- Joined
- Jul 28, 2003
Original; go there to see the picture discussed in first paragraph (the second picture of course).
I learned not to let illness in
A three time Olympic champion Irina Rodnina knows how not to break, and how to win in this life
Interview by Elena Kaljadina
Published August 12, 2005
The conversation started with a picture I was in the book of Stanislav Zhuk, Irina Rodnina’s coach. Touched to the first “golden” dream of the 19 year old European champion, I asked Irina Konstantinovna to talk about it. She looked at the photo with a bold, slightly cynical laugh, and suddenly wiped out all my sentimentality.
“It was a set up, a photographer’s trick. It was at the 1969 Europeans at Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Lesha Ulanov and I performed there without coach. The team leaders, Belousova and Protopopov, gave the leadership an ultimatum – either they’re going, or Zhuk is. That’s what I heard. We were told that Zhuk would come with the last tourist group. Tourists came without Zhuk. Yet we won anyway. In the morning, they put me on a little cushion, closed my eyes, put the medal next to me. It was probably the first posing I did in my life.”
“You posed well. But it wasn’t posing in the least when, having won the last of your 24 gold medals, you cried on the podium of Lake Placid. I know even the laziest of my colleagues have asked you about those tears, but I have a good excuse – an anniversary. 25 years have passed since your last golden triumph. How did it feel”
“Aaaaawesome! Yes, I did it!”
“I was afraid you’d tell me to go to hell with such a question. Yet your eyes are shining, as, I’ve noticed, they always do when you talk about the past”.
“Yes, that’s true. It was a hard road. But we did it!”
“Why tears then?”
“It was such a long road… No one will ever repeat it…”
“Do you remember your very first competitions?”
“Some block championships, obviously.”
“How did it feel?”
“Feel? I got a dress, the boots, and a go ahead!”
At the National debut, a cup sponsored by “Moscow News”, Irina Rodnina did not even have fancy dress. Her mom washed her training dress, and put some lace on it. What could be easier? Actually, for Rodnina everything comes easily and naturally. Nobody has to know of the struggle hidden in those eyes, one moment carefully narrowed, the next opened wide in a bright smile
“Irina Konstantinovna, here is your life arithmetic. 25 years on the ice (assuming you started at five years old). And 25 years without it. How do you judge the second “quarter” compared to the first?”
“It’s common wisdom that we enter life at twenty without really being ready for it; at thirty, I was even less prepared. So those last 25 weren’t easier that the previous ones.”
“Where you scared of not knowing how to do anything other than skate? Many big athletes are terrified by it.”
“For a while, I was in denial. Perhaps that happened because I moved immediately to work – first to the Komsomol leadership, then as a coach. Being without a thing to do is very scary. It’s scare to stop in general. This fear does not only stop athletes. Sometimes it’s inertia, sometimes denial, sometime refusal.”
“Do you not want to stop now? I mean to enjoy a very well deserved retirement.”
“Why put it like that? So, I deserve it. So what? Should I get off the train of life, sit on a bench and watch other trains pass by? I don’t want that!”
“You are a member of the Presidential advisory on physical education and sport, concentrating on the children and youth. Yet we have so many athletic federations, committees, associations, and volunteer organizations (of once of which, “Sports Russia”, you are a chairwoman). Isn’t it a bit much for our still struggling sport?”
“Another organization won’t hurt. The advantage of the Presidential advisory is that one of its parts is allied with athletic professionals. Another one is allied with leadership. That gives what we say a good chance of coming to life. We are quietly doing a lot, including work with “Sports Russia”. Our main concern is mass sport, especially for the children. Last year, more than 600 thousand kids all over the country took part in mini-soccer championships. We’ve resurrected the famous chess cup “White Rook”. We organize competitions between orphanages and boarding schools. This Fall in Moscow we’ll hold the first Spartaciad for disabled children.”
“You have achieved such results, such fame and acclaim, that you wouldn’t be forgotten even if you didn’t lead anything. Yet you’re also seen on TV screens. Is it your way of coping with the time, when the stars have to be seen everywhere not to be forgotten?”
