Russians Find Success in the United States

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, over 200 of Russia's top figure skating coaches have relocated to other countries as a means to stay in the sport and earn enough income to survive.

Some of the skating establishment bigtime coaches - Natalia Dubova, Tatiana Tarasova and Natalia Linichuk, to name just a few - found immense success training Olympic skaters on U.S. soil. Today a new generation of top Russian skaters have turned their talents to coaching and creating training schools in the country they now call home - America.

Evgeny Platov: Alongside a Legend

"In 1991 our country, the Soviet Union, collapsed. We didn't even have a flag in the Albertville Olympics," recalled twotime Olympic ice dance gold medalist Evgeny Platov. "It was three more years before I left, but that was hard times for my country, and the worst of times for my sport. Nobody cared about figure skating, and who could blame them, we had a nationwide depression."

Oksana Grischuk and Evgeny Platov won two Olympic gold medals

Things were so bad that Platov had to bring his own gasoline to the arena to run the Zamboni machine. "I would get up in the middle of the night, because the line would be maybe only onetwo hours long at that time," he said, "And perhaps I could get a little extra fuel so we could make the ice."

Despite the grim recollections, Platov retains his upbeat and optimistic personality. "Even our comedians joke that the Russian people are the most creative for surviving because we've been so beat up by our own regimes," he said with a laugh.

Now working in Simsbury, Conn, alongside the sport's Grande Dame, Tatiana Tarasova (Platov's onetime coach), the two-time Olympic ice dance gold medalist helps in the choreography and training of a pedigreed roster of the world's best skaters. Reigning World ladies' champion Shizuka Arakawa, reigning World silver medalist Brian Joubert, reigning U.S. champion Johnny Weir and reigning World junior champion Andrei Griazev are among the stable of singles skater talent they've coached or choreographed for this season. Their elite ice dance teams include Galit Chait and Sergei Sakhnovski, representing Israel, and Svetlana Kulikova and Vitaly Novikov of Russia.

Platov said that even skaters who work permanently with their own longtime private coaches come to Tarasova, looking for what he called a magic touch. He points to Johnny Weir as an example. "Tatiana and I choreographed his program so that when he skates, the audience will roar with excitement, and cry with emotion," he said. "So far, it's working." Weir, who has lacked a quad jump in competition, nevertheless took his first-ever Grand Prix gold medal at Japan's NHK trophy, beating U.S. teammates - and quad jumpers - Timothy Goebel and Michael Weiss.

But perhaps Platov and Tarasova's greatest accomplishment this year has been their work with Arakawa. "Tatiana [Tarasova] had only three weeks to work as Shizuka's new coach before the World Championships last March in Dortmund," Platov said. "She came to us as a girl, like Cinderella, and after a few weeks of hard work, she stood on top of the World podium as a woman and a princess."

Coaches Tatiana Tarasova, Marina Zoueva and Igor Shpilband watch the warm-up from the boards at Skate America.

Platov said nobody has a talent to find a special ability like Tarasova. "She can get skaters to believe in themselves and in her. She tells them 'the beautiful lie,' until it becomes the truth," he said. "The trick is to make them believe, and she has that gift."

Platov should know. He was the recipient of Tarasova's motivational and sometimes unconventional coaching style. In 1998, Platov and Oksana (Pasha) Grishuk were the defending Olympic champions. Right before the final warmup at the Olympic Winter Games, Platov said, Tarasova did something that to this day he can still hardly believe. "I felt like I was going to die if I lost this title, that my whole life would turn to garbage. I simply could not accept any position but first. [I was like] a Mustang horse chomping at the bit to get out of the gate; I was pacing, stomping, angry and filled with fire," he said.

Platov's emotional state was not lost on Tarasova. "My attitude caused her great concern. She knew that I had too much going on in my head - that I was actually too ready. ... She saw she had to put out the fire, and began opening a bottle of water. She asked me a couple of times if I was okay, and I told her to leave me alone ... so she sprayed me with the water, completely dousing my head! I was so upset. For two hours I had been meticulously preparing my costume with a steam iron, and on top of it my hair became a disaster. I'm a perfectionist, and started screaming at her ... but she knew, she knew. Within the hour we won our second Olympic gold medal."

