Yeah, most people worry most about him being on ice - "Plush, don't overdo things!" I'm almost more concerned what craziness he may cook up
off it. When he's doing training on ice, it's a "Well, at least I know where he is!" kind of thing. At least he's getting some outlet for his seemingly unbounded energy in a familiar fashion... I wonder if, as a child, he was the sort who never would sit still? And his parents were relieved by his starting skating, and that it tired him at least somewhat? Just curious.
If you want to understand Evgeni Plushenko need to read his biography. I arranged some parts of it :
I was born long – 57 cm. When I was nine months old I started running, and when I was an year old I was riding a small bicycle. My legs were already strong.
It is true, I caught cold very often because of the severe climate. In the North, I got pneumonia two times and with mom we stayed in the hospital for a long time. I was stuffed with drugs, pierced all over. My system went out of balance, the doctors found out a murmur in the heart.
At the beginning my mom believed in the efficacy of the treatment, but gradually her faith melted away and she took a resolute decision not to give me anymore to the doctors.
She took me from the hospital and started treating me herself. She took me on fresh air, put me on skis. When I was three years old we returned to our Volgograd.
The director of Volgograd’s Palace of sport Michael Makoveev took me from my first coach to his group. In the past he was a weightlifting athlete and did not have anything in common with figure skating. But he was a friend with the coach Ksenofontov, who once suggested to him :
- Why do you do only weightlifting? Try something else. In the Palace of Sport there is a vacancy: a coach for figure skating.
And Makoveev really tried. He went from bar-bells to skates becoming a coach of the children’s section of figure skating. But he taught me jumping and at about eleven I was already doing all the triple jumps and became a Master of sport.
Makoveev loaded us much with work. At seven I ran 10-15 kilometers, swam with speed-up in the pool. If I made “the gun”/ “The Duck”/^ , it was obligatory to make it fifty times with one leg and so many with the other leg. We worked with dumb-bells, Hantel^, bar-bells, stretched all the time. We played football, hockey, volleyball, did wrestling.
With him the sportsmen worked under pressure. If you jumped badly, you would do ten more jumps. If you did something wrong, you would run five kilometers long distance race. And this with him. He was a fanatic of sport, he had an incredible energy and tried to transfer it to us. He was a very strict and severe man and because of this he received his nickname – the policeman.
Makoveev was a despot coach, and these people are usually not loved by anyone. I didn’t love him as well, but I respected him. However, I realized this much later, when I got acquainted with Alexey Nikolayevich Mishin.
With Makoveev we always worked at overload. All the exercises we made with complicatedness. It is true although, that the policeman did not allow us to load our back, he was afraid for our spinal column. But at hands and legs we always had at least one kilogram weight.
I could not get rid of the feeling, that we were not prepared for figure skaters, but for soldiers of Spetznaz /Special Forces/. For four years he made out of me a powerful sporting machine. And, curiously enough, this helped me a lot when I went to St Petersburg. I want to thank him very much for his contribution and faith in me.
p.7
II – I am not a girl, I am a boy.
I am still sorry that I didn’t keep my first skates.
They were given to me just by chance. My mom went to the shop and took me with her. We met an acquaintance of ours with her little daughter. The girl was crying.
- Tanya, you know how difficult it was to buy these skates. They were delivered to us by our acquaintances in Moscow. And my daughter doesn’t want to skate at any case.
- It is cold and pain there! – the daughter was wet with tears – and I am falling down continuously.
- Let’s give your skates to them,- suggested the woman totally unexpectedly.
- Let’s give them to him! – the girl suddenly stopped crying.
- Well, I will give them to him immediately – the mother hoped the girl would give it a second thought.
But the girl was stubborn.
- Give them, I will not skate.
Then the woman took the skates from her daughter and hung them on my neck. This was destiny.
p.8
Perhaps if this meeting hadn’t taken place, my parents would have never thought to take me to the figure skating section.
When we went home I put my skates on, mom laced the boots and we went out on the street. I was happy and stepped carefully on the crunchy snow trying not to fall down.
