I remember her from newspaper photographs and large television screens, that first trusting smile on the podium in Colorado Springs, when fame collapsed like a roaring waterfall and the nineteen-year-old girl from Taganka suddenly turned into an unattainable "star." I remember her fearlessness on the ice and desperate stubbornness, celebrated in many newspaper reports and... a tear that, like a drop on glass, rolled down in front of the whole world when Rodnina stood on her farewell podium. For the umpteenth time, I look closely at the features of a face familiar since childhood. Strong, stubborn cheekbones, soft lines of the mouth, boyishly unruly black swirls of hair, only now already with rare streaks of gray hair, deep, attentive eyes.
It would seem the portrait is complete. What else? Life is made.
Would you like to live your life over again?
— A person dies only once. But they are born more than once. A person has only one name, but sometimes they are destined to live through several lives.
What should one fear first of all?
— Self-contemplation. Self-praise.
What did you suffer from the most in life?
— From loneliness.
Do you ever feel bored?
— When everything comes easily and thoughtlessly.
What do you regret in life?— About the un-done.
After meeting Irina Rodnina, I wanted to remain silent, as one always wants to remain silent after someone's difficult confession.
If only I had known how long and difficult this journey would be. Not to fame and medals—but to myself. Again and again, I look into the past, as if flipping through a photo album. Different faces—different people. All of us in life owe something to someone. To mother and father—for life; to the teacher and coach—for the ability to work; to enemies—for forging and hardening our character; to friends—for warmth and a kind word. Life is always a struggle and a clash of characters.
In the spring of 1966, I was solving a difficult problem for myself. I had to choose between a specialized German school, where I was studying at the time, and figure skating practices at CSKA in the group of Stanislav Alekseevich Zhuk. I made the choice in favor of sports.
Working with Zhuk was interesting; we ran to the rink as if it were a holiday. The most terrible punishment for us was to be deprived of training. Zhuk placed identical demands on everyone. And considering that at that time the country's champions Elena Shcheglova and Valery Meshkov, Lyudmila Pakhomova and Viktor Ryzhkin, as well as world championship medalists Tatyana Zhuk and Aleksandr Gorelik were training with him, you can imagine how hard it was for us, the young ones, at times.
And so, one day my mother and I went up to Stanislav Alekseevich, and my mother said that she was planning to transfer me to the "Dynamo" society.
— "You work mainly with other, leading athletes. Will Ira even catch your eye — it was unclear.”
Zhuk listened to us carefully. He said briefly:
— "What goals do you set for yourself in sports?"
— "To fulfill the requirement for Master of Sports," — I mumbled.
My answer, apparently, shocked him, as he was used to working with ambitious young people.
— "And what else?"
I honestly replied that I wanted to master the double lutz and axel.
Zhuk fell silent. It seemed to me that he wanted to smile.
— "Can you withstand four hours of training a day?"
— "I don't know. I need to try."
I was only sixteen years old then.
At that time on the ice, a different style was in fashion—lyrical, gentle. "Reflection", "Dreams of Love". "But as for me, as for me!" — I thought, — "I skate like a boy, cheerfully, I jump, I jump...". Lesha Ulanov thought the same. He and Zhuk repeatedly had arguments regarding the sporty, athletic direction that we chose. Lesha, a student at the Gnessin State Musical College, an esthete and intellectual, was the leader and the proactive side of our duo. We went to theaters, to concerts, talked about music, about styles and philosophy, and Lesha leaned more and more toward the lyrical style being closer to him.
But Zhuk firmly knew: for every "poison" there is an "antidote". "It is precisely you—small, stocky, jumpy, like a ball—who can win. Because you are fearless. They don't believe in you, but you prove that you are better," — Zhuk kept drumming into me.
Truth be told, he was mistaken when he spoke of my courage. At first, like a child, I lost my bearings before his stronger will. Then came the fear of losing a wise and experienced mentor, without whom, it seemed, I was nothing. He was often sharp and unrestrained, but I closed my eyes to his mood swings, because we were both doing a great job.
