+ Elena & Ruslan +

Interview - after Worlds
Paris - March 31, 2003
by Sonja Wendl and Tanja Brand

Most questions were answered by both of them. Therefore I will not specify who said what.

Now that the season is over, are you still happy you went to Tarassova?

Yes, we are happy about being with Tarassova. We are upset about the problem between Tatiana and Nikolai though. They were a real powerteam together and are just not the same anymore since they split. We wished they would have stayed together because we liked the combination of the two. Anyhow, Tarassova is very good for us.

Why did you stay with her and not Nikolai?

Tarasova asked us to stay with her. This was a great honour for us!

Why did the success of Grand Prix events not carry though the whole season?

We don’t know why we slipped in placement. It is not on us to say what judges didn’t like about it anymore. We are disappointed about it but not too much, since this was our best placement at Worlds ever. We are very happy about it.

What are you especially good in and what parts need improving in your skating?

It is hard to say which parts are weak and which are strong because we always give our best. We still have to learn to pace our programs better so we don’t run out of breath at the end. We need to build in a slow part in the middle of the program which gives us time to catch the breath in order to finish on a strong note. We also would like to improve where we put certain elements onto the ice. Here we play around with the skating speed.

Do you prefer a special style in skating? Is there any music you would like to skate to, but were not able to yet?

There is no particular music right now we can think of. We are always looking out for music. Ruslan trains little children about 1-3 hours a few days a week. Ruslan learns a lot from teaching and the children give ideas which are later used in programs. Elena helps in choreography for a couple trained by Matthew Gates.

We consider ourselves as more of classical skaters in terms of style. We think the Waltz was good music for us, the Rock’n’ Roll will be a little harder. We loved the OD this year. We put so much feeling into each part of this OD.

Ruslan, we heard your brother is skating too. How old is he....

My brother is 15 and also an ice-dancer. He trains with Romanova & Yaroshenko (from the Ukraine) in the States. He has been skating with an American girl for 3 months now in Delaware. We go there as often as we can to look out for him.

What plans do you have, now that the season is finished? Vacation, Ukraine...?

We will take just a couple of days off and then we want to look for new music and prepare our programs already. After this is done we plan to go home to the Ukraine in May or June for about 3 weeks.

No vacation on the beach or in the mountains?

(Elena laughed and shook her head with great enthusiasm) We want to go HOME!!

Again they confirmed their happyness about this season and are ready to do the work neccessary to improve their placements. They thanked everybody who cheered for them!! Good luck!

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