Yevgeni Trefilov, the head coach of the golden national team of Russia in Rio-2016, wrote a column specially for Handballfast. There are several stories about the head of the Handball Federation of Russia Sergey Shishkarev in it.
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I met Sergey Nikolaevich Shishkarev in early 2015. There was a complete uncertainty in the Handball Federation of Russia at that time. Things weren’t going well. The national team of Russia placed 19th at the men’s world championship. We didn’t win any match and were the last in the group at the women’s European Cup. How should I call it gently… The lowest point.
Vladimir Nelyubin resigned as president of the HFR. It was rumored that Sergey Samsonenko, who owned Macedonian Vardar at that time, would be a new head of the federation. But then Dmitriy Rogozin, who held the post of deputy prime minister and who headed the Board of Trustees of the HFR, introduced Sergey Shishkarev at the conference. It was a complete surprise for us. After Rio-2016 it became obvious to everyone that it was a good surprise.
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In one of his interviews Sergey Nikolaevich said that at the first meeting he promised to do everything to win the Olympic Games, but under one condition — I won’t use foul language and stomp my feet on girls. I remember our first conversation in Novogorsk in great detail, when Shishkarev was introduced to the national team as the new head of the HFR.
How did I feel when he said that we will win the Olympics? Approximately the same, when I talked to the founding father of Lada Yury Borisovich Stepanov in Togliatti. He was the secretary of the party committee of the Togliatti auto factory for many years, and I remember how he led me through Olymp corridors and told me that there would be sauna for recovery of the players and locker rooms and my office. And I was walking on broken bricks and thought: "Well, he speaks beautifully, of course..." And then we did with Lada what we did. There was something similar with Shishkarev.
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It took a lot of courage to talk about victory at the Olympic Games at that time. Let me remind that we had hard times. We formed the team with enormous complexities, it was necessary to talk to each player individually, to conduct conversations with each coach. Someone wrote denunciations on me to the Federal Security Service, sent letters to Vladimir Vladimirovich. We had the Olympic qualification in Astrakhan. And Shishkarev reconciled all of us there, tried to unite the incompatible. And he finally glued it.
The main thing is that he immersed himself in handball like only Aleksandr Borisovich Kozhukhov had done before him. But Kozhukhov is a man from handball, while it was a completely new and unknown matter for Shishkarev. From the very beginning he always tried to be close to the team. He gave everyone his phone number. And everyone started to call him! On any issue… I didn’t expect it. He was showered with requests! And he tried to help when he could. When we went somewhere with the national team, he came at least for a day. He involved coaches to the staff, coped with players. And he didn’t offend anyone after Rio-2016. It’s clear now that one of the main steps to the gold was taken then, in Astrakhan.
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One of the most memorable conversations with Shishkarev was about Kuban. The team was falling, I hadn’t been its head coach yet, but he told me: "Don’t worry, I won’t let anything happen to the team, I’ll support it". Then he repeated it to the girls and said: "Contact me on any issue, I’ll try to solve it". And they listened with wide eyes and amazement.
We had complicated conversations, sometimes loud. And disagreements. Each has its own cockroaches, own understanding. But we sat next to each other and solved it. Despite the fact that he is a person from the Forbes list, the owner of a fortune with zeros that we can’t count, he had enough time and tact to sit next to each other and solve the matter face to face. And most importantly, he never interfered in the coaching work, he was extremely delicate in this regard.
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At a certain point he forbid me to train. It was in 2018, when I found myself on the operational table. Shishkarev went to Novorossiysk to bury his childhood friend. And then he came to Sochi to me. He asked me which of coaches could head the national team of Russia, in my opinion. At first, I didn't understand. We talked about it calmly, discussed some names. And after that I strove to the bench, pounded my fist, wrote letters from the leadership of the Krasnodar region… And he confidently said: "I don’t want to see you covered with a shroud and a lid".
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Shishkarev sent a special plane to Krasnodar for me in 2020. I don’t remember it very well, I was in a fog. I had COVID and a temperature of 40, and he decided not to delay and to transport me to Moscow. But I didn’t understand that I was driving to a plane, I thought ambulance was riding me somewhere. I realized everything only on the runway, when I was transported to the plane ladder through the service door.
And the board was serious, big, of prime minister level. There was a separate sealed compartment for me and a COVID team, monitoring my condition, in a nearby cabin. I still don’t know what would have happened without that evacuation. Maybe, everything would have worked out. Or maybe not. Sergey Nikolaevich decided to reinsure, and I would be under the supervision of the capital doctors.
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Of course, there was more than this during 10 years of Shishkarev in handball. Things have happened. There were emotions and harsh conversations. Perhaps, there were periods of misunderstanding. But at the same time there was Rio-2016, when we truly became a single entity. And Shishkarev was the one who united people around this dream and continues to unite now.
There were many human actions on his part not only towards me, but towards many people who asked for his help. Maybe, the time hasn’t come yet for some stories. And I can’t talk about something that didn’t concern me personally. But, perhaps, this story will help to understand Sergey Shishkarev better as a person.
Photo: the HFR press
