"Rules are not a dogma, especially illiterate rules": legendary figure skating coach Moskvin has died

It seemed that he would always be.

A lump, a human being, a legend - pick up any, the most pretentious epithet of those that are attached to the coaching profession on holidays, and it will turn out to be small in relation to Moskvin.

It would turn out to be small ... And how hard it is now to translate words into the past tense.

When individuals of this magnitude leave, everything that they managed to leave behind in their previous life somehow suddenly comes to the fore.

And belatedly you think: why didn't you attach any importance to this before?

Did you not talk to the person once again, did not touch his experience again, did not appreciate it in time, did not thank him, did not laugh at some things together?

Why?

I have always considered it a great privilege to communicate with Moskvin.

We met at the Russian Championship in Chelyabinsk in 1992.

The legendary coach was over 60, all of his most outstanding students (Lyudmila Belousova / Oleg Protopopov, Tamara Moskvina / Alexey Mishin, Yuri Ovchinnikov, Igor Bobrin, Vladimir Kotin, Oleg Makarov) had long since completed their sports careers, and he himself worked with a not very remarkable at that time a couple - Marina Eltsova and Andrei Bushkov.

The impression of the conversation was firmly stuck in my memory then.

There was an abyss of humor in him and a barely perceptible disregard for what was happening, Yeltsova and Bushkov then became the strongest couple in the country, but when I noticed that the judges for once unanimously put Moskvin's charges in first place, Igor Borisovich chuckled:

- There was no one else to put on.

As far as judicial professionalism is concerned, I still do not flatter myself.

The judge must constantly be in shape, develop.

And our judges have no such opportunity.

Practically none of them knows the language, can not communicate normally with foreigners, they are all extremely conservative and what they see on the ice is sometimes as incomprehensible to them as natural phenomena are to primitive man.

On the one hand, more and more often I come to the conclusion that the issues of victory need to be addressed in a comprehensive manner.

Including working with judges.

It's just very disgusting.

I have never asked to help my athletes.

He believed that it was necessary to prove one's own innocence by work and only work.

Probably, I have too much left of the old, noble sport.

After all, for many years, in parallel with figure skating, I was engaged in sailing.

There, too, there are situations where you can provoke an opponent to violate the rules, make him disqualified.

But the opponent knows that you can catch him, and he, in turn, tries to put you in the same position.

It's kind of a game.

There is no dirt, constant squabbles, intrigues.

And in figure skating, the situation is such that men sometimes break down, not to mention women ... 

A year later, Yeltsova and Bushkov became European champions, and two seasons later they left Moskvin for Natalya Pavlova.

Marina then said, explaining the departure: they say, Igor Borisovich had already seen everything in his life as a coach, and it seemed to him that it didn’t matter if the players won or lost.

This is hardly the case.

It's just that Moskvin was interested in super tasks throughout his coaching life.

His athletes have always skated more difficult, more interesting, and this concerned not only technical elements, but also music, and the choreography and drama of figure skating in general.

Moskvin stood behind the genius of Belousova and Protopopov throughout both victorious Olympic cycles, although Protopopov himself constantly emphasized that the unique style of their couple with Lyudmila was solely his merit.

In 1969, Igor Borisovich made Tamara Moskvina / Alexei Mishin the second pair of the world (Belousov and Protopopov, who left the coach at that championship, remained third), and the world could not understand for a long time: how the mentor managed to create an extremely original and memorable duet of two completely different textured skaters.

From an absolute "illiquid", as Mishin jokingly put it in his own address many years later.

In none of the great pairs that have ever existed, skaters skated as close to each other as in Moskvin's pairs.

For singles, he constantly invented something, changing and modifying blades, boots, approaches to elements.

Igor Bobrin, who still associates all his professional achievements with the period of work with Igor Borisovich, said:

- Moskvin is not just a great teacher, but the greatest.

I can say for sure: what I learned from him, what I use every day now, is the ability to prepare for training.

Because you can't come to work expecting that some wonderful thought will come to you.

Moskvin did not just invent, but knew how to do it in such a way that everyone praised not him, but his students.

They said: "Wow, what a fine fellow Bobrin!"

Or: "Wow, what a clever Ovchinnikov."

This raised us extraordinarily, above all in our own eyes.

And those around them were sure that each of the Moscow skaters was a nugget of extraordinary scale.

Take the same Belousova and Protopopov: after all, everyone was sincerely convinced that they were training and coming up with all their programs on their own.

According to Bobrin, Moskvin also taught him to work on ice not only with his feet, and it is impossible to compare a specialist with someone else, not only because he was not angry about an unfulfilled element or insufficiently honed movement, but also because of the incredible creative spirit that reigned in training.

- For obligatory figures Moskvin came up with not quite ordinary blades.

We called them "pike".

Igor Borisovich took skates two or three sizes larger than necessary, grinded them on a lathe to such a state that the blade became almost flat, without bending.

And he came up with a technique for executing pieces on a long move.

It was an innovation at the level of inventing a new "school".

On good ice, the flat skate gave a very even and clear arc.

Another thing is that at high speed you had to be much more careful to get into the figure drawing.

But all those who skated with Moskvin painted these figures two or three times larger than those who trained in Moscow.