At this time the former owner of the skates was going back home and saw us again.
- Why do you skate on the snow?
- And where shall we skate? – asked my mom astonished.
- Go to the Palace of Sport, there is a section for figure skating. Boys are taken immediately like hot cakes.
And we went. I was standing next to the barrier and watching with wide opened eyes how the children were skating. They glided, fell down, stood up and made some figures. The most simple ones, of course, but it was so great! I felt like skating too.
- I want to become a hockey-player,- I declared to my mom. When I was four years old I was convinced that only hockey-players skate on skates.
To the Palace of Sport mom brought not only me, but also my elder sister Lena, who was then 9 years old.
The coach Tatiana Nikolaevna Skala looked at Lena:
- This girl is grown up already, she has already grown up much for figure skating.- then she looked at me : - But this girl, here, I will take.
- What girl, - said I indignantly, - I am a boy!
- That’s even better! Do you have skates? Come on Monday.
When I was four I really looked more like a girl than like a boy : long hair, big eyes, and with the nose just the opposite – it was small then.

I looked like a little, tender, comely girl, but actually I was a real fighter. :cool2:
p.9
I am very flexible. Even before the appearance of the skates in my life I enjoyed tumbling, turning over into a roll. My parents watched me and laughed :
- You are made out of plasticine.
The coach also noticed this immediately:
- You know, your boy is very flexible, - she told my mom,- Here one has to sit at side-splits, to do bridges, fish. Come to the next training, see how we stretch.
They showed us how to stretch correctly. And mom set to work. She stretched not only me, but also my sister. Lena realized quickly, that this is painful and decided that she doesn’t need the side-split.
It hurt to tears. While mom was stretching me I several times fell into hysterics, I laughed and wept at the same time.
- Mom, what are you doing. It hurts.
- Be patient for a while and it will not hurt any more,- mom talked me over and went on stretching me.
- Will you buy me a chewing gum? – I laughed hysterically. For a chewing gum I would have suffered anything.
For four days my mom did what the other parents did for a month. I sat without any problems in side and front split, lifted up my legs to my ears. It didn’t hurt any more.
Then I started stretching alone. I took two chairs and hung down in a split – like Jean-Claude Van Damme in the films, which my parents watched.
The coach was simply shocked when I came to the training a completely stretched out boy. But, of course, at the beginning on the ice nothing worked .When I went out on the ice I started falling down. I was hurting my head painfully, falling down on my coccyx. On my hands there was no undamaged place – I hurt my hands all the time on the cold and sharp ice.
p.10
Out of affront, that nothing works, out of helplessness, I cried out and did not try to stand on the skates any more, but simply crept on the barrier. Then Tatyana Nikolaevna took me in her hands, skated in circle and cradled me. I calmed down and went out again on the ice.
I was new on the rink and the fellows in the group have already been skating half an year. They could glide on the ice, make “swallow” /arabesque spiral/^ and to me they seemed real masters. My legs went apart, I was falling down all the time and all the group laughed at me to be such a small good-for-nothing. And I started crying again.
At one such moment Tatyana Nikolayevna Skala came to me and said:
- Zhenya, why are you crying?
- They laugh at me.
- Do your best. If you do your best, you will soon exceed them.
She was able to inspire me with confidence. I went out on the ice and trained hardly, till I made the required element, steps back or a “fir-tree” /basic stroking/^. I stopped paying any attention to the jokes and intrigues of the seniors.
Usually, we came with mom earlier at the training. Before us skated the hockey-players. I stayed behind the barrier and watched them with wide opened eyes. I envied them – they had sticks, a puck, a goal! I had already realized that hockey and figure skating are two completely different kinds of sport.
- Let’s go to play hockey as well, - I asked my mom.
- I don’t know, son. Let’s see how it will be with the time. When you learn to skate well, we will go to hockey as well.
But when I had already learned how to skate I did not want hockey any more.
I fell in love with figure skating.

This is from Edvin Marton's site, so it's not confirmed now : Plushenko and Marton , Amazing on ice , Beijing. 2016.7.15--we will see!