“Not at all. TV producers need this, since it’s easier to make a program popular by putting stars on it. Audience, meanwhile, is interested in shows where interesting people aren’t just seen, but discuss things or even host.”
“When you are on the new program of “Russia Radio” “Stadium”, you’re the same you always were on the ice – confident, sincere, and natural. Did you study journalism?”
“No. It’s just how I talk to people – to athletes, judges, and commentators, to the people who also see their lives in the sport. That’s why it open, very human conversations. Other than in sport, where you see us and which dictates some odd characteristics and relationships, we are just normal people
“Let’s talk about the sport where we saw you, and the normal life where we didn’t. Stanislav Zhuk had many talented students, yet in his book he mainly talks about you. Why?”
“I guess I was at that time the only one who trusted him implicitly. O trusted him, but I didn’t just do everything without thought. I asked for, or even demanded explanations. I general, I was very faithful to him. When life brought us together, I saw that it’s all wildly interesting, that it’s working, and that I want to do it. Quietly so my dad wouldn’t find out, I transferred from a special German school to a normal one, and then to a vocational school.”
“I think Stanislav Alexeevich gave you a very exact definition. He saw in you “a unique combination of playfulness, naturalness, and joy with a very clear and sober view of the goals in life”. Do you indeed consider “goals in life?””
“The most important thing Zhuk taught me was this sober view to one’s goals, not the dreams in the clouds. He also taught me how to realize those goals, thought breaking or loosing interest.”
“Having found out you’re wildly interested in figure skating, did you soberly decided to become Olympic champion?”
“Of course not. As you grow, so do your goals. You grow with it as well. At first, I just wanted to become Master of Sport of USSR. The criteria then were so tough that even the National champions did not always fulfill them. How incredibly proud I was of the pin of “Honored Master of Sport of USSR”, it was so beautiful! They don’t make it anymore, but I have one. I am always proud of saying, “I am an honored master of sport of Soviet Union”. I am probably the only one to have ever gotten it before a simple “master”. I got “honored” for the Europeans at Garmisch. They gave me the pin when I got home. I got a “master” pin later, when it was confirmed that I fulfilled the requirements for the overall number of points.”
“Did you also approach Lake Placid with a clear goal of the Olympic trinity?”
“I wanted to do it, but because of Sashka’s birth I missed a year. I could also feel my age of 30. I just saw all those jumping beans around me. I knew that in technical merit our main opponents, Americans Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner, weren’t even close. I was confident in myself, but not in the situation. I don’t want to go there, but I still don’t understand why we found out about the change in rules and accident from a FRG judges, as opposed to our own leadership. It was then too late to change anything. We cleaned it up a bit, and decided to leave in our program the elements that give more guarantee.”
“It must have been difficult psychologically. The talk already started about holding the Summer Gamers in Moscow in light of the Soviet troops entering Afghanistan, and you were shamelessly put under pressure by the Lake Placid hosts.”
“Yes, I remember those endless cries: USSR uses forbidden moves in politics, and Rodnina and Zaitsev use them in figure skating! At practices, four cameras hunted us to document our “forbidden moves” and to start quacking, quacking, quacking… We didn’t give them the chance. Some of the elements we didn’t even perform at practices. The tried arranging a special press conference for our confession. But we didn’t give in. For the free skate, it became a moot point since Babilonia and Gardner withdrew after the free skate.”
“So the Americans bumped out their own?”
“Randy went from Lake Placid straight to the mental hospital. Twenty years later, we were with Tai and Randy at Lake Placid at the Goodwill Games that Ted Turner was organizing. On the day of the short program, Turner interviewed us. He asked Tai if they ever discussed it. She said, “Never”. He asked me what everyone always asks me not only about Lake Placid, but about my whole athletic life, “How did you stand it?” I said, “You miscalculated. First of all, we didn’t have good English, and couldn’t understand what was being said and written about us. Americans, meanwhile, did not understand Russian. God forbid they ever heard what was said about them! Most importantly, you bumped out your own athletes. You wanted to bump us? No way!”
