Biathlete Kolotov: “They spend money on me, take me to training camps, but I don’t show results. It weighed on me.”

Biathlete Ivan Kolotov told that he felt pressure due to the lack of results, as he was fully supported by the Russian national team.

Kolotov won the Alfa-Bank Russian Championship pursuit race on Tuesday. This season, the biathlete trained as part of the Russian national team under the leadership of Yuri Kaminsky.

—Did you have any signs that you were going to win?

— I have been pessimistic all season. Maybe that stopped me from getting better results. I came here precisely with the thought that I would stop blaming and oppressing myself. I prepared myself to shoot well every day. As they say, I had a plan and I stuck to it (laughs). I was confident in my abilities, so yesterday I expected to be in the awards, and there I was.

— Are you sure you can be part of the national team next season?

– Not one hundred percent. Maybe I won’t be a starter, but I hope they at least get into the reserves.

— Was there any pressure from being part of the national team, but not showing results?

– Yes, there was pressure. I always have a responsibility to myself: they spend money on me, take me to training camps, coaches invest their strength in me, so I am adamant, and sometimes even too much, if anything thing doesn’t work. I think this season is experimental for me: this summer we tried to radically change the technique of movement, I learned a lot of nuances that I did poorly before. For example, I even performed the imitation poorly from a technical point of view. All these disadvantages added up to a huge disadvantage that had to be eliminated,” Kolotov told .

Watch live broadcasts of the races of the Alfa-Bank Russian Biathlon Championship in Tyumen on the and Match Arena channels, as well as on the sites sportbox.ru and matchtv.ru.