Lupita translates a Sovietski Sport interview with newly adopted Russian MAG team member, former Ukraine Olympian, Nikolai (Mykola) Kuksenkov.
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| Nikolai Kuksenkov and his sister, journalist Irina. Courtesy of Sovietski Sport |
KUKSENKOV INTERVIEWED BY HIS SISTER JOURNALIST IRINA KUKSENKOVA
A STOLEN MEDAL
– Tell me, Kolya, when did you first ever think about going to live in Russia?
– Irina, it was a long time ago, when we were living in Belgium, where Dad was the national team’s coach. You entered the Journalism School in Moscow University and I thought it would be nice to go to Russia. I was still a kid and I went back to Kiev with our parents. Later I was seriously injured before the Beijing Olympics, I had surgery and a long recovery. You remember, I came to see you in Moscow, we went to different specialists. I didn't know if I would come back to elite sport. The doctors didn’t give a very promising prognosis. At the end, I watched the Olympics on TV. Аnd I lived for the following four years thinking of London.
– Before London, a new injury...
– I tore my foot joints when I was practising tumbling. The doctors questioned my participation at the Olympics, at least in vault and floor. It’s difficult to express that situation. I decided to recover and compete on pommel horse. I couldn’t miss a second Olympics.
When we arrived to London, Dad didn’t know if I would compete in the All Around or only on four events. We decided to remove difficulty and to try to make the All Around.
I worked for the team on the first day. We put on an excellent performance. Then came a scandal, that had never happened in the history of gymnastics – we were stolen our medal was stolen.
– What did you feel when you heard that the bronze medal was going to the Japanese team?
– You never forget this kind of thing. Injustice! I think I was in a kind of fog. We finished the competition in third position and the bronze medal. TV showed a table, where the Ukraine was third. Once the competition finished, the Japanese, decided, without respecting the rules, that the Ukrainian team had to fall off the podium.
The Japanese submitted their protest when the delay was over. Had the protest been submitted by any other country, it wouldn’t have been filed. A Japanese gymnast fell, hit his head on the pommel horse, yet that dismount counted for him. It’s ridiculous. Everyone who understands gymnastics was sincerely sorry for us. Who needs a sport where a good performance is not necessary, where you have to ask properly?
–Whom?
– In London I understood that sport is also politics and business. I thought that I would never compete again. Yet I overcame those feelings. And I decided to compete again.
– Did you compete in the all around throwing in the towel?
– I was in physical pain. I concentrated and did what I could. I came fourth, again off podium. In London I realized I had to change something. I thought again of moving to Russia.
A NEW PASSPORT
– You always expressed your uneasiness when your father was the national team’s head coach...
– Sometimes you don’t have the feeling he’s simply your father. By the way, Dad said he respected my decision. It’s true that he has now problems in the Ukraine…
– Who’s now your coach?
–Igor Kalabushkin, in Vladimir. He is an excellent specialist and a good person. Psychologically we fit one another. I like his sense of humour. I enjoy going to the gym to train with him. Kalabushkin was a coach to the late Yuri Riazanov. We were very good friends...
– Аnd why precisely Vladimir?
– Vitali Ivanchuk, director of the Vladimir School, had made this proposal to me some time ago. He invited both my father and me. I accepted, but Dad decided to stay.
– When will you show me the Russian passport?
–The Minister of Sport Vitali Mutko has already sent a letter to Putin about my documents. I’ve been told that I’ll get my passport in February.
– You probably know that in the Ukraine some people say you are a traitor?
– These people say so because they don’t know the situation of Ukrainian gymnastics. I had to pay for my surgery. They didn’t allocate funds for the national team. When you give everything, including your health, this is unbearable!
– Is it different in Russia?
– It’s like night and day! I spent three weeks at Ozero Krugloye [Round Lake, the Russian National Training Centre] and felt the difference. Everything is done for the athletes; you only have to train. A beautiful gym, numerous specialists, a special coach for pommel horse or high bar.
– How did your new teammates welcome you?
– Very well, I have known them for a long time. We spend three weeks at Krugloye. Then everyone goes home for a week. I go to Vladimir.
- Which are your next competitions?
- The Russian championship is going to take place in Penza in March. Then in April in Moscow the European Championships. I wish I stay healthy and I can fight for a medal.
– You are being compared to Gérard Depardieu, who gave back French citizenship and took Russian...
– Of course, it’s pleasant, but it’s not a correct comparison. I’m Russian! You know that, contrary to Depardieu, we have roots in Russia. Dad is from the Moscow region; Mum is from Bashkiria. In the Soviet period people worked in different places in a huge country. After the dismantlement of the Soviet Union, not everyone came back home. I felt Russian all my life.
– I remember that you wrote Putin a letter, when you were a kid and we were living in Belgium. Мum has kept it. Now we laugh when we read it.
– At my Belgian school, the teacher told us about Moscow: misery, deprivation, abandoned children. I stood up and said that it was not true. Unlike the teacher, I had been in Russia, and had never seen this. Belgian kids humiliated us Russians constantly. I hit a boy and I had to go to the headmaster’s office. I came back home humiliated. I wrote a letter to Vladimir Putin, who had just become the Russian president. In my letter I explained how the Russians were perceived in Belgium.
– Don’t you have the impression that this letter from your childhood reached the President?
– And as an answer I’ll soon receive my Russian passport? Yes, probably. On my passport they won’t write Mikola, but Nikolai as my parents called me. Here you have a subject you can dwell upon!
Nikolai Kuksenkov was born in June 1989 in Kiev.
As a member of the Ukrainian team: European Junior Champion. Third in the European Championships (2011). Winner of the Universiade (2011). Winner of stages of the World Cup. Fourth in the AA at the London Olympics (2012).
At the end of 2012, got the Russian citizenship and will perform for the Russian team.