To someone, I probably seemed the luckiest person. But fate was not kind to me. My sporting success was mixed with sweat and tears, tested by countless nerve-wracking situations and injuries. Sometimes it was so hard that after a victory, I didn't want to remember all the hardships that fell to my lot. And I habitually smiled—a sort of cheerful person—in front of the cameras, and gave interviews, without trying to seem smarter or more significant than I was perceived. My job was to skate, and I tried to skate honestly and well.
I often think: when did that crack appear, the one that turned into an abyss in our relationship with Zhuk, which neither he nor I could ever overcome? Was it when he got new, talented pupils to whom he started paying more attention? We athletes are excessively ambitious and egotistical people, and I was jealous and demanded increased attention for myself. A conflict situation arose in our small, once close-knit collective. Zhuk no longer wanted to, and could not, work with me. He grew tired of me. The same old Rodnina, the same old style, the endless cranking up of complexity: a two-and-a-half-rotation jump meant it had to be three, a two-handed lift consequently meant it had to be on one hand. He stuffed and stuffed us with complexity and technique because he wanted to, but he failed to see something new in me.
A certain stereotype of thinking has formed—to believe that sports must hide the woman inside a woman behind seven locks. Indeed, no matter how much we "make ourselves up" before competitions, no matter how much time we spend spinning in front of the mirror, conjuring over a new dress, it is all the same... When you spend eight hours a day on the ice, run exhausting cross-country races with weights, work out with a barbell—remaining feminine is difficult.
But femininity is eternal. Always, everywhere, in all ages it will be valued, becoming more and more precious. And despite the frantic rhythms of the time, the unthinkable grimaces of fashion, it breaks through again and again under the careful hand of the great master—nature.
It was precisely this turn in me toward my own nature, toward my feminine essence, that Zhuk failed to see. And I once again found myself faced with a choice: to leave entirely or to start all over again.
An unstable and anxious period of life. Nothing was clear, nothing was ready. A new, young coach—Tatyana Tarasova. As many ideas—just as many doubts. And I was used to working with a confident master who knew firmly how to go toward the intended goal. And even if he didn't know, he still carried himself confidently. With Tarasova, everything during training was different. If a good idea regarding a dance for another pair suddenly popped into her head, she would abandon us completely and switch over, catching moments of inspiration.
Little by little, quietly, I had to accustom Tanya to the fact that when she works with me, she works only with me. I had a right to this egoism, because I was aiming for a high result and knew that I would not turn off this path, that I would achieve my goal. Mixed with the desire to prove myself in a new capacity on the ice, to prove that Rodnina was not yet running on empty, was a sense of responsibility for Sasha, and even more so—for Tanya, who believed in us and risked taking on our pair in such a conflicting, almost scandalous situation.
Once after a training session where, for the umpteenth time, nothing was working out, having quarreled with Sasha and Tanya, I threw my belongings into my bag and, continuing to curse to myself both my partner and the coach and all of figure skating, rushed toward the station (this was in Voskresensk, where we were preparing for the national championship). A damp December ground wind was blowing across the ground, a wind from behind was pushing me in the back. By the time I reached the platform, I had cooled down. I looked at the tail of the departing electric train, threw my bag over my shoulder, and marched back.
Simple truths are the hardest. On that road from the station, when the wind was already blowing right in my face, I grasped another lesson: the secret of inner harmony lies in not being indifferent to your neighbor. Why is a person unhappy? From grief, of course. And what else? Maybe because there is too little love in them? Simple love—for the sky and the sun, for rain and snow, for the first green and the last yellow leaves, for their loved ones and for a stranger passing by. That love which makes you look at the world in a whole new way, not inward at yourself—but around.
Then came the Olympics, championships, competitions. Another Olympics, the third and last. The farewell. We knew that it will come, that very last day, we were preparing for it—and yet we all turned out to be unprepared.
