.
- How does it feel to be the first Olympic medalist in the women's snow skill event in 28 years?
- I don't even know how to describe this feeling. It was also over time that I learned that our female athletes had not won a medal in the snow skills event for 28 years. The same is true of the World Championships. I am very happy and fortunate to have made this achievement in our annals.
- How did you prepare for the Winter Olympics? Unfortunately, the Winter Olympics will be heavily politicized by Western countries, and Russian athletes will become hostages in political confrontation. Is this stressful for you?
- No, I was not affected in any way. We trained in Finland. My personal trainer was not there during training. It was a fairly long training camp — we didn't leave there until a month before the Winter Olympics started. That's my only pressure. So, in principle, everything was fine and we did our best.
- Tell me why you chose the Snow Trick project?
-When I was 4 years old, my dad put me on skis to let me learn to ski. Our city of Chusovoy is a freestyle skiing snow skill sports centre where sports training is very strong. So I started the sport. In addition, it is a very wonderful sport: here you can skate, jump and show speed.
Chusovoy is a very small city, but the people there are very kind. The city is often referred to as the "City of Sport" because great athletes like Tatyana Ivanova, Albert Demchenko and Sergei Shuboletsov grew up here. This is my favorite city.
-What advice do you have for your Russian-Austrian teammates who are about to play at the Winter Olympics?
-I recommend that you train hard and take small steps towards your goal, but still strive to achieve it. Don't be nervous, this is perhaps the most important thing to pay attention to at the Winter Olympics.
-So how did you overcome the tension yourself at the Winter Olympics?
- I tried to treat it like a normal game from the beginning, because the work I had to do was exactly the same as during the preparation period. I try to concentrate, very focused. That's why I got this medal.
- How to make snow tricks more popular in Russia?
- Need to get more medals at the World Cup and World Championships. We're working very hard to fight for it, and I hope that, starting in 2021, we'll be able to raise our impact in a short period of time, get people to pay attention to us, talk about us.
