V: Tell me please about your skating career before you became a coach.
E: I come from former USSR.  You know that USRR had very strong team with many good skaters. So it was very difficult to get the place in USSR team for competing internationally. I started to work as a coach in Siberia, in town called Novosibirsk. I had 2 very talented skaters. In few years I was suggested to move to city, called Perm. We even organized ice theatre. Except figure skating I have one more big hobby-taekwondo. So I did some taekwondo trainings in Perm, and it’s still one of my biggest interests. After some period of time I was invited to work in France as figure skating coach. It’s interesting country, I learned French language pretty quickly, so it felt good. After France I moved to Sweden. There I had very talented skater Filip Stiller, I guess you know him. He is very clever guy, it’s always nice to communicate with him. But he finished his competitive skating career in 2006. He understood that I had to work not only with him, but new talented skater was coming to me as new pupil, so you remember results of Swedish Nationals 2006: My new skater Adrian Schultheiss won the Nationals, Kristoffer Berntsson was second and Filip Stiller was only third. Swedish Figure skating Association sent 2 skaters to Euros Adrian and Kristoffer.  Filip understood that to compete in international competitions, such as Euros and Worlds became very difficult. So he decided to quit. But I will repeat, Filip is very clever guy, he participates in skating shows, he is also becoming technical specialist and he will probably have perfect career as a journalist, I still have great relationship with him.

V: What can you say about your work with Adrian?
E: He is completely different from Filip. He is talented skater, he practices quad. I don’t know when he will show it on the competitions. I guess when I will see that he is ready for that, I will include quad in our programs for sure. But as you see current situation in figure skating: You can win biggest competitions without jumping quad, so we are not in a hurry, time will show when Adrian will have it in his programs. Sometimes during our trainings with Adrian I have to be strict, I try to persuade him that he has to do what I tell, but after some time he understands that it’s really necessary and that I’m right. I see now that he is ready to win. Though this season is pretty difficult for him,  the beginning was not successful, but now he is getting better and better, so maybe during ECH 2009 he will not show his best, but later I hope everything will go well in next competitions.

V: What professional features you like in yourself ?
E: Usually I understand skaters very well, I’m not tired of figure skating, I can work hard and make skaters work hard as well. I love my job, this is the most important thing. One time I made for myself the model of perfect coach. Perfect coach with skates, in my opinion, at one point can explain everything without saying a word. So skaters from different countries would understand him. From another point, imagine, you don’t have skates at all and your task is to explain everything to skaters without showing anything, just using words. Both methods are quite difficult, but they show how professional you are.

V: Have you thought about coming back to Russia?
E: Well, it’s difficult question. I’m satisfied with my job in Sweden, but my son is in Russia. In Sweden I train national champion, and we are hoping for Olympic Games in Sochi 2014, I think I will not be able to work in Russia at the same level as I work in Sweden. But every year, every 6 months we are coming to Russia, we visit our son and our friends.

V: Your wife Galina is choreographer, you work together. Is it difficult?
E: No, I know that some couples have troubles working together, but not we. We understand each other very well. She works 3 days per week in another club, so we are not all the time together.