The judges did not even have to bend down to consider all these "eights" and "paragraphs" ...

Bobrin became the European champion in 1981, officially training with Yuri Ovchinnikov.

But at about the same time, he admitted that he had said goodbye to his sports career, since in him "the whole unwritten plan on paper ended, according to which Moskvin was coaching."

Having exhausted the reserve invested by Igor Borisovich, the skater was completely squeezed out.

Ten years ago, talking about Moskvin with the legendary Tatyana Tarasova, I heard:

- When Igor is at the rink, every person there feels protected.

Like a little child with his father.

And this feeling does not depend at all on whether you skate on the ice yourself, or stand on the coach's bench.

Until now, when he addresses me "Tanechka", I feel like a very little girl.

And we all like to feel like children.

And deep down, everyone wants this state to last as long as possible.

The most unique feature of Moskvin is that even at the age of nine he has not calmed down and does not want to rest or rest on his laurels.

Once I saw him working with an eight-year-old girl.

I looked at this picture from the side and thought: "How lucky you are, girl ..."

Moskvin's coaching genius was behind the most unusual sports couple of the early 2000s - Yuko Kawaguchi / Alexander Smirnov.

The coach was still not eager to somehow emphasize his own merits, leaving this pleasant role to his own wife, but in every conversation with Yuko one could feel incredible gratitude to Igor Borisovich.

For faith, for constant support, for the fact that the coach knew how to dispel any doubts that one way or another periodically arise in every athlete with a short phrase: “You can do it!”.

What Moskvin is outside the ice, I first saw in the 2010s.

Collecting material for a book about the coach, I lived with the Moskvins in St. Petersburg for almost a week and, since Tamara was more busy at the rink, Igor Borisovich considered it his duty to constantly entertain me with conversations, treat me to cooked pickles with his own hands and remember stories related to certain exhibits of the home museum.

With all the seeming external severity and inaccessibility of the legendary specialist, a very tangible internal warmth emanated from him, in whose aura he wanted to be constantly.

This was formulated most comprehensively, perhaps, by the Olympic champion in ice dancing Natalya Bestemyanova.

Telling me about Moskvin, she said:

- Before Igor Borisovich, you don't need to play and pretend.

You can afford to completely bare your soul - it will never prick.

This is such a rarity for figure skating.

Most of all, in that St. Petersburg outing, the purely family dialogues between Igor Borisovich and his wife sunk into my soul.

- Tamarochka, the walls of the bathhouse tend to cool down.

In order for them to warm up ... But what am I explaining to you, you don't know physics ...

- I will not go to such a bath.

It's hot there.

- I'll explain to you again: it takes time for the walls to warm up.

- I'll do everything myself.

- You cannot be trusted.

You don't know how to light a stove.

- I can do everything!

- You can not.

Start a fire or something.

You've already managed to burn three toasters.

- I can also have such a list of what you did wrong.

I just forget everything quickly and forgive everything.

- I forgive you even what you have not done yet ...

“Tamara is never afraid of anything, because there is always Igor behind her,” Tatyana Tarasova once said.

Perhaps it really was so.

For all her outward roughness in dealing with her husband, Moskvina, deep in her soul, always accepted his leadership.

She confessed to me one on one:

- Igor is a much better coach than me, and I am not saying this for a catchphrase, but because it is so.

The main thing is that my husband did something in the profession that no one else succeeded in: first he prepared a very large galaxy of coaches, working at the institute, and then all his former athletes began to work as coaches.

Not because there was nowhere else to go, but because Igor was amazingly able to infect students with coaching, instill love in her.

For a long time he was a reference point for me.

Once, however, when I started to train on my own, I once remarked about one of my ideas: "Don't do it."

I didn’t listen, thinking that I already knew everything.

And ten years later she came to him and said: “Igor, do you remember how you warned me not to do this?

What a fool I am to have spent ten years trying to make sure you were right. "

Surprisingly, for all his innovation, Moskvin categorically refused to accept the changed refereeing system.

Invented, as it seemed to him, and not supported by any logic, the demands caused a constant internal protest from the specialist - he said this every time we met.

Moreover, it was not some old man's whim.

Even at the age of 80+, Moskvin's logic had more common sense than those who worked for months on the development of new rules.

- These absurdities are not needed, do you understand?

Now, for example, they figured out that the skater should change the fulcrum during the rotation.

What for?

Is this the essence of the element?

Why then not invite ballerinas to perform fouette on their heels?

In rotations, the most important thing is speed, centering and difference in poses.

Who cares on which edge it is done?

Or take a twist in pair skating.

If a partner presses her arms to her chest during the flight, this is one cost.

But if she has her hands above her head, it is already different, higher.

I asked at one of the seminars: what if the partner has one arm over her head?

And the second athlete will, say, pick in the nose?

It's also difficult - hitting your nose with your finger on a triple turn. "

In our last conversation, Igor Borisovich said with a pain in his voice:

- If I were 40 years old now, or 50, I would fight.

I would try to change the situation, teach people.

Rules are not dogma.

Moreover, the rules are illiterate.

Many of those who wrote them never skated themselves, did not teach other people.

How can they know how it should be?

People just wanted to stay this way in the history of figure skating.

A kind of milestone.

And a milestone is completely different ...