INTERVIEW WITH 470'S AUSTRALIAN COACH VICTOR KOVALENKO

by Isabelle Musy on 30 Sep 2000 The former Ukrainian created history by coaching two crews to a gold medal.

The 470 expert shares with sail-world.com his philosophy of coaching and how
he achieved such a huge thing for Australia's sailing.

Yesterday you coached two crews to a gold medal. You coached one crew to
gold in Atlanta. What's your complete record?

Victor Kovalenko: all together I have 32 medals including 6 Olympic medals
among them 3 gold, 6 world championships and 6 European championships.

This year between the two crews, we won many regattas around the world. The
world championship, European championship, Hyères, Kiel, Spa regatta and the
Olympic games.

Last year, the two teams had average results. You managed to coach them to
gold. How do you do that. I mean what is your philosophy of coaching?

V.K: my philosophy of coaching and preparation for Olympic games is the
following: first year is learning year. Second year improvement. Third year
is the year of success. Fourth year is year of domination. I started one
year later with my Australian team. So it's our third year and it was a year
of success!

Is it true that you say to your crew: "Don't worry about your speed right
now. That will come later"?

V.K: Yes, this is true. It's the same if your teaching somebody, for
example, violin. You say: "Ok you have to do this and this and this etc."
(He imitates a violinist). You pay less and less attention to the notes and
more attention to the tactics and one day you're reached a level where
you're not thinking about it anymore. Full of emotions, full of inspiration,
full of feelings.

It's the same in sailing. First you learn how to tack and
gibe, you learn how to trim the boat, how to tune the boat. Then at the last
stage, the level of inspiration, you work to try to sail faster. Just sail,
just enjoy sailing, just absorb the spirit of the Olympic games.

You've achieved something huge by coaching two teams to gold. How do you
manage to coach two teams at a time?

V.K: They were training together. They are good sparring partners. They are
good friends in life. Normally, the women say to the men: "You're my
heroes!" and the men say to the women: "You're my fellow". Both crew are
good and we trained together all through the year. We had hard time together
and time of glory together.

What's your summary of these athletes from when you first met them to now?

V.K: It's different for the women as they started form zero in 470. Before
they were good sailors but they were sailing big boats. Jenny Armstrong was
sailing Europe in Barcelona. They were good sailors but when they started in
470 they told me that they would be happy to quit. But then they became very
dedicated. They were sailing every day after work. They spent most of time
on the water with me. We were happy together when we were in Sydney. We kept
increasing the number of hours we spent on the water. They would stop work
at 4 o'clock and we would train one hour until it was dark. We grew up
together. We had real good time. We sailed many times offshore in extreme
conditions. Sometimes, with 40 knots wind and big waves. Sometimes they were
scared for the equipment. Sometimes we were sailing very fast because we
were followed by sharks. They were very active to accelerate the boat.

Was it very different with the boys?

V.K: a little bit different but the approach was the same. Many times we
were really one dream team. I call them "my dream teams".

Is it very different to coach Australians compared to the Ukrainians?

V.K: no. It's not different because first of all I motivate them properly to
sail. From the first day we were working for medals even though we were not
talking about it. It was our goal and each of us kept that goal in his
heart. Now I'm really happy that they trust me and believed me. And
therefore they forgave me for all my mistakes as we only had three years
compare to other competitors. And sometimes we were really close to
completely destroy our program and preparation. Mainly, because of lack of
time. But eventually everything went ok and we cope with the trouble and won
two gold medals.

Did it make it easier for them to be Australians. Did they know the waters
better?

V.K: No, it was easier for them because many competitors spent much more
time to learn Sydney Harbour than we did. It's not a secret for most of the
teams that we were most of the time training offshore in the ocean not in
the harbour. We only trained inside the Harbour for the last two weeks.

Why were you training offshore. What's the advantage of that?

V.K: because my opinion was you couldn't learn all the secrets of the Sydney
harbour in one or two months of training. So I wasn't in the position to
destroy them psychologically by training in the Harbour along with top level
competitors and playing coins winners/losers.

We trained apart offshore and arrived fresh just for the games just to sail
and to win.


As a 470 expert, what do you think about the surprising below par
performance of the French crew who was at the top for the last three years?

V.K: they are still one of the greatest team in the world as athletes as
well as sailors and as persons. They're great. But as you know,
Tanguy Cariou has a problem with his back and this is the main reason why
they're not Olympic medallists. Because they were really perfect. They're
great sailors. It was a pity for us that they could not compete at their
100% level at the games. It's a real pity because it was a real pleasure for
us to compete against them at the worlds for the gold and we were expecting
the same here in Sydney. It's a shame.

What are you plans for the future?

V.K: the same. Two gold in Athens, I hope with Australia. In Atlanta when I
coached my team to gold they told me that next time I should get two gold
medals. I'm very happy to have met the right people here in Australia to
reach that goal.