MOSCOW, April 15, Andrey Simonenko. 2020 European champion Russian figure skater Dmitry Aliyev said in an interview that during the Olympic season he did not have the courage to tell the coach about his desire to rest. Aliyev took ninth place at the Russian Championship, which was a qualifier for the Olympics in Beijing, and could not win a ticket to Beijing. Prior to that, at the stages of the Grand Prix in Italy and France, the skater took ninth and fifth places, respectively.
"I think during the season it was worth not being afraid to take three or four days off. Leave, disconnect from figure skating, go to the bathhouse, go snowboarding, something else. As I did after the Russian Cup final. Yes, it was already, in fact, after everything was over, but still: he came to the ice on new boots and immediately did a triple axel. I went to the quadruple sheepskin coat — the same thing, did it the way it should. And I realized: nothing was spent during such mini-vacations,» Aliyev said.
«That I need it. Of course, I threw the bags on my shoulders with which I went all season. But with one such action, I could throw off one of these bags.»