As a kid, I don’t think I had much of a chance to do anything other than handball. I might have tried some other things like piano, but I found them really boring.
When I was between four and six, I had my little routine of going to practise, even though I was not playing then. My dad, Victor, was a handball coach, so I would go with him and throw the ball around next to the court.
My daily routine was a handball routine, and I was going there just for fun. My older sister, Polina, was also playing handball, so that made sense for me to go there.
But then I started playing with my own team when I was nine.
Of my childhood, I seem to only have kept the tough memories. I won’t say they are bad memories, but they are definitely tough.
My dad used to have me training on the street, no matter what the weather would be like. If I would go to school at eight, I would be up at seven in the freezing street, to practice.
And then, same thing when I would come back after school, practice again. My time would be 70 per cent handball and 30 per cent being a normal child.
Of course, looking back, that seems really tough, especially since my father was a very demanding coach. Nothing was ever good enough for him. But it served me right.
In a way, I always think that things could have gone differently if my dad had not been as tough with me.
My mum did not have a word to say about it. Elena, that’s her name, travelled along with my dad as he would change clubs, training all around the country.
Life was not, I think, too easy for her, as she would struggle to keep a job while my father had to move away. She was taking care of the youngest children of the family; myself, my sister Irina and, later, my brother Ivan. She was basically the definition of a stay-at-home mum.
