How champions grow up

Training is underway since the early morning at the TsSKA sports complex. When The Day’s journalists came to the stadium around 8 a.m., four boxers were finishing their run around the football field. Their next training session is scheduled for 6 p.m., at another sports complex. And this is their daily schedule, because only personal efforts help you achieve good results in sports. These are the principles of the Merited Coach of Ukraine, the coach of the combined team of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, as well as the mentor of Volodymyr and Vitali Klitschko, Volodymyr Zolotariov. Not everyone will repeat the successes of the famous brothers, but it would do good to everyone to have a sound mind, or at least a sound body. This particularly concerns children and teenagers, every second one of which is suffering from health problems. Zolotariov’s prescription is sport. Whether you achieve medals or not depends on what kind of personality you have. The Klitschkos have personalities with a capital P, and made great efforts to acquire world fame. Below the first coach of the Klitschko brothers Volodymyr ZOLOTARIOV answers The Day’s questions about preparing the champions.

For a long time you have been known as the first coach of the famous boxers. Now they are being trained by foreign specialists. Do you keep in touch?

“I was preparing Vitali for his fights with Lennox Louis and Danny Williams, now he’s training on his own. At present we communicate rather as partners. Several months ago the brothers came to me and said that they were going to revamp the TsSKA gym (the Central Sports Club of the Armed Forces of Ukraine), located on Povitroflotsky prospect. Now I am coaching the combined team of the Armed Forces. In early March Volodymyr came and launched the revamped gym. I’m not giving them special consultations or advice; they are keen on everything.”

“At the moment the brothers are at a training camp in the Alps, where Vitali is training for a fight, hereafter Volodymyr will start his preparation for the bout with David Haye.”

Twenty years have passed since the brothers came to you for the first time to train. Do you remember your first meeting and impressions?

“Vitali came here (TsSKA gym) for the first time on February 1, 1990. A year before then he was called to the Armed Forces, served for two months in a military unit, after which he moved to the sports unit of the Air Forces. Volodymyr came practically within a month. Vitali asked me, ‘Can Volodia come to our trainings?’ I did not mind. Here they did laps around the football fields. It was hard for them to run every additional lap, they would run two or three circles, after which they had pains in the liver. But the army is the army. All the more so their father was an officer and taught them to live like soldiers, he raised them in severe discipline. At first they forced themselves to do sports, then it became their habit. Sometimes they missed training sessions. There were three places where they could stay: home, the unit, and the gym. Some athletes say that they want to have a life. But, you see, the brothers dedicated six years of their lives to training in this TsSKA gym, they became devoted sportsmen, and now they are successful. There was a time when they wanted to go to work as builders because they did not have money, they did not have anything. They could not find sneakers and clothes of the right size, because they are tall. They asked coach Hennadii Chuchura, a Merited Master of Sport, who headed the basketball team, to help them find uniforms for such tall boxers. We are grateful that he supported them in their undertakings.”

What drove the Klitschkos to sport? In those times many teenagers chose the streets.

“Their father wanted his sons to become sportsmen. In 1989, when Vitali was going to serve in the army, the bosses called me to meet Volodymyr Klitschko, the major responsible for mobilization at the Air Force. They told me that his son – a tall boy, who had taken some kickboxing, was going to join the army. I agreed: if the bosses say he should be in our unit, then he should. On the one hand, Vitali came to us ‘thanks to protection’ because now, for example, we accept only members of the country’s combined team. Under these circumstances Klitschko would not have been able to serve here, because the boy did not have any outstanding achievements at the time. But the army raised him. After a year of boxing trainings he won Ukraine’s Sports Contest. However, he broke his right hand after the fights. For 1.5 years after that he was fighting with his left hand only (by the way, nobody knew about that) and everything was okay. He became the world champion in amateur kickboxing.”

The brothers trained together. Wasn’t there any rivalry between them, or desire to be distinguished?

“Rivalry was present all the time. Vitali was a head and shoulders above Volodymyr, not because he was taller, but because he was older and more masterful. So Volodymyr was given one kind of load, and Vitali – a different kind: the five-year age gap had its effect. And Volodymyr wanted to be given the same load as Vitali. I told him: ‘Don’t worry. You will have time for this.’ For example, 10 basketball players were invited to the ring, they put on boxing gloves and worked with Vitali for a minute each. Volodymyr also wanted to train in the same way. In a sense, he was always trying to equal Vitali, and we were restraining his ardor. Then he worked with the same basketball players, they pretended that they were going to hit him, and he was dodging their blows — this is how he learned to defend himself.”

Was there a moment when you felt that the brothers would become champions soon?

“I thought about this at once. Their father played a great role in their upbringing. On the whole, I like to communicate with the parents of my trainees, because it is easier to choose the right load for them, so that our efforts are not in vain. Now we hear reports about children dying in PT lessons. In such cases you should always speak to the parents, ask how children feel after training sessions, whether anything bothers them, because children don’t always tell you that something hurts or bothers them. As for the brothers, during that first month of trainings I saw that they are talented. As a child I had a dream that I would become an Olympic champion and then coach champions. Dreams come true, though not all, as I have not become a champion. In my best period, when I was best prepared, I contracted hepatitis. After my recovery I continued to fight, but I never reached success.”

You prepared Vitali for the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996, but it was Volodymyr who fought for the Olympic gold.