“How do you get along with Tai and Randy?”
“We never had any problems, even in lake Placid. Tai and Randy first met us at the rink. We sill see each other at various competitions. Tai had a terrible incident with a drug overdose. It took her a long time to get out of it. You know what impressed me about America in this? A person stumbles, but it doesn’t let him fall. The same world that raised the person helps him get up again and again. Tai and Randy had a lot of support, both material and mental. They were invited to do shows. They could only do a couple of spirals, but they got standing ovations.”
“I know that in Lake Placed simple Americans loved you, and gave you presents for little Sasha.”
“A lot. In 1979, when the big Sasha was at the world championships in Vienna as a guest, he brought back a whole luggage full of toys and other things.”
“Did you keep any souvenirs from Lake Placid?”
“A bottle opener. After the victory, we slept a full day. The next day, we really wanted some wine. Together with my coach, Aunt Tanya Tarasova, went to the store and bought two bottles. How do we open it? I couldn’t wait for the Olympic village. We started discussing this. The store owner understood, and put a bottle opener into the bag. We came to the rink, and hid in the make-up cabin. I started opening it quietly. But you can’t do it quietly with a bottle. It made a “boom”, and everyone started looking in. So we got busted.”
“A touching story is associated with Lake Placed. In 1932, during the 3d Winter Olympic games, Sonia Henie so loved it, that she stayed there for good. You’ve lived and worked in America at the international figure skating center, also, by the way, at a lake town, in Lake Arrowhead. Many of our big athletes and coaches, including Tatiana Tarasova, continue to live in the USA. Why haven’t you?”
“While I came to America because of feeling useless at my homeland, I only enjoyed work for the first two years. It was interesting to learn from the greatest coaches of a country with filled rinks and stadiums. After my contract, I went through an ugly custody battle for my child. The daughter’s father insisted that she cannot return to Russia until she’s 18. So for the last 10 years I was mainly working to support my children.
Alena is still in America at the Santa Croix University, but she wants to continue her education in Russia. She feels good there, because she’s been there since the age of four. English is her main language, but she has a fluent Russian. It was harder for Sasha. He had trouble adjusting. Half a year before graduation, he quit college and came to Moscow to do what he loves, which is pottery. He is now in his fourth year at Stroganovka. He also recently got married.”
“Your athletic and personal life is a chain of overcoming obstacles. In childhood, it was the illnesses, then the fight for ratifying your highly technical style of pair skating, ugly scheming against you and Stanislav Zhuk, and finally several break ups, both with coaches and with husbands.”
“Everyone has more than enough things to overcome. For me, it’s just more visible.”
“To overcome life like that, one must be born with Rodnina’s character.”
“The main thing about my character is that I always thought that little things like intrigues and divorces don’t end one’s life. I took it with a grain of salt.
There is a golden rule I learned from Zhuk. Wasting energy on intrigues is pointless. You should only use energy for work. While they scheme, you work and get results. Envy and schemes spring up where you can’t win in a fair fight A leader is always annoying. Zhuk especially like about me that I didn’t stop or get depressed because of little things.”
“You don’t get depressed. Do you let your feelings our? When, for instance, do you cry?”
“When I’m hurt. The first time I left home because of hurt was when I was six. We had some guests, they didn’t have enough space for me at the main table, so they put me at the children’s one. I quietly got my coat on and left. A policeman brought me home. My parents then understood they couldn’t treat me like that.”
“So you taught them a lesson. What was the main thing you learned from your parents?”
“Principles. Dad was a military man, he was in the artillery in the war. Mom was a military nurse in Poland, Finland, and all to Berlin. They met during the war. Then they got lost; when dad came to mom’s hospital, it was already bombed out. They met by accident. For me and my sister, it was a lucky accident.”
“What do principles mean to you?”
“First of all, don’t whine. Take responsibility, for example for the children. Our parents raised us in difficult times, yet nobody cried, “the country owes us!” When I left Zhuk, I also took the responsibility – for my partner Sasha Zaitsev, with whom we just started skating, for the young coach Tanya Tarasova that I went to. I had to take personal responsibility to personally go to the defense minister Grechko (I always competed for CSKA), and arrange everything.”
