A revolutionary coach is about Ugryumov. Although not everyone understood this, and not immediately, even in the form where his coaching career began. Mikhail entered the elite of the profession at the age of 30 when his first ward, Zhanna Tsirulnikova, became the 1981 European champion on a three-meter springboard. Four years later, she won the title again.
Ugryumov himself was already working with yet another trampoline player Valery Statsenko. In the track record of this jumper in the water there were not many victories, but it was he who first embodied the unique idea of his coach - a jump on the board with a double bounce, which allows to sharply increase the height of the jump. Statsenko demonstrated the novelty in 1989 at the European Cup in Zurich, won it, in the same season he became the second in the championship of the continent and the World Cup.
An innovative pounce was not invented from a good life: just in the difficulty of jumping, the athlete and coach then rested on the “ceiling”, and it was necessary to invent something that would allow them to leave the springboard to a great height. Formally, technical know-how was a violation of the rules, so preliminary jumping in a sense had to be masked - it was not so obvious to Statsenko as it was later done. But in this way the whole world is now jumping onto the springboard.
After the collapse of the USSR, the coach was forced to leave his native Kiev abroad - he began to work in Spain, where he not only created a school of diving from scratch (his athlete Jose Miguel Gil was the winner of the World Cup, and Javier Ilana - medalist of the European Championship), but he also very much participated in the progress of Spanish synchronized swimming: in the early 2000s, support-emissions began to be more and more appreciated in this sport, and Ugryumov was the first to tell the Spaniards the idea of inviting a specialist in diving to practice acrobatic emissions. In my opinion, this was done even before specialists of a similar profile appeared in the Russian team.
He generally liked to look around. In 2015, already at a solid age for the coach, Mikhail was preparing for the first European games of the Turkish athlete, and enthusiastically told that he was very pleased to work in the new era.
“The world is completely open thanks to the Internet, getting information is fast and it is incredibly interesting. I’m talking not only about my sport, but also about gymnastics, and about acrobatics, and about acrobatic freestyle - about all “related” sports disciplines. I realized once that any complex coordination sport can develop only in one case: when there is a constant exchange of information. As soon as the coach closes within the framework of his appearance, he begins to miss a lot and, accordingly, to degrade. It is no coincidence that in China, which is now trying to catch up with the whole world in a number of sports, they built a center for training national teams, which brings together all sports without exception at the level of national teams? There is no such base even in Russia, ”said Ugryumov.
In the same year, shortly before the World Cup in Kazan, as a joke, rather than seriously, I asked the coach to make a forecast - I was repeatedly convinced that his predictions used to come true.
“I think there will be one big surprise. Perhaps - completely unforeseen. For example, a personal gold medal won by an athlete from a country not too hopping. The rest will remain with the Chinese, ”the specialist answered almost without hesitation.
The victory on the 10-meter tower at that forum in Kazan was first won by the representative of North Korea Kim Gukhyan. And this was the biggest sensation of the tournament.
- Mikhail Ugryumov with his wife Alla
In his encyclopedic book on diving, Ugryumov collected unique information about the Olympic Games and about each of the champions. For example, that at the 1920 Games in Antwerp, athletes jumped into a ditch about 10 meters deep, filled with water. The water was very cold and so dark that some jumpers lost their orientation underwater.
And here is another amazing fact found by the coach. Vice-champion of the Games of 1948 and 1952 Miller Anderson participated in the Second World War and during his 112th sortie he was shot down over Italy, was able to parachute, but in the air the leg of a 23-year-old guy was almost torn off by the tail of the plane. Anderson underwent surgery at an American military hospital by attaching a silver plate to his left femur. And four years later he climbed the Olympic podium.
