Are relationships and marriage interfering with your career? Chronicle of Elizaveta Khudaiberdieva

Hello, dear reader and lover of Liza Khudaiberdieva’s columns. A catastrophically long time has passed since the publication of a brilliant and vital article on trial skates, which is why today the hot topic of a new article for you: about the institution of marriage in the light of a sporting career.

To what extent is the theme of marriage and relationships covered in figure skating? Looking at the details of recent events, personal life topics have become popular: baby booms, wedding relay races, breakups and in some cases even divorces. Figure skating is a sport aimed at a fairly young age. Remember that an 18-year-old singles skater is already a mature woman. Therefore, discussions about weddings and marriage were not so common before. Maybe only because social media wasn’t as developed, but still. How did family life influence and influence my sports career?

I can say with certainty that it helped me a lot from a psychological point of view. And financially too. At first I wanted to write that with the advent of a family and a loving person, technically nothing has changed much, but then I remembered one conversation.

We recently discussed it with a friend, also a dancer. Together in 2019, we rented a studio with an area of ​​29 square meters. mr. in Balashikha near Moscow and deposited 16 rubles for a hematogen in a local 24-hour pharmacy. Now understand my message – not that “we had nothing to eat and everyone will feel sorry for us”. No. My friend was madly in love with figure skating and ended her career for financial reasons. I did not go with her to work as a coach for young children, but continued to skate because my future husband Kirill Blagov completely accepted my life and work. My salary was barely enough to pay for half of this apartment, let alone overseas expenses or the sudden need for a new suit. It turns out that family life had a dramatic impact on my career? Sports competition is huge, and if you do not have the support of your parents, to live comfortably (just comfortably, not in gold), you need to become at least in the top 3 of the Russian championship.

It would probably be more accurate to say that my new family has definitely influenced my position in society and in the media space. Many fans accepted the fact that I was married without much enthusiasm. Starting with the topic that it was my husband who bought me results in my career and ending with personal messages in a sarcastic style: “We are waiting for them to play with you and abandon you. However, many also saw that I was truly happy and genuinely happy for myself. Shippership is a common story in couples figure sports, so fans are happier to see that you’re dating a skater (or better yet, a partner) rather than someone unfamiliar with that fandom.

When a loved one enters your life and on social networks, the public’s nose, and sometimes the opinion of the technical staff, turns out to be rather annoying: they say, they constantly show how they spend their free time training with their boyfriend/husband = they don’t think about work and don’t want to ride at all. Sometimes it goes to extremes and crazy requests not just to “post fewer photos with your husband.” Despite the fact that if you do not share this on your social networks and live exactly the same life without changing anything, no one will even think to interfere with his prohibitions and advice. I realized something was clearly wrong when my closest person received a message on Monday, no different from work days: “We understand you love him very much, but can you eat at home?” Why go to a restaurant?

In general, I try to make people understand that an adult athlete should not be afraid to express in an interview or elsewhere what they think about a future after sport. About the fact that he wants children and a big family, or that he needs to distract himself with a hobby in order to continue to love figure skating and manage to miss it in one day. Only the lazy people around me didn’t ask me if I wanted to ride or not. It makes sense: if this was no longer the meaning of my life, I would have finished it a long time ago. I am 22 years old and I naturally understand that at some point I have to at least think about myself: what would I like to do and how I see my life without sports.

And now the main question on the topic: do relationships and even marriage interfere with work? How do relationships suffer with a job like figure skating? Not everyone can live with an athlete. Firstly, constant training, diet, work with a partner, this cannot be ignored either. I have little energy for any interaction; I am already silent about when real problems and difficulties at work begin. This is why, in the common sense of the term, it is perhaps easier when both people in a couple are athletes. But besides, many skaters don’t live together if they skate in pairs. It is said that there is a complete disorder: work and personal time mix and the problems of the house are transferred to the ice.

So, I would like to end with the words of the classic: “Have fun! Don’t be afraid of anything! There is only one life! Well, seriously, I love it, folks! Your life, the people around you, your business and of course figure skating!

Your sporty Carrie Bradshaw.

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