“Why was Zhuk so schemes against?”
“Not just because he gave cause with his rudeness and lack of restraint that resulted from his extraordinary talent. Zhuk was the only coach with a strict system that allowed an athlete with mediocre givens to get to a very high level.”
“How was it for you?”
“I wasn’t just mediocre, I was the second one from the end. I didn’t think about it, though, I just like skating. With my tiny lungs, I completed programs that others couldn’t. Actually, people with mediocre givens more often rise to the top. That’s what life shows.”
“Why did you choose Tarasova after Zhuk?”
“By then, I felt independent. With Tarasova, we were rather like partners, we were after all only two years apart. I chose Tatiana Anatolievna for her emotions and musicality. Besides, I was too fed up with Zhuk. Tarasova is the person who makes you feel truly special. That’s very important, since 99 percent of athletes are rather insecure.”
“What can you not stand in a person?”
“Betrayal. Conscious betrayal. Perhaps that’s because I have few friends – two very close girlfriends, and two less so”.
“Are there things in life you can’t forgive yourself?”
“Not in sport. In life – sometimes. It pains me that I didn’t pay much attention to my parents; I couldn’t even be there when mom was dying. You can’t strike that from your heart. That why, when Sasha had a conflict with his father, I told him, “You only have one father, whether or not he’s right. I don’t want you to end up with a weight in your soul like I did.”
“What does Sasha’s father, Alexander Zaitsev, now do?”
“I think now. He’s retired, both as an officer and as an athlete. For a while, we worked together in America. I came back, so did he.”
“In sport and in life, you learned to win brilliantly. Did you learn to loose?”
“I learned not to let in a malady, either physical or moral. Once you start whining, feeling sorry for yourself, feel bad that someone doesn’t like you, or envies you, or is better off than you – that’s it. I don’t know, perhaps some things are just easier for me. I knew there was something off in me when Zhuk told me, “Such a lemon!”. I asked, “Why?” “Your face is just too happy!”. Yes, it’s happy. That’s me!”
“That way you said this, it brings to mind your famous “Kalinka” – you skated it so happily. Is “Kalinka” you favorite staple?”
“Of course not! Though I liked it. Lesha Ulanov and I did it on our own. It was fun to skate it. You know what was good about that period of our skating? We were freer, we gave it all we had. I guess my most prized program is the tone that Zaitzev and I only skated once, and the 1980 “Nouvelle de Moscou” cup, when we said good buy to the sport. Its story is memorable, and has to do with the Moscow Olympics. I was already working the Komsomol Central Committee, and we needed to prepare a concert for Pakhumtova in the Olympics village, on the double. It was fantastic! For the first time I heard Sinjavskaja sink with Alexandrov chorus and be stronger than all those man. Sasha Gradsky for the first time sang “First Round”. It amazed Alexandra Nikolaevna, as it did us as well. So we decided to use the song for our farewell. It was symbolic. Lake Place – Moscow-80. Last podium and “First Round”. Indeed, we were so young! Though we’re not that bad still.”
Bus #24 goes from Taganka to Lake Placed
For little Ira Rodnina, figure skating started with a struggle. She had pneumonia, and her mom decided that ice may help. They’d get onto the bus #24 in Taganka where they lived, and go to the rink at Mar’ina Roscha. Ira was always car sick, and they had to get off the bus, get some air, and get onto the next one. Stanislav Zhuk thought this most valuable in her character, “heroism of the everyday” which meant that at the moments of greatest struggles her will seemed endless. It was so at the World championships in Calgary, when Irina competed with a concussion and got a standing ovation. It was so at Lake Placid, when 30-year old Rodnina was the horse nobody would bet on, and wouldn’t even tell of the change in rules. Yet she did it all! It was so recently in America where she came to get away from her “needlessness” at home. It was so during a custody battle with the love of her life. It was about his “heroism of the everyday”, so necessary not just for those on the podiums, that I decided to talk about with Irina Rodnina.
