The forgotten champion: “I am the only one in the Baltic, and I don’t get much attention” | sports

Valdemaras Novickis is the most titled Lithuanian handball player of all time and will remain so for a long time. The 64-year-old Kaunas, who won the Olympic gold and silver with the USSR national team, as well as the IHF Cup with Kaunas Granite, told of the beginning and flourishing of their path as elite handymen in the first part of an interview with Sergejs Mordasevičius, author of handballfast.com.

Now 15min offers the second part of the conversation with V. Novickis. She meanders through the champion’s attempts to go abroad, the Kremlin offices, the fights in Spain and the beer in Germany, unleavened bread, layoffs, health concerns, and an embellished coach life.

– You said that in Soviet times, food during the camp in Minsk was not very tasty. At what point in the USSR does it feed best? In georgia

– yes There we play in the tournament every year in November for the prize of the newspaper “Rytų aušra”. In Tbilisi, each team was associated with a sponsor: a factory, a winery or a cognac factory. We were preparing lunch and dinner for ourselves. To keep the coaches from seeing, they poured wine into dark glasses and had fun there. As if it were water.

Such were the surprises. But I had moderation. After heavy loads, I really didn’t want to.

– There was a case where you suffered an arm injury when falling on a protruding nail in the square …

– I played in Germany for the Super Cup. I suffered several injuries there, just like at the Moscow Olympics. In a meeting with the Romanians, I fell from a nail that cut the palm of my left hand. All because of the placement of square plank pallets on the floor. Subway in the subway. This is probably how they claimed not to move. And a nail was also on the six-meter line. When I collapsed, I ran down my stomach. So I was hooked.

Sewn in eight points, inflated by hand. But Dr. Roman Sergeyevich says, well, I’ll give you a syringe at the door here, you can play there. Supposedly nothing terrible. Okay, I played in another game. But in the end I turned a leg. She also swelled up. And the doctor reassures me again: we will do everything. The leg was like two thick ones. He did seven injections. I played in the semifinals, my hand fell, my leg fell, but before the final I said: no, boys, I will not play anymore.

When I tell young people about this now, they point their finger at the incense: well, fool! Why did you play But in sports you can’t postpone a game. Here is a postponement of the Olympic Games. But they all postponed. And anyway, the game cannot be repeated. I think an athlete has to play before he can play. Although maybe that’s wrong.

– Kaunas Granitas won seven prize games in the USSR Championship. How did it happen that the bag was so strong in Lithuania?

– A generation of good players recently reunited, who in their spare time directed all their energy to the sport: Dumbliauskas, Kaučikas, Mikulėnas, Valuckas …

We train a lot, we set goals. We went up to the top league. Maybe in the Soviet Union it was interesting, a different style. All the long-haired people, including me, came to the first tournament. There is even a photo. And when they saw us, they wondered, where did they come from? Who are the Europeans here? It must be trimmed. But we resist. Although in the end we are still holding each other.

– You were one of the first players in the USSR to go abroad to compete. Easily released?

– It was an interesting policy. Basketball player Šarūnas Marčiulionis was one of the first to solve this problem. Finally he left. But he did it as an independent athlete.

And I am different. The USSR then established Sovintersport, an organization through which all contracts were carried out. He had to get a permit from that agency, then get a permit in Lithuania. I had to listen to the briefing in the party department. Several Kremlin cabinets had to be visited. There they told me how to behave abroad. In case of suspicion, – report.

I had variations from Spain and Germany. I chose Sovintersport instead of me. Probably the Spanish proposal was better. At the time, I could not get more than a diplomat working in that country. And this one made fifteen hundred dollars. That was the contract for me. It was signed by the agency. First Sovintersport, then the Republic of Lithuania, and then myself, symbolically.

– Did you pay anything from the contract?

– There was already an agreement about it. Everything was determined by the owner of the club. There could have been bonuses. For example, you win against Barcelona, ​​you get a prize.

– How interesting were the stages in Malaga, Spain, and Bad Schwartau, Germany?

– We were raised differently. I didn’t know how to play for another club. And how to communicate, how democracy works. In Spain, for example, we are approaching a fight with blacks. I am a fighter in general. I worked hard during training. And they were walking, something was bubbling under their noses. I say: why don’t we run? Answer: What is your business? Approximately, the coach will tell you and we will agree with him. But everything has to go differently. There were two brothers. One defended the other. It was difficult to prove my truth, but we played what you would do.

