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STEPHEN GOUGH, U.S. National Short Track Coach Ohno Zone Interview, January 2003 Part 1: Background
OZ: What made you decide to coach short track in the U.S.? SG: There were a couple of reasons. I had decided that I wanted to pursue coaching in the short term as a career. I applied for a position to coach in the US mainly to serve as leverage for a better salary at my current position in Montreal. I didn’t really want to leave but at some point you have to pay the bills. When my employers in Montreal told me they would not have any information for me until the end of the summer, that pretty much did it and I accepted the offer to coach in Marquette in 1999. OZ: Who has had the biggest influence on you as an athlete and coach? SG: When I was younger, I always looked up to Mark Lackie. He was the only top skater in Canada from my province and was a World Record holder in the 500m. I guess the other skater who had a lot of influence on me was Marc Gagnon, more now then when we trained together. I think my former coach Yves Nadeau (now coaching The Netherlands) has had the biggest influence on me as a coach. I always tried to learn something from all of my coaches though, whether it be the things they are doing that are correct or from the mistakes that they made. John McCall, who was the Cdn. Team doctor (and still travels with them from time to time), also had an influence on me as a person. And of course my father has had a big influence. OZ: What is the highlight of your coaching career, to date? SG: It’s hard to really pinpoint one highlight. Most of the time at a competition you have skaters who are doing well and skaters who are not, so as a coach you have to try to stay level emotionally. Still, to name a few: · JP Kepka winning a final at a Quebec Cup the first year I coached in Marquette. · The performances of Derek Gray and Kyle Ortiz at the US Champ. in 2000. · Helping coach Ron Biondo and Allison Baver onto the Olympic team last season. · Apolo winning the first two World Cups this season. Part 2: Coaching Apolo OZ: (Stephen was asked this in Bormio, but I missed his answer.) With regards to Apolo, what is it like to coach someone you once competed against? SG: I don’t remember much from that race apart from the fact that I wasn’t skating very well at that competition and that it was a hard race with Lee Jun-Hwan from Korea and Naoya Tamura from Japan as well. Its more of an interesting little footnote on my career - I was around long enough to get beat by the best from the late 1980s to the future champions of the 21st century. OZ: Apolo speaks very highly of you in his book. Why do you think your particular coaching style works so well for him? SG: I’m not really sure. I think he sees that I have a passion for the sport and that I have a fair amount of experience in areas that are important to skaters – equipment and technique. I try to take a very simple approach to things and I think he sees some of the logic in that. OZ: Apolo seems to have it all as a speedskater. What attribute(s) in particular would you say make him such a special talent? What do you think is the most important attribute for a successful speedskater to have? SG: Apolo’s physical gifts are what really set him apart from the rest. He is capable of doing things that few others can in short track. The thing that is so rare is that he has the work ethic to match his physical and technical skills. He knows what he wants and is willing to do the work and to push himself in order to get it. Short track speedskaters need to have a variety of attributes to be successful. I guess for lack of a better term I would say “fighting spirit” would be in my opinion the most important. Its a combination of heart and brains you could say. A skater has to race/train with a lot of heart but it has to be calculated and controlled to a certain degree. >> Continue to page 2 >> Ohno Zone Home |
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