The main achievements of the Russian women’s volleyball team are still two world championship gold medals won in 2006 and 2010. Neither before nor after our girls managed to achieve comparable victories.

However, behind the flawless picture of triumph, as it turned out, there were many dark stories. One of the main stars of that team, Svetlana Kryuchkova, spoke frankly about her career in the team and what it’s like to be a professional volleyball player in Russia.

Drugs and nightclubs

The current volleyball player and world champion in 2010 Tatyana Kosheleva now combines her sports career and journalistic activities. On Sunday, her Italian “Vallefoglia” started with a victory in Serie A, and a couple of days later, the player released an interview with her former partner in the Russian national team, Svetlana Kryuchkova.

If the stories about the hectic life of football players hardly surprise anyone, then the revelations of the Russian volleyball player amaze with details. A native of Lipetsk, who has become one of the most titled volleyball players on the planet, shocks with the details of her youth:

I started smoking at the age of 13. And smoked long enough. I quit only at 28. I thought that I calmed myself down with cigarettes, – Svetlana admits.

Svetlana Kryuchkova / Photo: © RIA Novosti / Vladimir Pesnya

Around the same time, Kryuchkova tried moonshine, and even drugs as an adult:

– It [наркотики] was in my life, but at a later period. It was a difficult year, and I found a way to escape from reality. But I urge everyone not to even try,” says Svetlana.

Hazing and Coach Pressure

Although Kryuchkova’s lifestyle could not be called correct, at the age of 21 she received an invitation to the Russian national team. In 2006, the team was coached by the Italian Giovanni Caprara, together with his wife Irina Kirillova, who also acted as an interpreter for our girls. For Svetlana, working under the guidance of a foreigner and adapting to a new team, and even at such a level, became a real test:

– In 2006, the team did not immediately, but split 6 and 6. Some did not communicate with others. And I don’t know how we won that world championship. Don’t know. But I came home and said: I won’t go to the national team anymore, ”Svetlana says in an interview with Kosheleva.

Blame the hazing that arose between already eminent players and newcomers to the national team. Gamova, for example, at that time already a two-time Olympic silver medalist (Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004), could simply ignore her younger compatriots:

— Ignored. Sometimes Katya Gamova didn’t like something, she might not answer, ”Kryuchkova shares her memories.

Such behavior was encountered not only on the playground, but also in everyday life. In addition to hazing, Kryuchkova’s relationship with her mentor was also heating up:

“He called me several times. And there were talks about going home now. As soon as my statistics showed a percentage lower than the threshold, he called me and said: “That’s it, you’re going home, we’ll take tickets now.” It was periodic blackmail. It was repeated throughout 2006, says Kryuchkova about Caprara.

Photo: © Osports / Contributor / Getty Images Sport / Gettyimages.ru

However, these difficulties and internal strife did not prevent the team from winning a dramatic final against the Brazilians. In the fifth set, with the score 11:13 in favor of the rivals, the time-out of the Italian coach changed everything, and our team, having won 4 draws in a row, became the world champion for the first time in its history.

Conflict with Markov

Four years later, the team repeated the achievement, again beating the Brazilians in the final in five games, but under the guidance of Kuzyutkin, the most important mentor in Svetlana’s career.

The main disappointment for Kryuchkova was not working with Caprara at all, but with the Russian specialist Yuri Marichev, who led the team in 2013. He managed to rejuvenate the team and immediately win the European Championship, but before the world championship in Italy in 2014, the former mentor of the Dynamo men’s club (Krasnodar) found himself in conflict with Svetlana:

– 2014 is the year when I refused to go there two days before the World Cup. It was a conflict, not a conflict. I reacted to, let’s say, ridicule from the coach in front of the whole team. During training, he started joking that I have some kind of protection there, get into Sveta and so on. Yuri Marichev was the coach at the time,” recalls the libero.

Photo: © RIA Novosti / Vladimir Pesnya

As a result, it was possible to persuade her to return to the squad only by blackmail from the club, which threatened the volleyball player with a fine of 10 million rubles – an incredible amount at that time. However, this did not benefit the team, and after two triumphant world championships, our girls did not even manage to reach the semi-finals. And Svetlana ended her career in the national team on this.

At the club level, the two-time world champion played until 2021, having finished her performances as part of Leningradka from St. Petersburg. In addition to awards with the national team, she won many club trophies.

But the story of her life is perhaps no less interesting than the history of victories. In the end, without this ambiguous youth and the lively nature of Kryuchkova, we might not have seen that golden team. A team whose achievements have not yet been surpassed by anyone.