"From a very young age, I was an active, athletic, coordinated child. In the courtyard, we often played football, played various outdoor games, and I was good at them. At age nine, I signed up for a football group, trained for six months, but our coach left for a month to referee and our training stopped. At that moment, my first skating coach Irina Bubenshchikova came to recruit at school. I decided to go and try it. And I was sucked in. I liked the sport for its diversity. Cycling, roller skating, skating, weightlifting, swimming, running, game training. The main reason [for taking up the sport] was probably the variety of athletic training and speed."