| | World champion Maria Butyraskaya took some time out during the ISU Grand Prix season to sit down with ABC Sports and share her thoughts on being world champion, the demands on her time and her future. Translated excerpts from the interview follow.
ABC Sports: What does it mean to you to be world champion?
Maria Butyrskaya: (translated): Well, okay, I fulfilled my dream. I kind of stopped first and then I started creating new goals for myself, for example to repeat this result. Let everybody know that this was not just an accident. But I can do it and show everybody the beauty of my skating. And, besides that, life is much broader. I have some ... personal dreams and goals. So my life is very interesting right now.
| |  | | | Maria Butyrskaya: skates across the ice. |
ABC Sports: What are your personal dreams and goals?
Butyrskaya: I wouldn't tell about it right now because it's dreams, and, if they're gonna be fulfilled, it will be something interesting. But, right now, I just don't want to reveal it.
ABC Sports: Okay. Will you tell us when it happens?
Butyrskaya: Everybody will notice it anyway. I won't need to talk about it.
ABC Sports:
Okay. [LAUGHS] How hard is it to stay on top now that you're here how hard is it gonna be to stay there?
Butyrskaya: Of course it's very difficult, because the process of reaching the top is easier than the process of keeping it. Because there are so many people who desire to reach this top and get in there.
ABC Sports: How has being world champion changed your life?
Butyrskaya: It didn't change anything.
ABC Sports: Did it change your skating, your confidence and your--
Butyrskaya: I got my confidence not from being champion, but from my experience. The confidence comes with years of experience. I know that for American girls and boys to win the championship means a lot, it means change. Their lives change dramatically, but, for me it just happened and I have already forgotten about it.
ABC Sports: You don't have more requests for interviews and people wanting your time?
Butyrskaya: Right, right after the championship when I came back to Russia, I had lots of invitations for interviews. But now, everybody has forgotten about it.
ABC Sports: Well we haven't forgotten. What made the difference at last year's worlds? You've had a little bit of bad luck sometimes at worlds. Why were you finally able to show your best at worlds, what was different last year?
Butyrskaya: I've been feeling that idea for long years. And then, my day came and my chance came. I couldn't let it go. It first happened when Michelle Kwan said she was not going to compete. And then she said she was going to compete. Nobody paid attention to me, everybody was running and following around Michelle. After the short program Michelle gets fourth place and I get first. Then I understood. I can't let anybody have the first.
ABC Sports: Wow. How long will you keep skating? Will your age have an effect on it or will your accomplishments make the decision?
Butyrskaya: I love sport and I'm gonna stay until I can show my best results. For now I believe that my technique and my jumps are not any worse than any of the others. My artistic abilities are better than the others. As long as I'm able to combine these two sides, I'm going to stay, competing because I believe that professional skating is very different from the sport skating.
ABC Sports: What do you have to say to all those people that either didn't send you to worlds or who said that you weren't gonna become a great skater?
Butyrskaya: I think they are surprised that I became a world champion at 26 years old. But it's, too early for me now to say anything bad about them. [LAUGHTER]
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