That book by Ugryumov remained unclaimed, although it could become an insanely valuable archive for any sports journalist or commentator. Where else, tell me, you can find out that after his victory in Helsinki in 1952, American David Browning was arrested for dumping a flagpole while trying to steal an Olympic flag, and the 1960 Games vice champion Sam Hall is more than 20 years old later he saved children from terrorists in Angola, fought in Mozambique, led a guerrilla movement in Nicaragua, was pierced through with a bayonet, but survived and died only in 2014? Or read about the outstanding Soviet water jumper Boris Poluliha, who was suspended for life after the 1968 Games in Mexico City?
However, Ugryumov really surprised me not with this unique knowledge, but with his work in football. A conversation on this subject arose, as always, spontaneously. Ugryumov began to talk about how to professionally investigate a phenomenon such as team building, the first was Sir Alex Ferguson, who very actively used the developments that are usually used in large corporations. When I asked the coach how he knew this, Mikhail noticed that from Ferguson himself.
“When I worked with English jumpers before the Games in London, a masseuse periodically came to our training camps, who simultaneously worked with a group of 15-16-year-old Manchester United footballers. Once on TV some match of the Mankunians was broadcast, and I allowed myself to express purely professional - from the point of view of the coach - comments on the game. Sharp enough, by the way. The masseuse, as it turned out later, conveyed my criticism to Ferguson, who, we must give him his due, never limited his interests only to the main club team. So he expressed a desire to meet with me, ”said Ugryumov.
According to Mikhail, he arrived in Manchester at the invitation of Sir Alex himself, but he immediately warned that he had only an hour of time.
“In the end, we talked for three hours. The first thing I asked then was why all three goalkeepers train with him separately from the rest of the team? Ferguson, of course, replied that the goalkeeper is a separate role, respectively, and he needs a different job, taking into account the specifics of human actions on the field.
And then I asked him a question: “If you admit that each role is specific, why do you have left and right defenders, midfielders, and attacks working in a common heap? Ferguson, it seemed to me, immediately became interested in talking to me. Although this question is the first one that any non-football coach asks when looking at the training of a football team, ”Ugryumov smiled.
At the same time, Mikhail also talked about how he read and lectured at Johann Cruyff's school on coordinating the training of football players and admitted that he became interested in this topic long before his departure to Spain, when in the early 1970s he worked with divers in the gymnastics in Kiev “Vanguard” hall, where Valery Lobanovsky regularly held acrobatics classes for his players. Once Mikhail, as usual, inserted his “five kopecks” commenting on the training, and Lobanovsky, instead of attacking his young colleague with righteous anger, immediately invited him to the club to conduct acrobatics with Dynamo Kyiv players.
According to Ugryumov, such specific elements as flasks and somersaults are needed not only by football players, but also by most athletes for overall coordination.
“Its level directly depends on the number of various movements that a person is able to make, and this develops the brain. At one time, I decided to become a coach by reading the book “Physical qualities of an athlete” by Vladimir Zatsiorsky — to this extent I liked this book. And now sports science more and more comes to the fact that qualities are becoming highly specialized. Take the same stamina. If a boxer needs to stand 15 rounds and move in a certain rhythm taking into account the blows inflicted on him, this is one type of endurance. Make such a boxer swim five thousand meters, he will drown after the first five hundred. Because it is a different stamina. For chess players, where after several hours of play you need to maintain the ability to think quickly, it is the third. In the same way, the explosive power of the hammer thrower and the “explosion” of the goalkeeper on duty differ, ”Ugryumov explained.
When such people leave life, it is impossible to force yourself to believe what happened. In my memory Ugryumov will forever remain as he was in our constant conversations. Benevolent, in a young, funny, with an unchanging sense of humor, a huge love of sports and athletes and a subtle, indescribable irony.
“Who is my favorite soccer player? Well, of course, Messi. He constantly comes up with something on the field that you don’t expect at all from the player. And not even repeated. He would have more appearance, like Cristiano Ronaldo, - there would be no price. To advertisers in line fought so that women "Hurray!" shouted. Otherwise, what kind of football is it - without women ?! ”
- Mikhail Ugryumov during work