Where to go? What to do? What to occupy myself with? Where and in what to find purpose for my abilities? We stood face to face with a life that is much more complex and strict than life in sports.
The first and only offer was a job as an instructor at the Central Committee of the Komsomol (VLKSM).
I belong to the generation for whom the word "Komsomol member" is associated with the name of Pavka Korchagin. We tried to be just as selfless and honest, just as unbending and strong. In sports, life is compressed to the limit, squeezed like a tight spring; we are used to its frantic rhythm, used to giving it our all, to being the ones with whom the final responsibility rests.
But in the new position... The day passed without anxieties. I was invited to various "events," I said the right, already quite tiresome words, which, it seemed to me, nobody listened to. I felt like a figurehead.
I don't want to, and cannot, blame anyone for the fact that I failed to grasp the specifics of the new work in a short period of time, failed to get used to its measured rhythm. Parting with sports turned out to be impossible for me—I was pulled to the ice like a magnet.
To judge one's peers, to help them, to share their cares and difficulties, one must first of all learn to understand them. And who, honestly speaking, needs to be understood better than your closest person?
I am often asked: why did our marriage with Sasha Zaitsev break up? After all, on the ice we were a wonderful pair, a well-oiled mechanism. We had one high goal, toward which we walked shoulder to shoulder. But the era of big sports ended, and ordinary life began. Day after day, we discovered new, previously unseen traits in each other. Gradually, the thought came that we are different people. He is not bad, and I am good, and he is not good, and I am bad. Just different. Sasha decided that he had achieved everything, attained everything, and now he could relax. For me, the battle continued...
When I was offered coaching work at the "Dynamo" society, I agreed with joy.
The most difficult, most interesting, most agonizing days of my life were the coaching days. Every day I was overcome by doubts—whether I was doing the right thing or not."
"My favorite pair is Veronika Pershina and Marat Akbarov. They came to me already as world junior champions. They skated in the style inherent to Zhuk’s students—speed and tempo, technique and complexity. We began to look for our own, original style. And found it—powerful, impetuous, heroic—in a dance to the music of Khachaturian to the ballet "Spartacus." I remember watching the kids skate once and thinking: this is the kind of pair I would have wanted to be all my sporting life... Due to many reasons, I couldn't, it didn't happen, but the desire remained in my memory. In this dance of Veronika and Marat, I was exactly as I saw myself.
I loved Veronika, a quiet, hardworking, and obedient girl who trusted me with her soul, though she hadn't yet become an adult. She tried and gave her all, agreed with everything, and... was psychologically completely unsuited for sports. There are fighters by nature—Veronika did not belong to them.
After one of the training sessions, I kept Marat for a conversation.
— You understand that this won't do? — I said. — Veronika is a good, wonderful person. But you and I are in elite sports. A strong-willed partner is needed here. You need to change your partner.
— No! — Marat replied.
I often return in my thoughts to this short conversation. Where, when, at what moment did the desire for a high result obscure the human soul of Veronika from my eyes? And I mentally bow to Marat, my student, who warned me against such a nasty mistake, and taught me such a serious life lesson.
I had to leave coaching work—I had two children, a daughter was recently born. I don't know when it was harder: when I trained for eight hours a day, or now? I work at the department of the State Institute of Physical Culture, I am writing a dissertation. I think about my place in the work of the National Figure Skating Federation, which has been left without a leader for many years now. I also write for newspapers, host a radio show, and am writing a book. I don't get enough sleep when the children are sick, drive them to doctors, check their homework.
When a free minute arises, I love to wander around old Moscow, look into the Patriarch's Ponds, listen to the crunch of snow under the feet of passers-by and children's voices from the skating rink.
Am I tired? Probably. But I know this will pass. Ahead is the road. And I am still on the way.
. Multiple pairs partners and success in her thirties.