Another example: there is no gas in the room. You go to the club and ask: why? The Spaniards respond: “Tomorrow”. I say tomorrow. Finally waiting a week, sometime plugged in. There have been many such cases.

In Germany things are different. Discipline If for the Spaniards “tomorrow” it is better to drink wine than to run, then in Germany – training and training. We jump from the second league to the highest. A year and a half later, a player came to the club who, before playing against the USSR, was always afraid of me as a defender. And here we are in a team. He was satisfied. I took him for a walk, we drank beer together after the game. There was a good relationship.

When we went up to the top league, the coach told me: go on vacation to Spain, come back, there will be a contract. I come back, and instead I have another player from Poland on the team. He was a year younger. I was a little offended. That was wrong. I would have said something earlier.

– Why did you play abroad for a short time, only two years (1988-1990)?

He was 34 years old. He was considered old. Invited to Denmark, I went to the second review of the league team. We flew from Copenhagen to the village in a small plane, where the tournament took place from nine in the morning until nine at night with 18 teams. I say no, it is not my league.

I remember that we were still in bed with my wife and we were thinking: do we need that? Run with young people. You will not earn all the money. We decided: we will return to Lithuania.

– You remembered how you were expelled from the USSR team. Were there other times that you were convicted?

– yes There were three such meetings in my life in total.

The second happened when I trained “Granita”, with whom we won the Lithuanian handball championship many times. In the late 1990s, 99 percent. The team’s players also competed on the Lithuanian national team, which I trained in parallel. Then we won a ticket to the World Cup in Japan, where we got 10th place. Then, in the 1998 European Championship in Italy, ninth. Granite was the club’s president and vice president on a public basis. And the hardest job was for the coaches. It was necessary to find money, to pay salaries to the players.

I once had a meeting at the club. Coaches working with children at the club also attended. And he tells me: you are still a coach, you work well, but you lose your managerial position. It was like a verdict. No one consulted me, people gathered and decided. But a few months passed, they saw a lot of work to do and they left the country. It says: keep working.

Third case: after the European Championship, some players obtained contracts abroad, in 1998 we are preparing for the qualification match, I resort to the handball players: we have to run as before to keep up to date. The answer is: what are you talking about here? We have been abroad, we know how to train. Supposedly I am working poorly, the Russian system is not ok. I say, how can I not do that? The manual does not change: you have to train to win.

At night, the players entertained themselves: bar, girls. The next day we played with the Poles, we are 15 goals behind. I say, here is the result.

Meet again. And the handballers said to the president of the federation: either the coach or us. Clearly, I chose them. Then I was very sad. But since then, somehow I haven’t seen the national team make it to any elite tournament.

– The national team then traveled in an old bus. Often broke?

– Many times For example, we went to play with the Yugoslavs. We suggest We stay in Poland, opening a new bus from Lithuania. We drive again, we arrive in the morning. There we draw. The policy is changing, there is the possibility of moving forward. Now everything is flying by plane. And it was like that for us: we drove for two days, we played for the third day. And we won. Everyone on our bus laughed, but there was no money. What to do Such were the times.

– What do you remember of the tournaments in which you played with the Lithuanian national team?

– We were pleased to enter. To beat the national team for the 1997 European Championship, it was necessary to beat Ukraine. In the closing seconds, Jankevičius scored a winning goal of nine meters. We became the best teams that took second place in the groups. We did not go directly to Japan then. Australia had yet to be beaten, which was not a handball country, making it easy to beat.

Behind our list of teams that finished second in the groups were the Germans. And then the German Handball Federation offered to swap places for a fee. There was no money in Lithuania at the time. But we finally went to Australia and went up to the World Cup.

– When you played at the Seoul Olympics, the USSR team at the time was called the 21st century team. And now there is a national team of the XXI century?

– of course. French, Swedish, Croatian, Danish, Norwegian. This is all the current elite. Life does not stop. The level is rising. The combinations, throws, speeds are different. The game looks better.

Although sometimes I start from Youtube The final of the Olympic Games in Seoul with the Koreans. Dress Up In terms of speed, we didn’t give up on current handball. I say to my son: do you see how we run? And he immediately: well, what are you … But we all ran. Although to somebody it seems like we were playing slowly.

Now teams score 40 goals per game. For viewers, it could be more interesting. And in our time, Georgians appeared and an attack could last 3-5 minutes.

Someone was falling, playing, cleaning the sweat floor. Also interesting to see. And then what an unexpected release – bam!

