KISIL Yuri

General
LEAVING VANCOUVER FOR TORONTO
In 2018 he left the High Performance Centre - Vancouver, where he worked with coach Tom Johnson, to join the High Performance Centre - Ontario. "I just wanted to change things up for myself. Vancouver, I love the city so much. But at the same time I really wanted to get some new experiences. Coming to Ontario seemed the right move. So far I'm just loving it. Tom has been very professional about this. As soon as I told him he was very understanding and said if I ever wanted to come back to Vancouver, the door is always open. He was an amazing coach but his sets were becoming too repetitive and it was getting into my head almost about certain sets not going as fast as I did two years ago and stuff like that. Whenever I see him it's almost like immediately back to old times. It's the same with my teammates. They are still my best friends. But I needed a change of pace. Vancouver is an amazing city, I miss it a lot. But I really like changing up my environment as well." (swimmingworldmagazine.com, 07 Mar 2020; swimming.ca, 28 Jun 2019)

COACHING ADVICE
He believes he is fortunate to get the advice of current coach Ben Titley, as well as former coach Tom Johnson. "Any professional eye sees different things. Ben sees a lot of stuff Tom might not see. But then I go back to Vancouver sometimes and Tom picks up a lot of stuff that Ben might not necessarily see. It's really helpful to get the best of both worlds with such great coaches." (swimming.ca, 28 Jun 2019)