Maria Pavlova and Alexei Sviatchenko of Hungary are an ambitious pair and were more than ready for their first European medal. While they secured the bronze this year in Sheffield, their consistent elements and improved connection and skating skills will put them into contention for more podiums in the future. In this A-Z interview, get to know the pair team attending their first Olympics next month!
Note: Maria interpreted Alexei’s answers from Russian to English.
Most Used App?
Maria: TikTok
Alexei: Instagram.
Bedtime?
Maria: 11
Favorite Competition Memory?
Maria: Worlds in Montreal, 2024. Yeah, it’s the best memory I can remember.
Anna: Better than winning the medal?
Maria: Winning a medal means a lot. But, not everyone showed up to this competition. Sara [Conti] didn’t come. The Armenians also didn’t come. And there is a chance, for us, that we’re putting on a medal anyway. Of course, it depends how everyone skates. But if it feels still not fully accomplished because we want to compete with all of the top teams.
A recurring Dream? Your last dream?
Maria: Usually, I don’t really have dreams. But [if I do] it’s always something crazy happening. It doesn’t make sense. It cannot happen in the real world, but it’s something crazy, but I cannot remember anything that I would describe.
Alexei: It was the last dream, and it was before the freeze game. I was skating on the ice, and something with my skates. So I come back from the 6 minute warm-up and I’m like, I don’t know what to do. And so I was tying the skates, and I could tie the top of the skate. [The laces] were so long, that I tied them around my waist. And then I’m telling [Maria] and she’s like, “What?” And then we went on the ice and skated the competition very good.
What is an Embarrassing moment you can laugh about now?
Alexei: All of my life.
Maria: For me, I think it’s about university, I would say, not about the skating, but there was some moments that were very weird with my teachers. They were asking me something, and I would be there just standing, I don’t know what to answer. I couldn’t answer anything and I just went out and then I was like trying to think, what did he ask? And I’m like, that’s so easy to answer, and I’m just embarrassed there that I don’t know anything.
Favorite Food from your country?
Alexei: Goulash
Fun Fact about yourself?
Maria: I would say I like to, not skydive, but jumping from somewhere very high with the rope. I do a lot of bungee jumping, my maximum was like, 210m. That’s the highest I jumped down.
A Goal you are working on right now?
Maria: The goal is to… skate very good at the elements and do our best right now. That’s it.
Holiday memory?
Maria: It wasn’t long ago, we had a vacation with my friends, and that was nice in the summer. But as a little girl, I remember my family went to Portugal for a vacation, me, my mom, my sister, and my dad, and I remember in the morning, my dad, he likes running. And we would get up at 6 o’clock in the morning and go and run every day throughout the vacation.
Alexei: Two years ago, my wife Sonya and I went to Rome, Italy, and we were exploring every day and I liked it very much. It’s just a beautiful city.
Biggest Inspiration?
Maria: I would say my mom, because no matter what, she always knows what to do. She always figures stuff out. If she has something down in her life, I’ve never seen her where she doesn’t know what to do. She always has a plan, if something doesn’t look like it, she knows how to manage that. And, my career, in my life, she helps me a lot.
Alexei: My father
Maria: He’s the biggest fan of him and of us.
Did you have a dream Job as a kid?
Maria: To be honest, I don’t remember. I don’t think I had. I was… all over the place when I was little, but there was always something I wanted to do. Every day was different. Because I already was doing figure skating, so I was just like, I wanted to figure skate the rest of my life.
Alexei: I dreamed of being an athlete.
Maria: We start from an early age, and we are not exploring a lot because we’re always in practices, in training, and in school.
Karaoke song?
Alexei: [Singing “Mambo Number 5”] “One, two, three, four, five, Everybody in the car, so come on, let’s ride”
Maria: I just realized that I actually like Spanish songs. I like a lot of Shakira songs, and the old ones, very much…I think I know all of them.
Language you’d like to learn/speak?
Maria: I really like Spanish and Italian language. For me, when I hear that, it sounds very pretty. Also, Japanese, but I don’t think is possible. It’s so hard -because of our Dutch friends [Daria Danilova and Michel Tsiba]. Yeah. They were at Cup of Japan, of course, and they started learning Japanese like last year. I don’t think they’re learning right now, but they were for a long time and it’s so hard. They were like, explaining and I’m like, wow!
