The tenth episode of the third season of the series (Failure of Champions): Special with Slaven Bilić, which is broadcast on Arena Sport channels, brings a continuation of the conversation with Janica Kostelić, one of the greatest skiers in history.
In the second part of the conversation, many topics were discussed, Slaven Bilić and the legendary skier talked about modern sports, preparations for races, the relationship between talent and work, but also the seriousness of today’s sport which, in her opinion, often robs children of a part of their childhood.
One of the most successful sportswomen in this region expressed her opinion on the increasingly pronounced trend adaptation of sports to the general publicwhereby the distinction between excellence and mediocrity is erased:
Sports are being tried more and more bring people closer which are less excellent, that it is available to the general public because everyone would like to be successful and get a chance. That’s my impression. All these things that are done because of attractiveness they don’t really differentiate between one who is really good and will know how to solve the problem when the problem is really there and one who is average.
As an illustration he cites the changes in slalom — discipline which once required a sense of rhythm, but today has turned into something else:
Slalom tracks used to be, except they weren’t so polished… they were never installed with a meter. Now everything is done with a meter. I’ll take a meter, you can get there if you know how to stand on skis, ten meters – you go down, pierce, drive a stake. It is not a “skill”. You need absolutely no knowledge for that. And then the skier standing at the start drives that track and it has the same rhythm from start to finish. So – “skill” zero.
To Slaven’s question about what made her better than her competition, Janica answered:
I don’t think I’m better at anything than others. I probably learned to use my capacities better. To know and know your body, to know what your body can do and what your limits are and never exceed those limits. I never went beyond my limits.
One misjudgment at the height of her career changed her perspective:
My goal, always when I was skiing, no matter how good I was when I was winning non-stop in slalom and when someone asks me what my goal is – my goal is get into another ride because it happened to me once, I was great, okay I was injured, but still, when you’re good, when you’re at your peak and then you come back, you don’t even cross your mind that you wouldn’t qualify for the second race knowing your quality and everything you did. But it happened to me and that was it such a downpourthat I realized that I’m winning here for nothing… and then I think to myself – okay, from now on, I’ll just enter the second race…
They also touched on the topic of frequent calling her father Ante because of the way the tracks are set up, to which the best Croatian skier said:
Because he set paths where you have to think… Make an effort, think.
I never understood why my dad was laying the tracks so wrong? He was just doing what we do in training. Amused you.
About her approach and what was important to her in skiing, she said:
You must never let your guard down… In my skiing, it was important to make as few mistakes as possible because they take an awful lot of time … you always have to be prepared for the fact that you will make a mistake and that you will need extra strength and motivation to compensate for it.
About talent and work, but also about the fact that today everyone is given a chance, the famous athlete pointed out:
Not everyone is for everyone and not everything is for everyone. But you have to know how to recognizeit’s hard to recognize that you’re not for something and that’s a blow for you. It’s hard to accept that you’re not capable of doing something…
She added:
I think you can be as talented as you want, but if you don’t work properly, that talent…
One hundred percent. And vice versa as welladded Slaven and continued:
You can be the best version of yourself, with work, but do you want to be Janica Kostelić?
A well, you have to be lucky too. Happiness is a by-product of properly organized actionconcluded one of the best female skiers of all time.
On one occasion, she stated that she was not sure that she could do what she did today. She explained in the show:
My character and personality are not modern. I’m more “old school”. Especially the pressure of those social networks. Before you had television, newspapers and expectations. Today, all these people have a right on the Internet form an opinion about you. And that for a person who is young, who has yet to start, who doesn’t know his way around, just as maybe I didn’t know how to do it in the beginning, I also got a little lost, that’s disastrous. To have someone else, a person sitting on the couch telling you how valuable you are… It’s hard to stay immune to all those things.
Speaking about children and sports, she emphasized her opinion that children should not take sports very seriously. She directs her children towards sports herself, but she explained that they primarily play there and that everything in it must be fun for them:
In my opinion, sports became too serious much too early…I think that serious sports took away a part of children’s childhood. A seven-year-old, an eight-year-old, I don’t think he should spend so much time in the serious concept of some kind of game, he hasn’t matured enough for that, but that it should be optional…
Watch the conversation with the new guest on November 24 on the Arena Sport 1 channel from 8 p.m.
(www.jabuka.tv | Photo: Screenshot)
