“It’s better to have a cat than to be one.” Rylov on quadrobers, as well as master classes and projects for the fall

Evgeny Rylov will take part in the Russian Short Course Championships in November. Preparations are already underway. He spoke in an interview with about how the swimmer spent the rest of the summer, how he perceived the “golden” result of the Olympics in his native 200 and why he tries his hand at master classes, but not at coaching.

— Zhenya, what did you do after the Baltic Sea Cup?

— A lot of time has passed. I managed to relax and I am happy about it. Now there is an overload, so there will be a performance in short course. If we talk not only about my preparation for the competition, I managed to do a series of master classes that we are about to start.

— I always said you wouldn’t be a coach.

– That’s right. I’m not going to become a coach. Master classes are another story; they are when you help children learn and give them advice from their personal practice. At the moment I take children from 8 to 10 years old and a group of 12-14 years old. The younger generation is easier to teach than adults. We will start working in the pool where I started, but if someone wants to invite me to give a master class somewhere else, of course, I will be ready to come.

— Did you yourself attend master classes when you were a child?

— Alexander Popov came to our house one day.

— Did you get an autograph?

– Yes! But I lost it a day later.

— For the Russian Championship. Why do you swim?

— I’m not sure if this is my complete program. Let’s see according to the circumstances.

— Have you watched the Olympics?

— I watched the 200m backstroke. That’s all.

— Andrei Gennadievich Shishin said that the results were not very good.

“I also thought it would be faster.”

— Even after the first few days, when it became clear that many were not swimming according to their personal results?

– Yes, most of them were in a strange state. There were those who swam very fast, but many did not really achieve the best results. Average, then. Usually, there is more of something “extra” at the Olympics. The men’s 100m breaststroke was the worst thing that could have happened.

— As Zhenya Chikunova said: “Even world-class masters of sports did not do it.”

– Exactly.

— Did your heart hurt while watching the Olympics, did your soul hurt?

– What? According to my personal result, the gap is one second. This is a lot. In Yekaterinburg, I lost the first place at the Olympics by 0.4 seconds. I think everyone understands that if it were a head-to-head, I would not give up the distance. And the person who started next to me would have been scared. I like to exert moral pressure on people.

And let’s be honest, I trained for three years against the background of illness. It had a great effect on me; adaptation to the training process was very low. The result too.

– What kind of disease?

— Without going into details, I had hypoxia. And in Yekaterinburg I swam with intramuscular antibiotics.

— Why did you decide to compete in short course?

“I feel pretty good about it basically.” I love diving and diving is one of the main elements.

— Do you want to participate in the Short Course World Championships?

– Nobody is waiting for me there. They don’t like me there and nobody needs me there. I don’t see the point in getting a neutral status.

— There remains one question as an animal lover. Is it normal that this evolves into quadrobing? What do you think of quadrobers?

– I can only say one thing. I have cats! I think it’s better to have a cat than to be one.

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