How to get to Red Bull competitions, recover from injuries and keep winning

Starting to do sports is a difficult task when you don’t have a goal in front of you. But this is not the case with the hero of our interview. Dmitry Murlychkin has been skating since childhood, and at the age of 23 he became the best among the participants of the Red Bull Ice Cross World Speed Skating Championship, which took place last weekend in the Leningrad region. We decided to find out from him how to grow from a childhood hobby to the world championships and what it takes to become a participant of international competitions with sponsors, prizes, fans and other attributes of a successful athlete.

Ice Cross Downhill is a high-speeddownhill skating on an ice chute with passing turns and jumps. The average speed of athletes is 40 km/h, the maximum speed on some tracks reaches 70 km/h.

– When did you first become interested in skating?

– I started skating at the age of 3. My father gave them to me for New Year’s Eve or my birthday, and we immediately tried them out in the backyard of the dacha. To be honest, I didn’t really like it because it didn’t work. There were tears and screams, but my father and godfather said that I could do it, because they once failed too. After a while, I was riding smoothly. I got a taste for it – I played hockey with my father, and in my school years – for the team. It was fun to shoot the puck, but I didn’t enjoy it very much.

– Did you choose to play on the team?

– My dad plays, so I went too. In the 9th grade I played in a club, got a small shoulder injury, and just had to pass the GIA. I chose to study, started to prepare, passed the exams, entered 10th grade, and as an amateur I just played hockey. Then I entered the institute, got a job in a bank. I realized that I started to die, because I had to pay attention to my studies, work, and personal time, and there was no time to relax. I wanted to try something new.

– Is that when you discovered speed skating?

– Yes, I saw on YouTube how guys skate, I was very impressed. I found a group on Vkontakte, wrote to them, and they told me: “Boy, have a rest. Competitions are held once a year in Russia, and you’re not 18” (at that time there were no junior championships yet). I thought, “Okay, it’s not my thing.” Exactly a year later I saw that there would be a Russian championship on Sparrow Hills and decided to try to take part. I got a small injury there – it was my first knee injury – a tear of the cruciate ligaments. I didn’t know it at the time. I performed, but because of the injury, I thought “sport is not my thing” again. And that’s all, the next day I went to work, in parallel I studied, and a year later athlete Nikolai Zimin wrote to me: “We want to see you at the qualifying stage of the World Championships in Austria.

Anyone can take part in the first stages of the Red Bull Ice Cross competitions. The main thing is that you must be over 16 years old.

– And you decided again?

– At that time the junior category was just introduced, I was 19 years old. I wanted to try again. I didn’t prepare, it wasn’t in my plans at all. But fate brought me back to this path several times. I decided to go to the competition. As it seemed to me, I didn’t perform very well. But then I heard: “In a month you go to Marseille for the main 1,000th Ice Cross race. There I competed in the Juniors, made it to the top 16 in qualifying, right in the first round. I also competed in the men’s category, where I took 91st place.

It was a terribly difficult course, I felt every centimeter with my heel. But I caught fire after I saw the biggest and most technical course at the biggest event. I realized that it was unrealistically cool and decided to try to train, I bought rollers.

It was 2017, just my first season. At the World Championship stage in Russia among Russians, I took third place and stood on the podium with German Titov. I liked the competitive spirit. And somehow everything spun and spun, after my first season I was already in the top 64 for men and in the top 10 for juniors in the world.

– Did you take the sport more seriously after that?

– At that time I took it as a hobby, at the same time I worked, saved my vacations and then spent them on competitions. I got into a vicious circle again: work, studies, training. Then I decided to distract myself somehow, bought a motorcycle… And crashed on it, once again tearing the cruciate ligaments in my knee. But I had been through this before, I knew that I had to recover quickly and continue training. I managed to do it in two months, already on July 1, I got up on rollers and thoroughly began to work out the technique of overcoming obstacles in order to compete in competitions.

I had no coach, no one at all, that is, I did everything myself. And at that time I successfully trained. In my second season I was in the top 5 in juniors, in the top 32 among men. I understood how it worked, and last season I finished fifth in the world. It was a thorny road from 91st among men at the event to No. 5 in the world.

One thing I can say is that it doesn’t matter how strong the competitors are. Some will say they have talent, but if you look at my example – any talent is shattered by hard work in training.

I am not a strong physical condition by nature, I am not that big, not that tall, and it is obvious at competitions. I’m small and nimble – that’s my plus. I saw it and started to use it actively. Now I just zeroed in, quit my job and decided to fully devote myself to sports.

– Now you have big plans for further development in sports?

– I really don’t. I never thought that I would only be an athlete. But after I quit my job, I invested all the money I had in training, in myself, and it justifies itself little by little. Of course, there are no paid checks for the efforts, for the blood and sweat, for the pain that I have to overcome, but again – who studied for what. My task is to do everything beautifully and realize all the plans that I have set before me. And then I already have other goals, not related to sports.

– I heard that you tore up everyone at the qualification? This is not just another victory for you.

– Yes, after the last time we saw each other in Japan, I tore a ligament in my knee. I spent my whole birthday in bed because I couldn’t walk. I had surgery a month later and to this day I’ve had a long period of rehabilitation, very hard. I now remember how I had to bend my leg one centimeter at a time in the knee, each time with hellish pain.

The rehab center closed because of the pandemic, and I had to stay at home and do facetime, pump my legs. Psychologically it was very hard, actually. Physical pain is one thing, mental pain is another. I was just waiting to be able to stand on my own, and all those little steps were like a big victory for me. Get one crutch out, get the other crutch out, stand, start walking.

Leading up to the race, I was thinking, “I’ve been training a lot this summer, pumping up my knee, doing a lot of work on myself.” And when I went to the start for qualifying, I already knew that I was the favorite, because it was in my head. I decided: now I will prove that nothing can break me, now I will go out and show everything I am capable of. I have everything I need right now. I went out and with that attitude I just showed the best version of myself, bringing two seconds to second place.

The length of the ice track specially built for the Red Bull Ice Cross World Championship stage at the Igora resort was 340 meters. It contains both technical elements and fast turns that do not forgive mistakes. The height difference on the track is 35 meters. The configuration includes five steep turns, jumps, as well as step-up and wall ride elements.

– There are rumors that you are not ready to take part in championships in the future. Is that true?

– Not really. Because of financial instability I don’t see the point in investing. But if the sponsors extend the contracts, of course, I will not even think about it. It’s only thanks to them that I come here.

Now my parents help me with some part of it, because they see that I am burning with it. There are resources – secondary resources – they fulfill certain needs. But I don’t want to depend on conditions. I’m preparing professionally. But that doesn’t stop me. I am now planning to go back to work, it will be impossible to train fully. If they offer me a good salary, I won’t hesitate to work, to move up the career ladder, and sport will be a hobby.

But I want to become an undisputed champion – this is my main goal. Not just a champion, but undisputed, so that no one can doubt my victory. They wouldn’t say he was just lucky.

– So now it’s not a stop, it’s a pause?

– It won’t even be a pause, believe me. I like to skate, I like to perform, I like to put on a good show. Not a lot of people watch it, but they’re the ones I need. They watch and that’s good enough for me.