Not like everyone else

The National Olympic Committee has recently honoured the winners and medalists of the International Sports Games Children of Primorye. At the competitions held in Vladivostok, Belarusian young athletes won 13 awards, including 5 gold, 4 silver and 4 bronze medals.
Figure skaters brought 3 medals to the team’s piggy bank — Valeria Yezhova became the winner in women’s single skating, and Elizaveta Kostyuk claimed a bronze medal. Vasil Barakhouski had no equal among young men.

Belarusian figure skater, Vasil Barakhouski      Andrey Golovanov

This is not the first success for Vasil Barakhouski at major international competitions — last year, the Belarusian figure skater became third at the Children of Asia Games. “I am pleased with my performance at the Children of Primorye Games. I am glad I could win. Success like this adds motivation. It is very pleasant when the national anthem is played in my honour in the arena, and I want to continue in the same spirit, so that it happens again and again,” Vasil shared his emotions. 
Yet, dwelling on achievements is not in the nature of the young Belarusian figure skater. 
Vasil Barakhouski is 16 years old. The Minsk resident has been training under the guidance of Sergei Voronov since last year. Interestingly, his sports path began quite far from figure skating — in the legendary gym of the Rings of Glory Gymnastics Youth Sports School.
“Artistic gymnastics was the first sport I did. I practised it for seven years. There was a period, probably about six months, when I tried my hand at hockey. But, as my mother says, my character does not suit this sport. You need a rough temper to play hockey, and that is not really my thing,” told the figure skater.   
Figure skating appeared in Vasil’s life at about the same time as artistic gymnastics. The athlete combined two sports over the years. “At that time, the training workload was not so heavy, so I managed to keep up with both sports. I went to gymnastics in the morning, and to figure skating in the evening,” the athlete recalled. “I did not even notice that I had already made a choice in favour of figure skating. I went on to train with Aleksandr Kazakov and finished with gymnastics — everything happened by itself.” 
Vasya admitted that things began to turn out quite slowly in figure skating. He mastered triple jumps by the age of 12, and before he had only double jumps. Despite that, the guy refused to think about switching to pair skating or ice dancing. Now the skater is practising higher complexity elements and is trying to include a quadruple toe loop in his free skating programme. According to coach Sergei Voronov, “After the Children of Primorye competition, Vasil performed in the Belarusian Cup final, then in Perm at the competition for the prizes of Russia’s Honoured coach Tatiana Anatolyevna Tarasova, where he already tried ultra C elements. I think this work should continue.”  
Speaking about his trainee, Sergei Voronov noted that Barakhouski is endowed with all the qualities necessary for an athlete — he is hard-working, resilient and stubborn in a good sense. Vasil has been competing in the Belarusian Figure Skating Championship for three years now. He became the silver medalist of the tournament twice, and won bronze this year. 
Sergei Voronov is sure that the more competitions are available in the current situation, the better it is for athletes. “This will ensure that the guys will have more competitive experience, especially at the international level. I would like to thank the leadership of Belarus’ National Olympic Committee and Ministry of Sports and Tourism for supporting the idea of such tournaments because the growth and victories of young athletes begin with them.”

By Tatiana Pastushenko