Viktor pushes off, and Yakov watches him go. His critical eye notes that the first few strokes are not quite as smooth and full as they could be; he is trusting that the simple deep breaths and long, repetitive motions of the cooldown period will gradually ease the tension that has been building up in Viktor over the course of practice -- and for some time before today, it seems.
There's movement at the edge of his vision, and he sees Yuri tapping the toe of his skate on the rubber matting, making a final adjustment to the fit before he too steps out onto the ice. What a pair, these two; barring some utter catastrophe involving fractured kneecaps or food poisoning, they'll both take gold at their respective Worlds. No one else in the field comes close to them. And even at the end of a too-long season, when they're all exhausted and snapping at each other's heels, Yakov still hasn't lost his interest in seeing what his skaters will do in the next one.
(The day he loses that interest is the day he'll hang up his own skates and find some high-windowed place overlooking the Black Sea to fade quietly from view.)
'All the way through on your left leg there -- you're pulling it up short,' he calls out to Viktor (I'm watching you, so you'd better not try anything, is the unspoken warning), and turns to glance at Yuri as he steps away from the wall. 'Now then, do you still feel like running off your mouth at your coach? Get on with those laps, and if you lose count you start over again from the beginning.'
'Yes, sir,' Yuri says, the polite response not at all matching with the sour look on his face, and he launches out into his first lap. But he can't quite resist a parting shot at the old man, so a quick dredge of his memory produces one of the sappier lines he remembers from Pushkin, the drippy, melodramatic poem written by Lenski right before Onegin shoots him in their duel: '"Oh! Whither have ye winged your way / The golden days of my young spring?...."'
He hears Yakov growl something, but he doesn't really care what it was. It's all he says before he puts his mind back to his task; the laps won't skate themselves, and if he has to do thirty of them forward and back then he can't afford to miscount any of them. And Viktor's still there, cooling down. Too much to hope that he'll deliberately distract Yakov for him, but any time on the ice with Viktor is worth it. In fact, maybe he can show Viktor how his own skating has improved -- he's definitely built some strength and speed since that competition, so it'd be good to show off what kind of form he has now. Give him a sense of what kind of raw material he'll have to work with for the choreography.
So Yuri lengthens his strides, letting his arms hang loose, and falls into a calm, steady rhythm. A proper warmup, for all that it has an ulterior motive.
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There's movement at the edge of his vision, and he sees Yuri tapping the toe of his skate on the rubber matting, making a final adjustment to the fit before he too steps out onto the ice. What a pair, these two; barring some utter catastrophe involving fractured kneecaps or food poisoning, they'll both take gold at their respective Worlds. No one else in the field comes close to them. And even at the end of a too-long season, when they're all exhausted and snapping at each other's heels, Yakov still hasn't lost his interest in seeing what his skaters will do in the next one.
(The day he loses that interest is the day he'll hang up his own skates and find some high-windowed place overlooking the Black Sea to fade quietly from view.)
'All the way through on your left leg there -- you're pulling it up short,' he calls out to Viktor (I'm watching you, so you'd better not try anything, is the unspoken warning), and turns to glance at Yuri as he steps away from the wall. 'Now then, do you still feel like running off your mouth at your coach? Get on with those laps, and if you lose count you start over again from the beginning.'
'Yes, sir,' Yuri says, the polite response not at all matching with the sour look on his face, and he launches out into his first lap. But he can't quite resist a parting shot at the old man, so a quick dredge of his memory produces one of the sappier lines he remembers from Pushkin, the drippy, melodramatic poem written by Lenski right before Onegin shoots him in their duel: '"Oh! Whither have ye winged your way / The golden days of my young spring?...."'
He hears Yakov growl something, but he doesn't really care what it was. It's all he says before he puts his mind back to his task; the laps won't skate themselves, and if he has to do thirty of them forward and back then he can't afford to miscount any of them. And Viktor's still there, cooling down. Too much to hope that he'll deliberately distract Yakov for him, but any time on the ice with Viktor is worth it. In fact, maybe he can show Viktor how his own skating has improved -- he's definitely built some strength and speed since that competition, so it'd be good to show off what kind of form he has now. Give him a sense of what kind of raw material he'll have to work with for the choreography.
So Yuri lengthens his strides, letting his arms hang loose, and falls into a calm, steady rhythm. A proper warmup, for all that it has an ulterior motive.