I learned not to let illness in
A three time Olympic champion Irina Rodnina knows how not to break, and how to win in this life
Interview by Elena Kaljadina
Published August 12, 2005
The conversation started with a picture I was in the book of Stanislav Zhuk, Irina Rodnina’s coach. Touched to the first “golden” dream of the 19 year old European champion, I asked Irina Konstantinovna to talk about it. She looked at the photo with a bold, slightly cynical laugh, and suddenly wiped out all my sentimentality.
“It was a set up, a photographer’s trick. It was at the 1969 Europeans at Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Lesha Ulanov and I performed there without coach. The team leaders, Belousova and Protopopov, gave the leadership an ultimatum – either they’re going, or Zhuk is. That’s what I heard. We were told that Zhuk would come with the last tourist group. Tourists came without Zhuk. Yet we won anyway. In the morning, they put me on a little cushion, closed my eyes, put the medal next to me. It was probably the first posing I did in my life.”
“You posed well. But it wasn’t posing in the least when, having won the last of your 24 gold medals, you cried on the podium of Lake Placid. I know even the laziest of my colleagues have asked you about those tears, but I have a good excuse – an anniversary. 25 years have passed since your last golden triumph. How did it feel”
“Aaaaawesome! Yes, I did it!”
“I was afraid you’d tell me to go to hell with such a question. Yet your eyes are shining, as, I’ve noticed, they always do when you talk about the past”.
“Yes, that’s true. It was a hard road. But we did it!”
“Why tears then?”
“It was such a long road… No one will ever repeat it…”
“Do you remember your very first competitions?”
“Some block championships, obviously.”
“How did it feel?”
“Feel? I got a dress, the boots, and a go ahead!”
At the National debut, a cup sponsored by “Moscow News”, Irina Rodnina did not even have fancy dress. Her mom washed her training dress, and put some lace on it. What could be easier? Actually, for Rodnina everything comes easily and naturally. Nobody has to know of the struggle hidden in those eyes, one moment carefully narrowed, the next opened wide in a bright smile
Rodnina’s here, Rodnina’s there
“Irina Konstantinovna, here is your life arithmetic. 25 years on the ice (assuming you started at five years old). And 25 years without it. How do you judge the second “quarter” compared to the first?”
“It’s common wisdom that we enter life at twenty without really being ready for it; at thirty, I was even less prepared. So those last 25 weren’t easier that the previous ones.”
“Where you scared of not knowing how to do anything other than skate? Many big athletes are terrified by it.”
“For a while, I was in denial. Perhaps that happened because I moved immediately to work – first to the Komsomol leadership, then as a coach. Being without a thing to do is very scary. It’s scare to stop in general. This fear does not only stop athletes. Sometimes it’s inertia, sometimes denial, sometime refusal.”
“Do you not want to stop now? I mean to enjoy a very well deserved retirement.”
“Why put it like that? So, I deserve it. So what? Should I get off the train of life, sit on a bench and watch other trains pass by? I don’t want that!”
“You are a member of the Presidential advisory on physical education and sport, concentrating on the children and youth. Yet we have so many athletic federations, committees, associations, and volunteer organizations (of once of which, “Sports Russia”, you are a chairwoman). Isn’t it a bit much for our still struggling sport?”
“Another organization won’t hurt. The advantage of the Presidential advisory is that one of its parts is allied with athletic professionals. Another one is allied with leadership. That gives what we say a good chance of coming to life. We are quietly doing a lot, including work with “Sports Russia”. Our main concern is mass sport, especially for the children. Last year, more than 600 thousand kids all over the country took part in mini-soccer championships. We’ve resurrected the famous chess cup “White Rook”. We organize competitions between orphanages and boarding schools. This Fall in Moscow we’ll hold the first Spartaciad for disabled children.”
“You have achieved such results, such fame and acclaim, that you wouldn’t be forgotten even if you didn’t lead anything. Yet you’re also seen on TV screens. Is it your way of coping with the time, when the stars have to be seen everywhere not to be forgotten?”
