By Hiro Yoshida

After calling time on a long and eventful competitive career, Michal Březina immediately began working as a coach and is busier than ever travelling with his students to events. I caught up with the four-time Czech Olympian at last month’s European Figure Skating Championships in Kaunas, Lithuania for a brief chat about life on the other side of the boards.

Březina was at Europeans with the current Czech champion in men’s singles Georgii Reshtenko. So how is he managing the responsibility of guiding skaters through competition like this?

“What he does or what he shows is a reflection on my training with him,” Březina said. “So obviously, there’s pressure because you always want the skater to do well, but there’s nothing you can do once they get on the ice. But when he comes here, and I know that he’s ready, and I know that he can do things in practice, that’s where I can have an impact is in practice not really in competition. The way that he performs, the way that he presents himself in the competition, that’s where I’m going to feel pressure because I want to make sure that he can represent himself, and he can represent what we train well.”

At the moment, Reshtenko is dividing his time training between Prague and Irvine, California where Březina is based. Březina believes Reshtenko could be the one to continue the storied line of male Czech skaters and follow him and his contemporary Tomáš Verner.

“He’s going back and forth, because he still has some commitments that he has to do in Czechia,” Březina explained. “He’s not full time in the US, but he’s basically there for the main part of the preparation season and competition season.

“He definitely has the most potential out of all the kids that were supposed to follow my path and Tommy’s path,” Březina added. “It’s great to see the progress that he has made, because last season was not that great. You can definitely see improvement, not only in the quality of jumps, but also in the quality of skating. You can see the improvement in the quality of his interpretation and choreography which is thanks to Adam (Solya) as well. He tapped into something that he never did before and he found something else that he needs to improve and it’s good that he knows he needs to improve it because then it makes him do it. When he came to me, he wanted to improve his technique and his jumps which we worked on really hard. With Adam, he definitely improved everything else that he had to. If he keeps going in the direction he’s going, there’s good chances that he might be the leader of Czech skating one day. He’s still learning to be a top-level athlete. It’s only his really second season as a senior so it takes a little bit. I remember myself, the first time I came to Europeans, I had no idea.”

Březina’s first appearance at Europeans was in 2008 when the championships were held in Zagreb, Croatia. He was seventeen years old at the time and it was his senior championships debut.

“I did Junior Worlds, but I had no idea what it takes to be at a senior competition,” he recalls. “All of that experience that comes from being there, more understanding what the judges are looking for, understanding what it is that actually makes you a skater, what it is that you have to show them in order to be more visible to the judges, so they recognise you as somebody who should be in the last two groups or in the last group. All of that comes with time.”

As well as Reshtenko, Březina works with a number of skaters competing on the international circuit. He is conscious of striking a balance between passing on his knowledge to a younger generation of skaters while at the same time not spreading himself too thinly. He feels grateful to be working with a group of coaches that includes his former coach, Rafael Arutyunyan.

“A lot of students means a lot of responsibility,” he said. “Sometimes it’s a lot to manage this amount, and I feel like it takes a toll on me as well. The more international students you have, the more it means you have to travel with them, you have to be with them. I don’t want to take on too many, because then I’m not going to have time to actually help them and develop them in the way that I need or they need.

I’m fortunate enough to work with Rafael and I have other coaches that I’ve worked with that are on our team. We started working with Daisuke Murakami. He just relocated to LA and he started working with me and my wife (Danielle Montalbano-Březina). He works with all of my kids and he’s had a great impact on a lot of them. It’s great that he’s there.

“Rafael does take some of my kids and gives them lessons. “He does skating classes that I was given when I was skating with him. It definitely works when you have a team and then you can manage to have a big number of international skaters. If you’re by yourself, or if you’re two, or even three of you, it’s hard.”

Missing from this year’s Europeans was Březina’s younger sister Eliška Březinová who did not make the Czech team on this occasion. Despite that, Březina believes she still has the ability to regain her status as the leading female Czech skater once she finds consistency again.

“She didn’t have a good Nationals, hence why she’s not here,” Březina said. “But she can still compete. She had a really good short programme at Nationals. She just has to find a way to making sure she can do two good programmes, not just one. That’s something that she had in the Olympic season, which was very consistent with both of her programmes. It’s been hard for her to manage a competition where she can do both programmes well. But if she can find a way to it, and I’m sure she can, she can come back.”

Březina had a reunion of sorts in Kaunas with former rivals Javier Fernández and Florent Amodio who were also coaching this year. The three skaters were all European medallists in 2013 when the championships took place in Zagreb, Croatia.

“Last season was actually 10 years ago since we were all on the podium, so we had to add another year,” Březina said. “It’s nice to see all the guys that I competed with now being on the other side helping the younger skaters to achieve what we once wanted to achieve and what we managed to achieve. Now we’re trying to help them because it’s their goal. It’s their skating career now. It’s not ours. Now we need to give them the how and the know and help them to get where they want to go.”

While Adam Siao Him Fa was a clear winner at this year’s Europeans, Březina believes that next month’s World Championships in Montreal, Canada will come down to a battle between Ilia Malinin and the strong contingent of Japanese skaters in the men’s event, all of whom he rates highly.

“That one’s going to be interesting because Ilia is very strong technically,” Březina said. “He also has a lot that he could work on, especially in the second mark and he’s been doing that. He’s been coming to work with Shae-Lynn (Bourne) a lot. You can definitely tell that he’s trying to improve that mark. He knows he’s not as strong. His technical abilities are out of this world. That’s no question. But it’s going to be interesting to see the fight between him and the Japanese.

“There’s way too many right now, especially the young ones. Shoma (Uno) is amazing, but I think that the younger ones are pushing through. He’s going to have a hard time soon to keep up, even though his skating is on a different level than theirs. In the technical mark, especially Yuma (Kagiyama) is pushing the level of Japanese technical ability. Kao (Miura) is going to be very good. He’s very consistent. He’s always a hard competitor to compete with because he’s so consistent, even though he doesn’t have as many quads as Yuma. The same with Shun (Sato), actually now. Shun got very consistent as well. I love his skating.”

“They’re all so determined to learn and to get better. It doesn’t really matter if any one of them would decide to contact me. I would love to work with them.”

Březina will have a close-up view of how the competition unfolds as he guided Reshtenko to a new set of personal bests in Kaunas coming ninth overall and crucially earned the minimum technical elements score for Worlds in the free skating he had been missing.