Ice dancing couple Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin made their debut at the European and World championships only last season, but they immediately drew attention for their skating style and for their original programs, created for them by their coach Alexei Gorshkov and coreographer Sergei Petukhov.
During the last Russian National championships they met the “Vremya Novostej" (Time of the News) correspondent.

- You have just started competing in senior tournaments. Tell us how you started.

MS - I started doing sports at the age of four. My parents really wanted me to do sports, which is why they introduced me to different ones. Before figure skating, I tried several other sports, even diving. I remember climbing on the diving board with the guys for the first time, but I would have never jumped if someone hadn't thrown me in the water. Naturally it was never my intention to climb back on the board a second time, which is why diving never worked for me.

In the beginning I didn't find figure skating very interesting either. I felt very unconfortable in the single skaters group because I was two years younger. As a result I tried many often to skip training. I would come to practice, walk around the ice arena, take the bus and go back home. Then I tried to switch to hockey: I thought I would engage in something more manly, but I didn't succeed. So finally, at the age of eleven, I came to the conclusion to give up my skating career.

- And you didn't mind wasting your seven years of training?

MS - What training? My parents took me to the rink. Every day, after work they would stand with me in the cold, tell me how to perform some elements, but they didn't know anything about it. One day my father managed to have me produce a sit spin. He was happier than me. He told all his friends about it: he went on bragging for a whole week. How could I give up figure skating? Nevertheless, when I was eleven I lost my patience and said "That's enough!". And that would have really been the end, had I not met coach Oleg Ivanovich. He was starting a team of ice dancers and he suggested that I should give it a try. I liked it, and that's how I became an ice dancer.

OD - It was less complicated for me than for Max. I was a very active child and my parents didn't know how to handle me. Finally they decided to turn me to sports so that I could release some of my energy. To my astonishment I was immediatelt admitted into the ice dancing group. They told me my legs were too long to be a single skater, that I would have problems with the jumps, so they suggested I should try ice dancing instead. I was really thin, and because I would always wear a huge jacket and leggings they would call me a lemon with legs. I looked like two legs with a ball on top!

So how did you two meet, since you Maxim come from Samara and Oksana from Kirov?

M.S: - It's a long story. There was no partner who would suit me in Samara. There was a time when I was training with three different skaters at the same time, but none of them seemed to work for me. In the end I lost hope and almost decided to give up the sport again. Once more it was my coach who persuaded me not to. He told me I was a real talent, and that at fif-teen I still had a chance, and suggested I should look for a partner abroad. That's how I moved to Sofia, where I teamed up with Margarita Toteva, and skated with her for a year and a half. We represented Bulgaria and everything went well. Unfortunately, at the Worlds she hit her back against the barrier, and was seriously injured. As a result she decided to stop competing. I stayed in Bulgaria for six months, then I went back home. Strangely enough it didn't even occur to me to give up the sport this time: I had tasted the feeling of the big competitions, and I wasn't going to give it up! Of course, once again, I had no partner! My coach insisted I should try with Elena Khaliavina, from Kirov. We skated together for several seasons. At the Junior Worlds we were tenth, then third and then second. But last year our partnership came to an end. Elena is a very difficult person and eventually I couldn't bear to communicate with her.

OD - I also had several partners befor Maxim. One of them left the sport beacuse of health problems, and I ended up out-growing the other. Then suddenly I received an offer from Alexei Gorshkov. I recall my mother calling me in tears, telling me to call my coach because I had received an invitation to go to Moscow. That was understandable: she didn't want her six-teen years old daughter to leave home. But there was no partner for me in Kirov, so I moved to Odintsovo, a town near Moskow, where I teamed up with Maxim Bolotin. We skated together for two years, then we started to have the same problems Max and Elena had.

So one could say you were teamed up by misfortune?

MS - If compared with my previous experiences, working with Oksana was like a walk. She is calm, even-tempered. Naturally she has her faults too, but nothing compared to what I had experienced before. As far as coming to Odintsovo, I was put in contact with Gorshkov by Sudakov.

- Do you remember how you started?

OD - You bet! It was a hard test for us, because the competition took place at a 2200 metres altitude. It was hard to stand that sort of activity physically and psychologically.

MS - We skated through our compulsory and original dances without problems and we were first. But in the free dance we overestimated our strength as acclimatization began. During our routine I started seeing angels, I gained speed in the diagonal and they called me up.

- Everybody says that your free dance stands out for its complexity. Did you work on it for a long time?

MS - The modern arrangement of the Vivaldi piece was chosen last year, but we decided to wait f little longer, beacuse the music was still rather difficult for us.

OD - We built one part of the program in one week. Then we went on tour with the Ilya Averbukh show. When we came back our coaches told us "Let's rebuild the program, make it more complicated", and changes kept being made until the very last moment.

- What are your plans for next season?

MS - It's hard to tell at the moment. The most important thing for us is to perform better than we did last year.