“Not at all. TV producers need this, since it’s easier to make a program popular by putting stars on it. Audience, meanwhile, is interested in shows where interesting people aren’t just seen, but discuss things or even host.”
“When you are on the new program of “Russia Radio” “Stadium”, you’re the same you always were on the ice – confident, sincere, and natural. Did you study journalism?”
“No. It’s just how I talk to people – to athletes, judges, and commentators, to the people who also see their lives in the sport. That’s why it open, very human conversations. Other than in sport, where you see us and which dictates some odd characteristics and relationships, we are just normal people
Bumping us out? No way!
“Let’s talk about the sport where we saw you, and the normal life where we didn’t. Stanislav Zhuk had many talented students, yet in his book he mainly talks about you. Why?”
“I guess I was at that time the only one who trusted him implicitly. O trusted him, but I didn’t just do everything without thought. I asked for, or even demanded explanations. I general, I was very faithful to him. When life brought us together, I saw that it’s all wildly interesting, that it’s working, and that I want to do it. Quietly so my dad wouldn’t find out, I transferred from a special German school to a normal one, and then to a vocational school.”
“I think Stanislav Alexeevich gave you a very exact definition. He saw in you “a unique combination of playfulness, naturalness, and joy with a very clear and sober view of the goals in life”. Do you indeed consider “goals in life?””
“The most important thing Zhuk taught me was this sober view to one’s goals, not the dreams in the clouds. He also taught me how to realize those goals, thought breaking or loosing interest.”
“Having found out you’re wildly interested in figure skating, did you soberly decided to become Olympic champion?”
“Of course not. As you grow, so do your goals. You grow with it as well. At first, I just wanted to become Master of Sport of USSR. The criteria then were so tough that even the National champions did not always fulfill them. How incredibly proud I was of the pin of “Honored Master of Sport of USSR”, it was so beautiful! They don’t make it anymore, but I have one. I am always proud of saying, “I am an honored master of sport of Soviet Union”. I am probably the only one to have ever gotten it before a simple “master”. I got “honored” for the Europeans at Garmisch. They gave me the pin when I got home. I got a “master” pin later, when it was confirmed that I fulfilled the requirements for the overall number of points.”
“Did you also approach Lake Placid with a clear goal of the Olympic trinity?”
“I wanted to do it, but because of Sashka’s birth I missed a year. I could also feel my age of 30. I just saw all those jumping beans around me. I knew that in technical merit our main opponents, Americans Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner, weren’t even close. I was confident in myself, but not in the situation. I don’t want to go there, but I still don’t understand why we found out about the change in rules and accident from a FRG judges, as opposed to our own leadership. It was then too late to change anything. We cleaned it up a bit, and decided to leave in our program the elements that give more guarantee.”
“It must have been difficult psychologically. The talk already started about holding the Summer Gamers in Moscow in light of the Soviet troops entering Afghanistan, and you were shamelessly put under pressure by the Lake Placid hosts.”
“Yes, I remember those endless cries: USSR uses forbidden moves in politics, and Rodnina and Zaitsev use them in figure skating! At practices, four cameras hunted us to document our “forbidden moves” and to start quacking, quacking, quacking… We didn’t give them the chance. Some of the elements we didn’t even perform at practices. The tried arranging a special press conference for our confession. But we didn’t give in. For the free skate, it became a moot point since Babilonia and Gardner withdrew after the free skate.”
“So the Americans bumped out their own?”
“Randy went from Lake Placid straight to the mental hospital. Twenty years later, we were with Tai and Randy at Lake Placid at the Goodwill Games that Ted Turner was organizing. On the day of the short program, Turner interviewed us. He asked Tai if they ever discussed it. She said, “Never”. He asked me what everyone always asks me not only about Lake Placid, but about my whole athletic life, “How did you stand it?” I said, “You miscalculated. First of all, we didn’t have good English, and couldn’t understand what was being said and written about us. Americans, meanwhile, did not understand Russian. God forbid they ever heard what was said about them! Most importantly, you bumped out your own athletes. You wanted to bump us? No way!”
“How do you get along with Tai and Randy?”
