Until relatively recently, Turkmen citizens could only dream of practicing figure skating, enjoying this sport only on TV. But in the past few years, thanks to modern ice sports facilities, we have been able to participate directly in ice dancing, as well as represent our country at international competitions in this Olympic sport. The correspondent of the Russian-language newspaper Neytralny Turkmenistan spoke with one of the most famous Turkmen representatives of ice dancing Ayna Ekayeva, who told about her sports career and what place sports occupy in her young and eventful life.
– How did your passion for figure skating start?
– It all started when I was four years old. My parents and I attended a concert where skaters also performed. Then I was literally fascinated by the graceful movements and grace of those girls, and since then all my dreams have been transferred to the ice. I enjoyed just watching the skaters on TV, and even more – from watching live competitions on the ice arenas of our sports complexes. Noticing my sporting passion, my parents decided to give me skates for my birthday and took me to the figure skating section. Since that day, my life has changed, and I am still grateful to them for this gift.
– Your programs stand out for their brightness, artistry, and organicist. How do ideas of images arise and how does the program preparation process go?
– Figure skating is a creative sport, and ice is the last and most rewarding stage of all preparatory stages. If you consider how much I do on the ice and how much I do off it, then the ice takes no more than 60% of the time that I directly or indirectly devote to figure skating. Athletes have to devote a lot of time to gymnastics, dancing, searching for music for the image, developing and sewing costumes. For me, my favorite phase of preparation is choosing an image. There are a lot of ideas. But sometimes there is a sudden insight. After that, the music is selected in collaboration with the choreographer. Then you combine your favorite parts, select the right places and prepare for the palettes of movements. When I choose an image, I immediately imagine what it should look like. I draw a sketch, select fabrics, trim. This is a very interesting and quite long creative process, as well as the production of the program. All the images that I bring out on the ice are very close and dear to me.
– What do you feel during your performances? Are you more of an athlete or an artist on the ice?
– It often depends on the final results. And during performances, I have different feelings. Real sports excitement, as such, appears when I work out several programs in one day. In such competitions, you forget about your emotions and start to feel free. But, unfortunately, it is not always possible to roll the program without errors, and when you made the wrong move, the most important thing is not to dwell on it and go further. You just need to have fun during the rental, which allows you to make much fewer mistakes. Figure skating itself, in my opinion, is comparable to art. But still, during the competition, the spirit of sport completely takes hold of me, and at this moment I think only about winning.
– How do you manage to maintain sports excitement and are there any starts that are especially dear to your heart?
– In competitions, I am attracted by a variety of programs and requirements, the opportunity to travel, meet old friends and find new ones. And the most important thing is a warm atmosphere and mutual assistance between the participants and applause in the stands. And when you make your debut with a new program, the very anticipation of novelty before going on the ice is inspiring.
Every start is very dear to me. Each competition is quite different from the other and is accompanied by a lot of new experiences. However, one of the most memorable starts was the performance at the first winter International sports games Children of Asia, which were held last year in the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk (Russia). It is a very honorable mission to represent our country at such prestigious competitions, and here I would like to Express my gratitude to our President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov for his huge contribution to the development of the national sports movement, which opened up the opportunity for us to engage in perhaps the most elegant and beautiful sport – figure skating.