Alexei: I’m learning Hungarian. And for now it’s my main goal.
Movie-night favorite?
Alexei: Spiderman. All of them, I like the Tobey Maguire [films], I like the Andrew Garfield, all of them.
Maria: I like Marvel. Especially Avengers. I know there is one coming out next year, I think. I’m waiting for that.
Do you have any Nick-names?
Maria: For me, I would say yes, because everybody that are close to me, call me Marusia. I would say it’s a different version of my name, but it’s still very good. I like it.
And for him, it’s Alexei. His close friends, just for fun, call him the full name, they say Alexei. And sometimes it’s very funny to hear, because for me, in Russian, it’s Alesha.
One Book or Movie you recommend?
Maria: I recently read a book, “It Ends With Us”. There is, I think, a movie also for this book. And I love it, actually. It’s very good.
Alexei: For me, its a movie. Mr. Nobody.
Do you have any Pets? What is your dream pet?
Maria: I have three dogs, and I think the dogs are my favorite animals, and I love my dogs. They’re amazing… I have two big ones, and the one small one. The big ones are my parents’, and the small one is mine. I asked for my birthday like 5 years ago, I think, and she’s so beautiful.
Alexei: I also have a dog, a little one. She likes to run, she likes to play, she’s very active. I was also dreaming of the dog, because when I was growing up, I didn’t have a dog, but then Sonya has a dog. So now it’s our family.
Quality you value in each other?
Maria: Even when I’m, like, stressed and more angry, and I want to fight with him, he always tries to stay calm, and he doesn’t answer back. So, I love that communication we have.
Alexei: She is a good friend, and is supporting me very much.
Favorite Restaurant?
Maria: I just like the restaurants where there’s pizza. I don’t have a favorite restaurant, just places that has good pizza.
Alexei: I also don’t have a [specific] restaurant, but I would choose pasta. Good pasta, yeah.
Is there a Skating performance that you wish you could have seen live?
Maria: Tessa and Scott in 2018.
Alexei: Volosozhar and Trankov in 2014.
Training Day Essentials?
Maria: I always bring coffee to all my practices and I like to put it, by my mat, where I warm up. And so when I’m starting early morning with the warm up, I have a sip of my coffee…If I don’t bring coffee in the morning, it’s not making it to the end of the day.
Who or what do you think is Underrated
Alexei: I think the first three films about Spider-Man? Like, the first verse, I think it’s underrated.
Dream Vacation destination?
Maria: Maldives
Alexei: Bali
Your Whereabouts on a day off?
Maria: I just want to lay on my bed and watch something on TV. On my day off, and it’s only one day, also, I like to just lay not moving, just fully relaxing.
Alexei: Yeah. Same.
An eXperience that changed you?
Maria: I think it was the last season, not one moment, but the whole year, I think, changed a lot for me. I would say everything. The perspective I was looking from. And now it’s completely different. And like, I will be, I am grateful for the season that we had last season because it taught me a lot in life and empathy.
Alexei: For me, it’s my shoulder, and I injured when I was 19. Now, when I wake up every morning, I know that it’s, like, an opportunity for me to… do, like, to change, practice to complete, and it’s not just [doing the] usual. I would say. Yeah.
A Year that you would like to visit if you had a time machine?
Maria: I think I would like to go to the future. Like, oh, a long time from now, I want to see how it is, like, one thousand years, so it’s okay. I want to see that way future, yeah.
Alexei: I want to see the year when they have medicine for everything. I want to see, is it possible?
What is your Zodiac sign (and your big 3), and do you believe in the zodiac?
Maria: My zodiac is Leo, and I believe. Sometimes I just read what I have for the day, and sometimes it is actually true. And that’s so weird, but it’s cool to see, and I believe in it.
[Alexei didn’t know his sign, so we looked it up]
Alexei: Aries. I don’t believe in it, but sometimes it’s accurate.
Read our previous A-Z interviews:
A to Z with Annika Hocke and Robert Kunkel
A to Z with Loïcia Demougeot and Théo Le Mercier
A to Z with Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps
A to Z with Valentina Plazas and Maximiliano Fernandez
A to Z with Yuka Orihara and Juho Pirinen
A to Z with Júlia Sylvía Gunnarsdottir and Manuel Piazza
