Artur Mingazov: The walls don’t help me at home 22.07.2010

He gave an interview following the European Shotgun Championship in June.

- Artem Nekrasov from Lipetsk, the silver winner of the Kazan Championship, claimed that he was going to enhance his performance at the World Championship. Do you think your performance will enable your participation in the world tour?
- I count on it. I hope that I will be third in the team after Nekrasov and Maksim Lazarev who won the Russian title in his age group. Moscow will hold the Russian Cup soon and I need to approve myself a good shooter. My coach and I are looking forward to medals. Because it’s hard to shoot being aware that you don’t get any medals, it’s a war of nerves.

- You were competing in a non-official point-count with another Lipetsk shooter Kirill Fokeyev whose brother Vitaly plays for the adults’ national team. Do the brothers have a common style in shooting?
- Yes, they do. Their styles are almost the same. It can be seen in the ready position. It’s evident that they know each other well. Because they rest their cheekbones on the shotguns in the same way, harsher then other shooters do. Yes, we can say that they have some kind of a family shooting tradition. By the way we have a shooting dynasty as well – Alexander Furasyev has a younger brother, Dmitry.

- Is there the idea of home walls in shooting sport?
- Now I feel there is. Although I was not aware of that during the Russian Championship last autumn. Maybe it’s because I didn’t feel that way. By the time of the championship we had been training three or four times and hadn’t gotten used to the shooting range yet. At present it feels like home to us. Personally I felt that the skeet was dear to me. But somehow the walls didn’t help me at home. The main thing was not to embarrass myself in front of my friends and my coach.

- What are your plans for the Universiade?
- I’ve finished my second year in the Law Faculty of Kazan (Volga region) State University. I study in the evening department and there are six years in my programme. I’ll be in my 6th year at the very start of the Universiade. Basically there are a lot of athletes in our faculty, I often see Ak Bars HC player Alexander Stepanov at the University. Though I think that he won’t be able to participate in the Universiade. Besides I know that there are many candidates for the Universiade team in our faculty but I don’t know them well. For example the potential candidate to our team Marsel Valeyev visited us at the shooting range after deciding to try his hand in shooting. But he did not succeed particularly because of his murderous reaction he had developed playing table tennis. But it’s unwanted in shooting, in shooting you need to stay cool.

- In your opinion who else has a chance to enter the shooting team for the Universiade?
- There are the Furasyev brothers in the team, the elder brother, Alexander, plays for the men’s team and the younger brother, Dmitry, – for the junior team. Liliya Valeyeva is the adults’ team. Shortly there are enough decent shooters for our team.

- But regretfully all of them are brought up in the only sports school in Tatarstan – Tetyushi sports school.
- I don’t think so, our famous shooter Vasily Mosin is a Kazan educatee. And so am I. I heard that they are going to open a new shooting school in Sviyaga.

- Are there enough coaches?
- I’m not competent in this question. I can just say that I’m the only educatee of my coach Konstantin Lebedev but he’s looking for another ones. By the way he treats me great. He is a man in a thousand. Responsible in everything, responsible for his words. He’s teaching me responsibility too.