– Which game do you prefer now, fast or measured?

– More discreet. When a goal is scored after a combination, the players help each other. I think when a team takes out a goalkeeper and shoots at an empty goal, it’s a complete parody. See how many of those targets, what does that bring?

– Who else doesn’t like a bag these days?

– The fact that nobody wants to defend themselves. When a handball player defends himself like a pillar, goalkeepers play more than defenders. When you compete and you know how to do it, looking from the side is very unpleasant. And these days, goalkeepers display the highest dominance. Everything is more on your shoulders.

– Who and the defenders of these times do you like?

– The same Karabatičius that we have already talked about (in the first part, French was compared to V. Novickis in terms of playing style). Still Didier Dinart, who has already finished his career. They are good advocates.

– When you worked as sports director at the club “Meškov” in Brest, most could not understand who the head coach is: you or Gintaras Savukynas. Was it a bad practice?

– No, it was good practice. Alexander Meškov (owner of the Belarusian team) wanted me to be a coach, but I replied: to be a young and promising specialist. Amber is my school. And all my thoughts to the team came through this. There was such an agreement. Both Bear, myself and Savukynas were satisfied. But sometimes too much emotion arose. Maybe I didn’t share the tips in time. Probably someone did not like it. But I am satisfied with my work and happy that Bear has given Savukynas a springboard. I think I did my job.

Foreigners were able to come to Brest with greater confidence. We brought mostly Lithuanians: Gross, Atajeva, my son Valdas, whom Meškovas wanted to take a year earlier.

But it was difficult for some players to show that everything you see is different, they train differently, they distribute money. In my time I interacted with Slovenes, Croats, but they were afraid to come. He intervened: there may be an unstable financial situation here (in Belarus). Or: the team level is not yet that. But then the players from the countries of the former Yugoslavia began to run. Little by little we form the team. And then I got tired. There were health problems. I didn’t say much about it.

– But you came out after defeat. Could it be understood that this is the reason?

– It’s just a coincidence. It was already the second half of the season. I started to feel bad. The first symptoms of diabetes appeared. There was a weakness.

– Why didn’t you beat the Minsk Dynamo?

– Because Dinamo played better. They gathered stronger players. There was a sports fight, if we were defeated then we were weaker at the time. And I still felt a psychological burden. The team was unable to relax. I did not understand: the players get money and considerable money, but they do not go to the field to fight. I conducted such educational meetings, demonstrating by my example the need to fight. As Dynamo did. But that was not enough.

The team was afraid to take the money or punish. Players sometimes came up with a disease: their finger hurts. I couldn’t have trained for a week, two. This is abnormal. I really didn’t like it.

– What are the memories of working with Bear?

– Very well. Maybe he didn’t like my departure, so cold. I had to say goodbye differently. Somehow I came out in English. But I think he is one of the best team owners. Patriots Keeps the club at this level for many years, delving into every player, every problem. Superman I learned a lot in Brest. The club management was professional.

– Do you no longer train for Kaunas “Granite” for health?

– yes There are problems. I retired on time. Now I work as a sports director. I advise young people, we share experiences. We lead the club together with Algis Mikučionis.

– Did they offer you to work as a coach in other countries?

– Yes Yes. In Germany’s third league, in Olsztyn, Poland. But he was busy with Granite and had no such goal. I know what life is like in another country. I don’t want to be second class.

– You said your son Valdas was interested in programming. Did it turn that way?

– yes He studied computer science in Germany and received such a specialty. And it works under this profile in the IT sector. But don’t forget handball, playing in the third league.

– You are happy? Is there something missing in life?

– Very satisfied with life. All right, where to get health? With her, everything would be super in general. And this is how the grandchildren grow, the children have already grown, my wife and I have been together for more than 40 years, the government provides some supplies like an Olympic champion. Live and rejoice.

– Are you still fighting diabetes?

– Not only with him. I no longer have half a kidney. Hypertension There is another disease.

– Are these the consequences of a player’s career?

– I do not know. But many diseases in the nerves. And the nervousness was over what. Every day he played with nerves: we had to demonstrate what had to be done, what was required. And it is very difficult. But I haven’t been training in a while. I feel the difference, so I’m not nervous anymore. I try to live for my pleasure, not worry. And it responds to the state.

And it is interesting: I am the only handball player in the entire Baltic: an Olympic champion. And I don’t get much attention. I forgot But that’s not my problem anymore.