I contact

Part of the charm with working at an international event like the hockey World Championships is seeing (and observing) people from all over the world. True, with hockey, it’s mostly the white, male part of the population I can observe, but even in that sample, there are some fascinating observations to be made.

Really.

For example, today I interviewed Olegs Znaroks, the head coach of Latvia, a day after the nation’s historic first win over Sweden. Last night, after the final buzzer, he was screaming and doing high fives with his players and assistant and I may be imagining this but I could swear he even sang the national anthem – like the entire team.

Now, unfortunately, I don’t speak Russian, and Olegs – fine, Mr Znaroks to me – is equally handicapped with English. (For the eagle-eyed, Mr Znaroks has latvianized his name, and the Chelyabinsk Oblast native speaks Russian). I set up an interview anyway, figuring that I can find an interpreter to assist me. And I do, except, at the last minute, I find out that he can’t make it, but that the team’s media manager will be there.

Sure enough, Vita was there, but since she wasn’t comfortable interpreting, what we did was this:

1. I told her what my 5 questions were, in English.
2. She wrote them down while assisting other reporters to get a hold of the players they wanted to interview.
3. She stopped the coach when he left the ice.
4. I pressed “rec” on my recorder.
5. Vita asked her my questions in Russian, I held the recorder in front of Mr Znaroks.
6. Repeat four times.
7. Send the soundbytes to the actual interpreter who will transcribe and translate it, and send it back to me.

That’s interesting. Sort of.

The really interesting thing was that not once during my three minutes and 39 seconds with Mr Znaroks did he look at me. He didn’t just not look me in the eye, he simply didn’t look at my direction. Had he done that, he would have seen a long-haired little fella smiling and nodding knowingly.

Afterwards, I asked Vita if Mr Znaroks was angry, because I couldn’t tell since I don’t know the language. But she told me no. “It’s just his image.”

PS. I still haven’t seen the transcript, so I have no idea what was said.I’ve posted the finished story here.

Mister Guy

4 thoughts on “I contact

  1. Maybe he was angry because he didn’t know you were there and simply couldn’t understand why his media manager was suddenly doing an interview with him?

  2. I guess it was Vita Savicka who helped you, she is PR specialist there. Znaroks is very interesting mam, if you wold know russian, you could hear many swearwords during the game and then he is very emotional. Depends time.

  3. Thanks Daina! I can imagine that he’s an interesting man, I can see that, and it bugs me that I can’t talk to him. Very fascinating guy. Thanks for the comment.

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