“A year before the Olympic Games we took part in the World Games. Vitali had pains in the back, therefore he took an anesthetic injection, which included a small dose of active substances, though this would not have had an effect on the bout’s result. I remember one Cuban boxer and Olympic champion, who also had this substance in his blood. President Fidel Castro and Cuba’s National Olympic Committee appealed to the IOC and as a result the boxer took part in the Olympiad. Our government never did anything of this kind, because who’s Klitschko? Zolotariov says he will become an Olympic champion, but who’s Zolotariov? We told ourselves that we would win and Vitali was ready for this.”

But he was disqualified.

“Yes, and the disqualification term ended exactly at the beginning of the Olympic Games. It seems to me, this was done to prevent us from winning. When I was asked, what we will do now, for I had promised everyone an Olympic champion, I immediately called Vitali and asked him what to do. And he replied calmly: ‘We have Volodymyr.’ I demanded that he would be trained only with Vitali. It happened so that Volodymyr would argue with me, telling that this is wrong, that we should do otherwise. Vitali said at once: ‘Listen to Zolotariov if you want to become an Olympic champion.’”

There was little time left, how did you train Volodymyr? Did you apply some modern methods?

“He was trained, but they did not include him in Ukraine’s combined team. He lost one bout, then another one. They simply did not believe in him. Therefore we had to go to train to Poland and Germany. We would go to Poland every weekend.”

Where did the funding come from? Funding has always been scarce.

“We went to Poland in my car, and Vitali could go to Germany free of charge. It was hard, because we were working all the time, without rest. Basically, he listened to me, took note of everything, analyzing – and we made an advance.”

Once you conducted an experiment on the brothers before the Olympiad, placing them in a pressure chamber. What did you want to achieve?

“To fully reveal the abilities of an athlete, trainings are held up in the mountains. We had an altitude chamber for pilots in the hospital and we asked the doctor for permission to go there. An altitude chamber has the same effect on a person’s organism as going up in the mountains. The boys went up to a height of 7,000 meters and came down. This helped them to better adjust to loads.”

The trainings were followed by the Olympiad. What did you say to Volodymyr? Were you satisfied with his work in the ring?

“The instructions before every one of the four bouts were different. As I forecasted, Volodymyr had his first with an American, whom we did not know at all. This was the toughest fight, Volodymyr was knocked down, and he did not listen to me. But he won the bout. The rest of the fights were uneventful.”

As a result you won the gold. How did the government’s attitude change to you personally, and to the brothers? This was Ukraine’s first olympic performance since independence?

“We expected to win the gold. We made ourselves known. And we did not pay attention to other people’s attitudes. Volodymyr and Vitali went in to professional boxing after that, which was the right thing to do. And though several times Vitali was going to leave the sport, he went to the ring again.”

Because boxing is in his blood, and he constantly needs to compete?

“Of course, Vitali resembles a bullterrier for me: he needs to fight all the time, there should always be a spirit of rivalry. He cannot let anyone else beat him, even in tennis. I remember when we were at a training camp, I beat Vitali and Volodymyr in tennis. The reaction was terrible: they did not know what to do. A year later they took revenge, delivering a crushing defeat. This shows their character and proves that they are strong personalities. Losing is not for the Klitschko brothers.”

Much depended on you, too. You were their first coach and main mentor. What psychological approach did you apply to the brothers?

“At first they were to acquire the habit of doing their duties. For example, when a new person comes, you need to make him fulfill a task. But how? Therefore I had to work up their sporting spirit. I don’t know how, but I succeeded in this. Who can lie on the car’s backseat, reading a book? Klitschkos can do so, this was surprising for me. We talked much when we were going somewhere. We spoke about life, I gave them examples of what they should not do. The ring was the greatest test for the three of us. But all of this yielded its fruit.”

There was a period when you put on weight in order to make the training easier. Was it also your method as a coach?

“I needed this to train with Vitali. He was active with his legs, I had to put on eight to ten kilograms, so as not to fly off as a balloon when he turned round abruptly. Basically, the extra weight did not disturb me. I felt that it did Vitali good, because he felt better where and with what power he was delivering a blow.”

Was it easy to train such champions?

“I won’t say it was easy. There are many boys, but you should be capable of making great sportsmen of them. There are several promising boxers. You will hear about them. Much is being done out of sheer enthusiasm, because the government does not help us. Even to go to the world championship for the military we had to pay out of our own pocket.”

In your opinion, how is it possible to bring up, if not champions (not everyone can repeat the Klitschkos’ achievements), then at least people with a strong spirit?

“I would consider Kazakhstan’s experience, where a lot of attention is being paid to sport. First, this is a country of boxers, there are a great many Olympic coaches, and they also invite foreign specialists for consultation. If you could only see what is going on in the audience during a boxing bout – it is completely crowded there. They simply adore boxing, like other kinds of sport. The young generation should undergo a school of sport. Now they want to cancel marks at PT lessons, thus making children disinterested in taking up sports and leveling the teacher’s status. But we are trying to invent something, to do something for the development of sport in the country, because we still have not fully appreciated a coach’s ardor.”

What can encourage children to take up sports?

“This can be a modern gym with tennis and billiard, or hiking with the school, competitions, sports competitions in schools and universities. I remember, as schoolchildren we used to go to the forest to ski in winter, and to ride bicycles in summer. We played football during all the breaks. School champions went to take part in city competitions. Parents should also encourage children to take up sports. For example, I have a student, I want to talk to his parents to know what illnesses he had, how he sleeps, how he feels during The Day and in the night, what complaints he has, because when you start giving tasks to the child, you can see that the child’s health does not allow him to perform them. School teachers should also talk to the parents, although the number of pupils may be up to 40 persons in one class. There should be a fashion for sport, it should enjoy a great popularity.”