— We have known each other for many years, and I don’t remember seeing you irritated, unrestrained in your statements and assessments, even when the athletes’ results left much to be desired. Is this a consequence of character or continuous work on oneself?
- Rather, simple logic.
Go online, read the comments of fans and you will understand: for each of them, “their” skater will always be the best in all respects, no matter what place he takes.
But no matter how the sports situation develops during certain competitions, there is a final phase - protocols.
If, for example, I think a different arrangement on the podium is correct, then I probably need to organize my own tournament, appoint my own referees who would evaluate my athletes the way I like.
Now I reason simply: if the figure skating federation trusts a certain panel of specialists to judge the performances, and we agree with this decision, then we thereby give these people the official right to determine who is the strongest.
And we should stop discussing their work.
- But no one has canceled the human factor.
“It’s clear that assessments can be subjective or even erroneous, but that’s precisely why there are nine people sitting on board, and not just one.”
Plus, there are rules by which I work as a coach, by which my work is assessed.
And to say after the fact: somehow they judged me wrong... I’m afraid that then we will come to the conclusion that the entire system of training, evaluation and determination of the strongest in our sport is simply illegitimate.
— You have said more than once: having already become a coach, for many years you seemed to be proving to your own husband, Igor Borisovich Moskvin, your right to stand on a par with him in the profession. Is it good to have such an irritant in front of your eyes?
“I didn’t really prove anything to anyone.”
I was just doing work that I liked.
It consisted, in particular, in a thorough study of what was done before you.
— You said: when you started working, for a long time you saw only the backs of the greats in front of you.
— I gave this example in a somewhat joking tone, and with a caveat: since I was very short, it was not exactly my back, but the part of the body that is lower.
But for me, nevertheless, it became an opportunity to see where these coaches are going, how they work, why their athletes are the best and they are the ones who delight the world.
— Who do you look up to now, who do you follow? Is there even this beacon in your coaching life?
- Of course I have.
Only now these are more selective moments that I notice from some coaches in our country, other countries, sports, or areas not related to sports at all.
These are not so much guidelines, but rather hooks that catch me: wow, how cool it turned out, but can I repeat it, transfer it to my sport, make it more interesting, better?
— Alexei Mishin said not so long ago: when you see a program, you immediately understand whether it was made for victory, or for the self-expression of the choreographer.
- Agree.
“But great athletes, by default, should keep in mind an option focused exclusively on winning. Moreover, as you gain titles, it becomes quite scary to try to move away from proven schemes and do new things. Isn't the field for experiment narrowing in this regard?
- There may be different situations here.
It is completely normal for someone who can and should win to create a program to win.
Someone else, whose chances of winning are not so great, needs to come up with such a production that it looks interesting, worthy, strong.
Everything is built anyway on the bricks that you have.
Plus, many circumstances may arise: the athlete doesn’t want to, the coach doesn’t know where to go, an injury or illness occurred, good music was not found.
There are plenty of options.
— In one of our previous interviews, you said: all the advantages and disadvantages of skaters become obvious only in comparison with other pairs. But a year ago, Alexandra Boykova and Dmitry Kozlovsky left your group, and Yasmina Kadyrova and Valery Kolesov ended their careers. Anastasia Mishina and Alexander Gallyamov were left alone. Will you be looking for opportunities for them to engage in equal sparring?
- Not quite the right way to pose the question.
Unfortunately, Valera really stopped training, although he probably made the right choice for himself - to graduate from college and get a different profession.
We still have Yasmina, who wants to continue riding.
Therefore, Arthur Minchuk and I will look for a partner for her.
But not in order to create a sparring match for someone, but with the goal of making a strong, interesting and self-sufficient couple that would attract attention.
— The current rules in pair skating encourage, first of all, the purity of execution of elements, so many of your colleagues are not initially set up for maximum difficulty. I know you think differently. But why waste time and effort on learning ultra-si, which may never pay off?
- Never say never.
Firstly, the rules can change, this has happened several times throughout my coaching life.
Secondly, there are certain trends.
In men's skating, figure skaters for a long time included one quadruple jump in their programs, then two, and this was considered incredibly dangerous.
Now quadruples have become the norm not only for men, but also for women.
- It's clear. But does it make sense for an established adult couple, such as Mishina and Gallyamov, to keep the prospect of an arms race in mind?
- Any couple needs to keep this in mind.
Yes and why not?
If girls singles perform four turns while jumping at a very low height, what prevents a partner from making four turns in a release whose height is obviously higher?
Arthur Minchuk and I in our group several years ago began to teach this element with Boykova and Kozlovsky, with Mishina and Gallyamov, then due to Covid and the Olympics this process was suspended, now we will continue again.
I don’t see anything incredibly difficult in this.
— Actually, Yuko Kawaguchi and Alexander Smirnov successfully performed two different quadruple throws for you, without possessing any special qualities.
- Not only them.
In 2000, when we were preparing in America for the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze taught a quadruple Salchow on a fishing rod.
And at the 1998 Goodwill Games, Oksana Kazakova and Artur Dmitriev entered with a touching quadruple toe loop throw.
Irina Vorobyova and Igor Lisovsky trained the triple axel throw, and this was back in 1980.
— When Kawaguchi and Smirnov won the European Championship for the first time in 2010, your colleague Viktor Kudryavtsev told me on the podium: “What a blessing for Tamara that in her coaching career she finally met an athlete who was absolutely ideal in terms of discipline.”
— I had many ideal students in terms of discipline.
Lena Bechke, Lena Valova, Lena Berezhnaya, Denis Petrov.
And among the rest, I don’t remember any very malicious violators.
— What about Oleg Shlyakhov, Berezhnaya’s first partner? I can’t remember, by the way: did you just look at this couple or did it come to work on an ongoing basis?
“I worked with this couple for a year or a little more.
The Latvian Figure Skating Federation really asked to take the guys, because local coaches simply couldn’t cope with Oleg.
Yes, and I was warned: the guy can be very aggressive.
But I can tell you with absolute certainty that the head injury that Lena received in January 1996 was not a consequence of this aggression, just an accident.
— At one time, you communicated quite closely on forums on the Internet and even once said that you were comfortable when people offered already selected music for new programs, some costume ideas. Are fans on the Internet different now?
— I would say the situation has changed.
At that time we had a large Russian-Japanese fan club of Kawaguchi and Smirnov.
Then Yuko and Sasha stopped performing and coming to shows in Japan, and gradually the fans lost interest in them.
— What do you focus on now when it comes to choosing music?
— For a whole complex of components.
I analyze what compositions my athletes and competitors skated this season, and where my opponents might move.
I think mainly about what direction I can take my couple so that they don’t look like anyone else.
Including last year’s one.
I'm looking for a moment of some variety, some surprise.
Music, on the one hand, must be recognizable, capable of eliciting a response from the stands, but at the same time allow for the development of athletes.
Lead them away from previous programs, but allow them to become attached to some image, plot.
Coaches Tamara Moskvina, Arthur Minchuk (right) and Nikolai Moroshkin.
RIA News
© Alexander Wilf
— I can’t wait to see Mishina and Gallyamov’s performance for the show program tournament.
— By the way, I guessed with the theme even before it was announced that the basis of the accompaniment should be Soviet or Russian music.
It is logical, when riding in your own country, to give preference to domestic traditions and culture.
In this regard, it is sometimes not entirely clear to me why, when we live in Russia, we should read some signs in other languages?
— Well, foreign things always attract people to a greater extent. You probably bought jeans when you went to competitions abroad?
- We bought it.
But that’s when I started asking myself the question: if everyone around is wearing jeans, why strive to be like everyone else?
As soon as I dressed differently for the first time, I immediately heard: oh, how beautiful it is!
This is where the understanding came that you must always somehow stand out, be different from those with whom you compete.
You can’t break free technically, you can’t do this or that jump, which means you need to paint it over with something else.
It's the same in coaching.
— In other words, you shouldn’t buy a full-length fur coat just because it’s fashionable to stand at the side in furs?
- And this too.
Well, just imagine me with my height in such a robe?
Although I tried to dress differently, put on makeup, and do an intricate hairstyle.
And then I realized: sometimes it’s enough to put on a bright sweater, and you’re no longer like everyone else in the crowd.
— When you take on some project to create another couple, do you even briefly think about the fact that you may not have enough strength or time?
- Certainly.
But, you know, life doesn’t end with me.
I don’t think about my personality, but about the development of pair skating in our club, in our city, in our country.
It’s simply unreasonable to build all this around yourself: you never know, I’ll get sick, or I’ll suddenly say: “I’m retiring!”
“Knowing you, I don’t allow this option at all.” And then it seems to me that you have already psychologically outgrown the moment when it is common for a person to set himself some kind of end point in his profession. Like, another Olympics, and I’ll definitely retire.
- I never had these points.
- Well, I remember your intention to leave the ice and raise your granddaughter when Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze finished skating.
“I wouldn’t talk about this as a serious intention.”
You see, life is multifaceted, there are a lot of interesting things in it.
Coaching is not my only pleasure.
There are many other areas of activity in which I can realize myself and do it with pleasure.
For example, festivals of honorary citizens of St. Petersburg, which are held in the Chapel, in the Philharmonic, in the Kirov Theater, in the Mariinsky.
I am often tasked with greeting spectators and introducing guests.
Sometimes I hold a Good Deeds Day for children and parents.
Or I arrange some meetings and concerts for the diplomatic corps of St. Petersburg with figure skaters from our school.
I know people who really need some kind of contact with me in order to feel more confident and recharge with some kind of enthusiasm.
— Sometimes you think: “How did all this bother me?”
- There is definitely no such thing.
I live as we were once taught.
- So that it won’t be excruciatingly painful for the years spent aimlessly?
— No, in accordance with the principle: if you are tired of some activity, you just need to switch to another.
And besides, I’m really interested in everything I do.
Strong couples appeared - I wanted people to admire them.
So, I'm starting to think about how to do this.
But I don’t focus on this so much that they would say about me: Moskvina is a fan, she has nothing besides figure skating.
In general, I always considered it important to have a large, strong family.
Husband, children, sisters.
And I considered it my great achievement that all this had worked out in my life.
— Many public people usually complain: great popularity imposes a lot of restrictions on a person. It’s no longer possible to go out into the street poorly dressed and unkempt.
- Well, yes, it happens, sometimes I hide.
On the other hand, I spend most of my time at the skating rink in a tracksuit.
Then I jumped into the car, put on makeup at the intersection, and everything was in order.
If I were a Western coach, I would probably have to work differently: from morning to evening - lesson, lesson, lesson, lesson... But I have enough for everything.
—Have you ever suffered from a lack of money?
— I have always had a slightly different attitude towards life.
I realized quite early: I don’t want and won’t suffer for any reason, but I want to live for my own pleasure.
Therefore, I lower the level of claims.
I choose what is more valuable and interesting to me.
I have always read a lot, starting from childhood, including Western literature, this gave me the opportunity to learn psychology and life wisdom from the heroes of these books.
I try not to allow myself to fall into a nihilistic or pessimistic perception of the people around me, events, and so on.
This greatly helps to constantly be in an even mood and frame of mind.
You know, like the joke: there are people who believe that cognac smells like bedbugs, and there are those whose “bugs” always smell like cognac.
In other words, my “glass” is always half full, not half empty.
— After operations on the hip and knee joints, do you train in skates?
- Not always.
It is, of course, more comfortable in skates, but before serious competitions I prefer not to interfere with my skaters on the ice.
Skates for me are also a certain trick that allows me to move a lot instead of going to fitness clubs or some other physical activity.
When I'm on the ice, I feel in good shape, on par with my other colleagues.
And besides, it is accepted all over the world: the coach must be on skates.
“I’m afraid this is not always the case at our skating rinks.”
- Maybe.
But in the West - yes.
Anastasia Mishina, Alexander Gallyamov and Tamara Moskvina (from left to right).
RIA News
© Alexander Wilf
“I’m trying to imagine: you’ve had surgery, a hip or knee replacement, and you’re absolutely helpless. Is this depressing?
- Helpless?
Just two or three days.
For me this is not a problem at all.
You look around, people are moving around in walkers, then with crutches, then without... Besides, I believe the doctors.
They said it was necessary to have surgery, so it was necessary.
They said I could walk, so I got up and went.
— I heard how you danced at the Magnitogorsk airport when you arrived at the Spartakiad of the Strongest at 5:00.
- Well, a whole ensemble greeted us, older people.
We had to somehow answer them, show them: we appreciate their work.
So I danced with them.
Why not?
Naturally, there was no press at the airport at that time.
I didn't do this for my own PR.
— I heard from many skaters there, in Magnitogorsk: we can’t wait for the season to end. Don't you have a similar feeling?
“It rarely happens to a coach.”
One competitive season ends, and a new one is already in your head.
The development of plans, ideas, strategies, and the search for music begins.
We teach our athletes the same attitude.
So that their life plans never reach a dead end.