Panarin-Paparin-Palarin: One on the court, triune on the Internet 08.07.2010

To make sure you need to go to www.volley.ru and look at the list of top beach volleyball players.

- Artem, let’s start with the key question – how do you spell your last name? I found three variant spellings of your name.
- The correct way is Panarin. Yet in the team entry form my last name was spelled «Palarin».

- Let’s start with Paparin. That’s how your last name is spelled on the Internet in the list of top beach volleyball players and you are named the best beach volleyball player of Tatarstan.
- Really? But have no illusions about my leadership because there are only two beach volley players in Kazan – myself and my partner in the Tatnefteprodukt team Dmitry Temyashkin.

- But yet you are higher in the rating list than your partner is. How are your ratings calculated?
- I’m ahead of Dmitry due to participation in the recent Russian Beach Volleyball Championship. To gain training experience I applied for the Championship together with indoor volleyball player Dmitry Kashkin. The thing is Temyashkin is not a student already and there was no point in playing with him. Our performance was quite successful unlike that of Temyashkin who had to compete in pair with another volleyball player. It’s owing to this tournament that there is a difference in our ratings and I dropped behind my team partner.

At the Championship Artem caught cold but he coped to take part in the European Universities Championship

- Paparin is also mentioned on the Internet as the winner of the first Summer Universiade 2008 when Kazan hosted the volleyball tournament final.
- What a mess. I recall that competition when we posted an unexpected but confident win. On the one hand we had not the strongest Kazan players at that time. Nevertheless we had future champions playing for our team: Shpilev, Obmochayev, Ozhiganov, Dmitry Kashkin and Sergey Andreyev who caps for the Nizhny Novgorod team now. Although Maksim Shpilev didn’t play in the final as he had left for the training camp with the first team of Zenit-Tattransgaz. I named those who still play volleyball, as for the others they left pro sports.

- Let’s talk about beginners instead. How did you come into beach volleyball for example?
- It was my first coach Maksim Lebedev who introduced beach volleyball to me. There were a few of us at the beginning but then it was just me at the end. I was probably bigger than I am now. I lost 15 kilos during the training session and I didn’t gain them back. And I also became fond of this sport. My first partner also left indoor with me but instead we got our first Russian Championship experience and almost beat one of the most talented beach volley players in Russia Likholetov. Together with my another partner we defend the colors of the Tatnefteprodukt team. He works there, he has never played pro volleyball but he’s a huge fan of this sport. Thanks to him our team has financing, we can pay application fees and have subsistence allowance.

- The Kazan volleyball site gives the correct spelling of your last name. It says that you are the one who is so truly interested in staging tournaments that is ready to take responsibility for organizing the event.
- There is nothing to wonder at. The thing is beach volleyball is underdeveloped in Kazan, both on pro and amateur levels. And when volleyball-lovers decided to organize the republican amateur beach volleyball tournament I was ready to charge myself with organization of the event. Besides I was on vacation at that time. But it died out as we couldn’t find playing areas. Kazan occasionally holds amateur beach volley tournaments but their level is not that good. Two years ago we didn’t enter any large championships, we participated in local tournaments and won them hands down. The last year tournament level was OK owing to the performance of Zenit-Kazan players Verbov/Kulikovsky. But at that moment we went to an important tournament in Lipetsk. Unfortunately we face the lack of good beach volleyball pairs for sparring meet ups.

- How so? There are two teams of Zenit-Kazan. It’s understandable that the first team is focused on the Super League championships, European tournaments. But the second team could help you providing sparring duos, especially in summer season when they have a break in indoor volleyball.
- You know one of the Russian leading beach volleyball players Igor Kolodinsky came back to indoor volleyball, he joined the Ural team from Ufa. Because you make more money from indoor than from beach volleyball. I personally get a living playing for the Chelyabinsk team. I’ve been performing in Kazakhstan championships before, by the way there are many quite good Russian players there. I was playing for the Aktobe team. I repeat that in Kazan beach volley is only in the hands of volleyball-lovers.

- Artem, you postponed our previous interview because of your illness. Was it because of the heat wave?
- Not exactly. After the Russian Championship I got cold, I had a sore throat and a fever. I think that we could have won today’s match against the Polish team if I had felt better. But you can’t fight the fate.

- Can you name your favorite duos at the European Championship?
- I can name a few tandems: Poland, Germany, Switzerland in the first place, Vladivostok and Krasnodar in the second.

Jaudat Abdullin, special correspondent of press-center
VII European Universities Beach Volleyball Championship