“We never had any problems, even in lake Placid. Tai and Randy first met us at the rink. We sill see each other at various competitions. Tai had a terrible incident with a drug overdose. It took her a long time to get out of it. You know what impressed me about America in this? A person stumbles, but it doesn’t let him fall. The same world that raised the person helps him get up again and again. Tai and Randy had a lot of support, both material and mental. They were invited to do shows. They could only do a couple of spirals, but they got standing ovations.”
“I know that in Lake Placed simple Americans loved you, and gave you presents for little Sasha.”
“A lot. In 1979, when the big Sasha was at the world championships in Vienna as a guest, he brought back a whole luggage full of toys and other things.”
“Did you keep any souvenirs from Lake Placid?”
“A bottle opener. After the victory, we slept a full day. The next day, we really wanted some wine. Together with my coach, Aunt Tanya Tarasova, went to the store and bought two bottles. How do we open it? I couldn’t wait for the Olympic village. We started discussing this. The store owner understood, and put a bottle opener into the bag. We came to the rink, and hid in the make-up cabin. I started opening it quietly. But you can’t do it quietly with a bottle. It made a “boom”, and everyone started looking in. So we got busted.”
”You just have such a happy face!”
“A touching story is associated with Lake Placed. In 1932, during the 3d Winter Olympic games, Sonia Henie so loved it, that she stayed there for good. You’ve lived and worked in America at the international figure skating center, also, by the way, at a lake town, in Lake Arrowhead. Many of our big athletes and coaches, including Tatiana Tarasova, continue to live in the USA. Why haven’t you?”
“While I came to America because of feeling useless at my homeland, I only enjoyed work for the first two years. It was interesting to learn from the greatest coaches of a country with filled rinks and stadiums. After my contract, I went through an ugly custody battle for my child. The daughter’s father insisted that she cannot return to Russia until she’s 18. So for the last 10 years I was mainly working to support my children.
Alena is still in America at the Santa Croix University, but she wants to continue her education in Russia. She feels good there, because she’s been there since the age of four. English is her main language, but she has a fluent Russian. It was harder for Sasha. He had trouble adjusting. Half a year before graduation, he quit college and came to Moscow to do what he loves, which is pottery. He is now in his fourth year at Stroganovka. He also recently got married.”
“Your athletic and personal life is a chain of overcoming obstacles. In childhood, it was the illnesses, then the fight for ratifying your highly technical style of pair skating, ugly scheming against you and Stanislav Zhuk, and finally several break ups, both with coaches and with husbands.”
“Everyone has more than enough things to overcome. For me, it’s just more visible.”
“To overcome life like that, one must be born with Rodnina’s character.”
“The main thing about my character is that I always thought that little things like intrigues and divorces don’t end one’s life. I took it with a grain of salt.
There is a golden rule I learned from Zhuk. Wasting energy on intrigues is pointless. You should only use energy for work. While they scheme, you work and get results. Envy and schemes spring up where you can’t win in a fair fight A leader is always annoying. Zhuk especially like about me that I didn’t stop or get depressed because of little things.”
“You don’t get depressed. Do you let your feelings our? When, for instance, do you cry?”
“When I’m hurt. The first time I left home because of hurt was when I was six. We had some guests, they didn’t have enough space for me at the main table, so they put me at the children’s one. I quietly got my coat on and left. A policeman brought me home. My parents then understood they couldn’t treat me like that.”
“So you taught them a lesson. What was the main thing you learned from your parents?”
“Principles. Dad was a military man, he was in the artillery in the war. Mom was a military nurse in Poland, Finland, and all to Berlin. They met during the war. Then they got lost; when dad came to mom’s hospital, it was already bombed out. They met by accident. For me and my sister, it was a lucky accident.”
“What do principles mean to you?”
“First of all, don’t whine. Take responsibility, for example for the children. Our parents raised us in difficult times, yet nobody cried, “the country owes us!” When I left Zhuk, I also took the responsibility – for my partner Sasha Zaitsev, with whom we just started skating, for the young coach Tanya Tarasova that I went to. I had to take personal responsibility to personally go to the defense minister Grechko (I always competed for CSKA), and arrange everything.”
