16 years ago, the European Championship took place in Budapest, remembering which, no, no, and you will hear: "This is the very championship at which Evgeni Plushenko suffered one of the most offensive defeats in his career - from Brian Joubert."
It could not help but be remembered, because in a decade and a half of performances at the highest level, Evgeny lost the battle for European gold only three times, and in the first two cases - by a very young man Alexei Yagudin.
Defeat from Joubert in 2004, during Plushenko's peak, seemed absurd, but it happened nonetheless.
Of course, there was no more acute and burning topic at that tournament.
However, there, in Budapest, an event took place that made me personally look with completely different eyes at the work of one of the most outstanding coaches in the world - Tamara Moskvina.
She brought her new duet to that championship - Julia Obertas and Sergei Slavnov.
The skaters did not differ in anything particularly remarkable at that time.
In April 2003, they paired up with Lyudmila Velikova; before that, the partner played with Alexei Sokolov and took fifth place with him at the continental championship in Malmö.
But to say that the skaters left a vivid impression would be a stretch.
With Slavnov, Julia almost immediately went to Moskvina, and in the same season, the couple unexpectedly for many became the third in the national championship and won the right to go to the main starts.
On the very first training session in Budapest, Obertas and Slavnov made a splash.
They appeared on the ice in competition suits of such a piercing pink color that the people sitting in the stands of the training rink began to look at each other in bewilderment.
Of course, I approached Moskvina at the first opportunity - to ask what was the reason for such a radical change of image.
And I heard:
“What else could I do?
We had only three months of full-time work.
As soon as it became known that Obertas and Slavnov were going to Budapest, I began to puzzle over what could become their trump card.
It is quite obvious that the guys cannot yet compete with adult couples in elegance.
So, it was necessary to come up with something else in order to attract attention to yourself.
Don't get lost among enough other couples.
The main thing is that the idea worked: when the guys finished performing, one of my colleagues came up to me and said: “Tamara, I could not take my eyes off them.
This stupid pink color is just mesmerizing. "
Consider that in this way I deceived the audience. "
Attracting glances to yourself when you are just one of a mass of competitors of equal level of skating is not as easy as it seems at first glance.
But this is undoubtedly one of the components of success: if an athlete or a couple forced themselves to remember, they become a little "their own" for the public.
You are stronger for such people, and the hand itself reaches out to give a higher mark.
Judicial perception in this respect is no different from the philistine.
Personally, I am still confident that the crazy progress in ice dancing of the Canadian pair Shae-Lynn Bourne - Victor Kraatz, who jumped from 14th in the world hierarchy to sixth in 1994, was due to the incredible programs in Olympic Lillehammer. crammed with many finds, including the famous hydroblade.
Equally impressive was the earlier leap from outsider to world and European champion legendary Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean.
Recalling the first appearance of an English couple on the world stage, the famous choreographer Elena Maslennikova said: “They went out on the ice, small, identical, without any presentability, especially with a partner, but they began to move - and suddenly, without even holding hands, they became a single organism ...
Like the tentacles of an octopus: one is woven into the other, one comes out of the two, and inconceivably organic movements arise that are so mesmerizing that you cannot look away.
It seems that people do not do anything special on the ice, but you constantly catch yourself that you cannot guess what the next step will be. "
Sometimes there is a tragic story behind an outstanding champion, such as the fall of Tatyana Totmianina from high support two years before the Olympic Games in Turin, or the terrible injury that Elena Berezhnaya received in 1996 - six years before her triumph at the Games in Salt. Lake City.
And sometimes sheer nonsense is enough to win the hearts of the whole world to his side.
As the little gymnastic girl Olya Korbut did back in 1972.
After a not very successful combination and the announcement of estimates, she sobbed so bitterly right into the camera that it was this story, and not someone's older victories, that became the main event of those Olympic Games for several days.
Why you need to try to attract attention, was excellently explained in a recent interview by two-time world champion Maxim Stavisky.
Talking about dance trends, he said: “Of course, you can catch a certain wave and ride it for five to six years, as the most titled dancers in the world at the moment Gabriela Papadakis and Guillaume Sizeron do.
But you can skate like that if you represent a country whose federation has a large international weight. "
“If Albena Denkova and I had been doing the same thing on the ice for six years, everyone would have got bored in a year and would have remained outsiders forever.
Therefore, I had to surprise every time.
Look for and come up with new supports, interesting choreography, memorable steps, ”said the skater.
If you look from this position at the results of the first day of the Russian Championship in Chelyabinsk, the rapid rise of Elizaveta Khudaiberdieva and Yegor Bazin can hardly be called accidental.
The skaters paired up in May of this year and - contrary to all common stereotypes (according to which it takes several years in dancing to skate with a new partner) and instead of long enough trampling in the notorious dance "queue" - they rushed, as they say, right off the bat ...
In September, they performed for the first time in public during open skates, won prizes at two stages of the Russian Cup, losing to Annabel Morozov and Andrei Bagin in Syzran (but winning rhythm dance against this duo), and in Sochi to Tiffany Zagorski and Jonathan Gureiro.
In Chelyabinsk, after the first performance, Liza and Yegor staked out the fourth position, and most importantly, they were really remembered by everyone who saw their performance.
They were remembered for the speed, pressure, swiftness of the execution of the elements and even the outfit in which Lisa went to the first and traditionally solemn drawing of lots.
Shocking was so frank that it was just right to recall the electroshock pink dress of Obertas.
It’s a paradox, but it’s time to think about the ability to please and attract attention not so much to girls as to men.
Gone are the days when the guarantee of success in single skating was given exclusively by quadruple jumps, and the simplest in execution - sheepskin coat and salchow.
In Chelyabinsk, there were quads in the short program of 12 skaters out of 17, and a full set of ultra-si was shown to the public in different variations: sheepskin coat, rittberger, flip, lutz and salchow.
It is clear that not everyone coped with their jumps, but let's imagine that one day this will happen.
And how do you stand out then?
The answer lies on the surface: only with programs.
Just as Mikhail Kolyada and Makar Ignatov did on Thursday.
In addition to the unmistakable distribution, both demonstrated extremely successful productions - light, danceable and very memorable.
The tendency of just such mini-performances was most vividly outlined, perhaps, by the two-time world champion Nathan Chen, who managed to find, in collaboration with the world's best choreographer Shae-Lynn Bourne, a kind of formula for success: "To pave the shortest path to the heart of the audience, you need to make him smile." ...
Although, if we talk about Russian skaters in general, they have taken a huge step towards making men's single skating again the highlight of the tournament, as it once was.
Perhaps this will happen already in Chelyabinsk.