Reigning Olympic and former world champion Alina Zagitova has discussed a huge turning point in her career, her passion for shopping and her part in an ice show with fellow Games gold medalist Tatiana Navka.
Zagitova scooped the top prize at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang in 2018, which was also the year she became a European champion before achieving victory at the world championships in 2019.
In 2015, she had moved to Moscow to be guided by legendary coach Eteri Tutberidze and Sergei Dudakov – and Zagitova admitted it was a pivotal moment for her.
"I consider my acquaintance with the coach Eteri Tutberidze to be my greatest success in life. When she took me, another life began, [in] victories, " she explained to the magazine Panorama TV in Russia via Championat.
In December 2019, Zagitova announced a career break and she has revealed what she now spends her free time doing.
"I meet friends, go shopping. Any purchase gives me incredible pleasure. I bought ink and my mood improved. The only negative is the need to walk a lot," she revealed.
"If the floors in shopping malls were covered with ice, it would be another matter: I would put on skates and go from store to store. By the way, I don't have a lot of dresses – I just don't know where to wear them.
"I prefer jeans, cozy sweaters, hoodies. I love bags and cosmetics very much – there are so many of them, but that does not stop me."
Asked if she had made a New Year wish, Zagitova fired back: "What's the point in that?"
"If you do nothing, nothing will work. Even a new handbag won't buy itself – you have to earn money for it."
Zagitova used her hiatus to graduate from high school and enroll on a journalism course, and has also become the host of the 'Ice Age' show.
She is also part of former Olympic champion Tatiana Navka's 'The Scarlet Flower' show – a version of 'Beauty and the Beast'.
"Everything that Tatyana Aleksandrovna does is always at the highest level: original lighting effects, music, complex tricks – in our show, skaters even fly and, from the side, it seems that they do so without any [props].
"The audience gasps and gasps but the most valuable thing about the show is the participants.
"They are all perfectionists, as if [they are competing for] selection [for the national team," she explained.
As well as striking Olympic gold in 2006, Navka was a world champion in 2004 and 2005, a Grand Prix Final champion between 2003 and 2005 and European champion in consecutive years between 2004 and 2006.