“Why was Zhuk so schemes against?”
“Not just because he gave cause with his rudeness and lack of restraint that resulted from his extraordinary talent. Zhuk was the only coach with a strict system that allowed an athlete with mediocre givens to get to a very high level.”
“How was it for you?”
“I wasn’t just mediocre, I was the second one from the end. I didn’t think about it, though, I just like skating. With my tiny lungs, I completed programs that others couldn’t. Actually, people with mediocre givens more often rise to the top. That’s what life shows.”
“Why did you choose Tarasova after Zhuk?”
“By then, I felt independent. With Tarasova, we were rather like partners, we were after all only two years apart. I chose Tatiana Anatolievna for her emotions and musicality. Besides, I was too fed up with Zhuk. Tarasova is the person who makes you feel truly special. That’s very important, since 99 percent of athletes are rather insecure.”
“What can you not stand in a person?”
“Betrayal. Conscious betrayal. Perhaps that’s because I have few friends – two very close girlfriends, and two less so”.
“Are there things in life you can’t forgive yourself?”
“Not in sport. In life – sometimes. It pains me that I didn’t pay much attention to my parents; I couldn’t even be there when mom was dying. You can’t strike that from your heart. That why, when Sasha had a conflict with his father, I told him, “You only have one father, whether or not he’s right. I don’t want you to end up with a weight in your soul like I did.”
“What does Sasha’s father, Alexander Zaitsev, now do?”
“I think now. He’s retired, both as an officer and as an athlete. For a while, we worked together in America. I came back, so did he.”
“In sport and in life, you learned to win brilliantly. Did you learn to loose?”
“I learned not to let in a malady, either physical or moral. Once you start whining, feeling sorry for yourself, feel bad that someone doesn’t like you, or envies you, or is better off than you – that’s it. I don’t know, perhaps some things are just easier for me. I knew there was something off in me when Zhuk told me, “Such a lemon!”. I asked, “Why?” “Your face is just too happy!”. Yes, it’s happy. That’s me!”
“That way you said this, it brings to mind your famous “Kalinka” – you skated it so happily. Is “Kalinka” you favorite staple?”
“Of course not! Though I liked it. Lesha Ulanov and I did it on our own. It was fun to skate it. You know what was good about that period of our skating? We were freer, we gave it all we had. I guess my most prized program is the tone that Zaitzev and I only skated once, and the 1980 “Nouvelle de Moscou” cup, when we said good buy to the sport. Its story is memorable, and has to do with the Moscow Olympics. I was already working the Komsomol Central Committee, and we needed to prepare a concert for Pakhumtova in the Olympics village, on the double. It was fantastic! For the first time I heard Sinjavskaja sink with Alexandrov chorus and be stronger than all those man. Sasha Gradsky for the first time sang “First Round”. It amazed Alexandra Nikolaevna, as it did us as well. So we decided to use the song for our farewell. It was symbolic. Lake Place – Moscow-80. Last podium and “First Round”. Indeed, we were so young! Though we’re not that bad still.”
Bus #24 goes from Taganka to Lake Placed
For little Ira Rodnina, figure skating started with a struggle. She had pneumonia, and her mom decided that ice may help. They’d get onto the bus #24 in Taganka where they lived, and go to the rink at Mar’ina Roscha. Ira was always car sick, and they had to get off the bus, get some air, and get onto the next one. Stanislav Zhuk thought this most valuable in her character, “heroism of the everyday” which meant that at the moments of greatest struggles her will seemed endless. It was so at the World championships in Calgary, when Irina competed with a concussion and got a standing ovation. It was so at Lake Placid, when 30-year old Rodnina was the horse nobody would bet on, and wouldn’t even tell of the change in rules. Yet she did it all! It was so recently in America where she came to get away from her “needlessness” at home. It was so during a custody battle with the love of her life. It was about his “heroism of the everyday”, so necessary not just for those on the podiums, that I decided to talk about with Irina Rodnina.
Last edited:
