This year she was supposed to turn 90, and I often thought about what words I would definitely write to the coach for this date.
There was no doubt that this date would take place: at her more than solid age, Dedova was vigorous, mobile, if she appeared where, then invariably elegantly dressed, with a straight back and a laughingly appraising look.
When a woman retains such a look and such a posture, she cannot be called an old woman even at a hundred years old.
It's a paradox, but journalists almost never wrote about her.
In 1954, Dedova (then still under the maiden name of Chumichev) was the first of the Soviet divers to become the European champion on a three-meter springboard.
In the 60s, she already began to train and raised a completely unique athlete - Vyacheslav Strakhov.
He performed jumps on the springboard of prohibitive, inexplicable and unattainable for those times difficulty, remaining the only performer for almost a dozen years, and foolishly lost the main starts: there was not enough reserves of the nervous system.
The training ground for the same prohibitive complexity, but on a 10-meter tower, was for the coach myself.
At that time, the maximum coefficient of difficulty of individual women's jumps rarely exceeded 2.6.
Therefore, the numbers in my starting list (2.7 - 2.7 - 2.9 - 2.9) shocked the jumping audience.
At the first adult European Championship, my colleague Maria Chermakova, the coach of the Czechoslovak Olympic champion Milena Duhkova, even approached my Valentina Nikolaevna: “Valya, your girl has a mistake in the protocol”.
When Dedova explained that there was no mistake, Chermakova stared in bewilderment: “You want to say that she is jumping all this ?!
You're crazy, Valya! "
Valentina Nikolaevna was distinguished from most of her colleagues by a very clear understanding of what she was doing and why.
She once invented the incredible complexity of the spins for her students only because she understood: in Europe and America, where diving developed to the Olympic level much earlier than in the USSR, no one was surprised with beautiful lines.
To be noticed, appreciated and started to reckon with you, you need something completely different.
Different technique, different speed of rotation, different goals.
I remember, while still in school, I started a conversation about jumping technique with the world famous professor of biomechanics Vladimir Zatsiorsky, who for some reason was visiting my parents.
She operated mainly with phrases picked up from the coach, which she honestly confessed to the professor.
And by chance I heard him say to her father: "Seryozha, your girl may not even realize how lucky she is to be in such hands!"
It was difficult for grandfather to love - because of her exactingness.
However, she was even more demanding of herself.
Compulsory gymnastics in the morning.
Mandatory stretching - after our workouts ended.
Being in shape for a coach was an indispensable condition of life.
If she saw that one of the athletes allowed himself to disband or violate the regime, the punishment followed immediately.
I remember how I myself fell under a hot hand, showing up for training in fashionable, high wedge-heeled sandals.
Dedova, seeing me on the steps of the pool, changed her face: “Take it off immediately!
You have the world championship in two weeks!
What if you twist your leg now?
Thinking how much work will be put down the drain?
Idiot ... "
I drove home in tears and barefoot.
I realized much later: it was the coach who then taught me that on the way to a big goal there is not a single insignificant detail.
Probably, she still went too far in 1978, saying that she did not believe in me - at that time the most severely traumatized - and that she was generally tired of big sports and did not want to continue to dangle around the training camp.
Probably, I hoped to awaken some new motivation in this way, but as a result we just parted.
It's stupid and ridiculous.
And for many more years, I acutely regretted not only our breakup, but also that the coach did not even see how I won the Olympics in 1976 - I could not come to Montreal.
As it turned out later, those who were included in the team by "third numbers", like me, were not supposed to have personal mentors in principle.
Then the question seemed to be resolved, since in addition to me, Slava Strakhov was supposed to speak at the Games with Dedova, but when Valentina Nikolaevna went to take the documents to the field department, it turned out that all his employees had already left for Canada.
And she stayed in Moscow.
When I found out about this, I was hysterical.
Crying, pitiful and endlessly lonely in my grief, late in the evening I went up to the floor to the swimmers, whose team was led by my father.
After listening to my lamentations, my father said:
- You know, there is a good practice in America.
All directors of large enterprises are sent on long business trips or vacations from time to time.
And they see how well the enterprise works, being left without a manager.
If problems begin, directors are fired immediately.
Because a boss who is not able to organize work so that it would run smoothly in his absence is not worth a price.
Do you understand everything?
Your main task at these Games is to prove to everyone that you have the best coach in the world.
I understood everything.
All the following days, this was pounding in my head: "I have to prove that my coach is the best coach in the world!"
This, in fact, has always been the case: even when we stopped working together and actually stopped dating, I, achieving some intermediate success in my studies, and then in the profession, thought: I wonder if she knows?
And what would you tell me?
Probably, I would have patted the top of my head as usual: "Well done, Mitten ..."
... She fell unsuccessfully while at home and broke her hip.
She lived alone: she did not want to, and did not like to burden anyone with herself.
Therefore, they did not immediately realize it.
Valentina Nikolaevna was brought to the hospital in a very bad condition, and on January 3 she was gone.
Goodbye Coach!
Unfortunately, only now I can tell you what I always wanted: I have always loved you very much.
You taught me almost everything that I know and can ...