Do you need to go to a metropolis if you want to achieve something serious in sport? Chronicle of Veronika Stepanova

The same question is repeated almost at all meetings with young athletes, their parents and just the fans. “If you want to achieve something serious in sport, when do you have to leave your village or your hometown? »

It seems to me that even those who ask this question themselves understand that there is no universal answer and there cannot be. It depends on the specific location of your city and the distance to the nearest metropolis, which is also a transport hub.

But as the questions do not stop and there is not always time to go into details in oral communication, I will try to tell you my background. About what I learned – and what I did wrong, maybe.

I come from a small town. The population of Yelizovo is less than 39,000 people. Not that everyone knows each other by sight, but there will always be common acquaintances.

Everyone knows everything – who does what, who is the parent of whom, who will become (or not). Everything is nearby, you don’t need to drive for several hours to your destination. They built a new mall – already an event. New restaurant – talk for a month. Well, and the best: fresh air, silence, proportionality to a person.

If you are lucky, like me, and at 12, 14, 16 you have decent training conditions and a serious approach from the authorities to children’s sports (equipment, coaches’ salaries) , so training in such conditions is just a thrill . Five minutes from the ski base, even less from the school. If internet speeds are decent, there isn’t much of a difference to peers, big city teens. Yes, we all live in social media now, no matter where our physical body is at the time. The older generation will have to accept it.

But you can’t do sports on the internet if it’s not esports. At some point you have to decide how to build a sports career and whether to build at all.

In this sense, it was easier for me to make a decision: it is absolutely impossible to train even in the junior team of Russia and return to Kamchatka between training camps.

But here it must be remembered that I qualified for the 2019 World Junior Championships at the last moment, not being part of the national team. A combination of the efforts/ambitions of my coaches in Kamchatka, luck and, perhaps, talent… In general, after qualifying, I immediately raced with confidence, became the medalist of money from the YJWCH in the relay race and firmly established myself in the team.

And otherwise? In fact, nothing is impossible for talented and persistent people. Now there are girls in the main national team of the country who have never been included in the junior and junior teams. But this way is much more complicated. In general, looking back, I think that ideally I should have left Kamchatka a year earlier. Or even two. Train with the strongest. It is much more difficult to achieve results alone.

There is another nuance. In a small town, a narrow circle of contacts. It is a kind of aquarium with warm water and the same environment, good and only wishing you good people. You have nowhere to develop social skills and understand in practice that people on the planet are different and you need to be able to adapt.

I’m not going to give advice. But if you and the whole family think that sports is your future profession, your chance to prove yourself, to make a career, then the decision should be made almost at the age of 12-13. Choice between two approaches.

Either you and your parents systematically prepare, and at conditional 15-16, you move to the place that is the capital of your sport and train with the best peers. Probably, then your parents/grandmothers/aunts and other relatives help you adapt. They become your assistants, “managers”, cooks, etc. Or you stay at home and continue your career until adulthood, then you leave and do everything in your life between practices.

I took the second way. Since the age of 18, I have not only trained in the national team – almost all this time I have lived alone. Not immediately, but step by step, of course. And my parents were involved from the very beginning, as well as my dear and close relatives from St. Petersburg. Of course, it’s a special life – three weeks a month you’re still in training camp, but you also have to live the remaining ten days, right? And not just to live, and not to stop training, treating injuries, etc.

I am no exception – we have several main ski racing centers in our country, and almost all “collections” have a home base in one of them. Same story in Norway, for example. There, if I’m not mistaken, only Eric Valnes, the proud son of the North, still lives in Tromso. All the others are either in Oslo or Trondheim.

It is not only very interesting to live in a metropolis – any practical problem can be solved quickly and efficiently there. But distances, noise and relative cleanliness of the air! Last week it turned out that for four days in a row I had to travel from airport to airport along the Moscow Ring Road in traffic jams. My body, spoiled by the air of the forests and the mountains, protested categorically. I fully understand that many, many people have to stand in these traffic jams every day. For years. But, from my point of view, it is a powerful challenge for the body and it will certainly not benefit the athlete. Are the conveniences of a metropolis worth the complexity of life there?

Mikhail Prishvin has an interesting phrase: “A person in the world has two joys: one is to leave home in youth, the other is to return home in old age.” It seems to me that this was said about the fate of a professional athlete.