Platov himself can be tough with his skaters. Asked if he ever yells to his students during a competition program, Platov answered, "Absolutely. You don't want to spook them by saying the wrong thing, so you have to think before speaking, but if they look really shaky or nervous I will scream 'Control!'

"Especially at the end of the routine if they're tired and stressed, and you see they need to push more so they don't fade out at the end, I will yell in Russian the words, 'Push - Push - Push!' You can see the energy coming back as soon as you scream loud and strong; you can see their body and facial movement change like a sprinter in the last 30 feet of the race."

There is a fine line to this type of . coaching. "It's dangerous. Too much and they could lose control, so I have to look at their eyes, see their condition and instantly decide if they can take it or if it will distract them at the wrong moment and cause a mistake," he said.

Ice dancers today have many elements to focus on, as a result the new International Skating Union judging system. "I like it because finally ice dance has criteria," he stressed. "Everybody has been so critical of the discipline; others were laughing at us and even wanted to kick us out of the Olympics because they found it so bizarre there were no judging criteria."

The system has its drawbacks as well, including the vast number of elements required. "What we've lost is some of the dance as skaters rush to cram as much as possible in their programs and rack up the points," he said. "Too many couples look the same as they try to get the max point elements. ... I think the solution is to reduce the amount of elements and I've heard the technical committee is going to consider it."

The concept of ice dance needs to be maintained as a sport, he said, but it also needs to express the music with the language of the body. "Right now," he said with a laugh, "we just look like bad pairs teams."

Alexander Zhulin: Coach and Husband

Alexander Zhulin spent an entire career competing against Evgeny Platov, and now Zhulin runs his own successful training school at the rink on the campus of Montclair College in New Jersey. The former World champion and Olympic silver medalist said, "The U.S. skating programs operated under Russian tutelage are in good hands, and the huge infusion of Russian culture into the American training methods is producing good results. I would say in just a few more years my former country will be in big trouble."

Maya Usova and Alexander Zhulin

Zhulin, whose top students are his wife and reigning World ice dance champion Tatiana Navka and her partner Roman Kostomarov, said the main reason for the mass exodus is purely economics. "In America as a coach I can make 10 times - maybe more - than what I can make in Russia," he said. "Let's be honest, parents in Russia put their children in skating so they can get out of there and be somebody and do something with their life."

But Zhulin is aware that a different mentality towards training still exists between the two countries. "Great skaters need to have the habit of discipline. I was a World champion and I try to keep my standards really high," he explained. "In America, the coach can teach you forever if you have the money because lots of people even in the middle class can afford it. In Russia, there was no middle class and only with government assistance could the children continue to skate. Talent mattered, not money, and talent was rewarded by getting to stay in the system - as long as you kept advancing.

"Here, there is talent also, but often the students come from nice families, with great lives. And maybe they have such a great life that when the training stops being fun, they lose interest. Russians know from experience that life is not always fun, and they persevere. In Russia, the kids dive headfirst into the watet of figute skating and they spend maybe 90 percent of their [time] on it. In Ametica it is split, maybe 50-50 between school and skating. Some might criticize our method for essentially mortgaging children's futures for immediate short-term athletic gains, but nevertheless, you can't argue with its effectiveness."

Zhulin said he will always consider himself Russian at heart, and that both he and his wife Tatiana enjoy frequent trips back to visit friends and family, and to skate in Russian ice shows, which are rapidly growing in popularity. But he also has concerns over changes in his homeland. "Drug use in Russia is high, the mafia influence continues to grow and everywhere the culture is diminishing,\" he said. "I travel all over and already Russia has become much more dangerous. Even if you want to do well in your life and finish school with good grades, the mafia is the lure if you want to make money. Our former president Boris Yeltsin once described his own country as the biggest mafia state in the world. It's sad."

Growing up under Soviet rule, Zhulin stressed the mindset regarding boys and figure skating was completely different than in the United States. "Always you can see that Russian men are very talented and very competitive. But in America, parents would rather bring the boys to football, baseball or any sport than skating because they are afraid of the stigma attached to it," he said. "Male figure skaters can get hassled a lot in school, and they don't want the trouble, even if they enjoy the sport, and I think that fear and stigma are pretty important factors as to why more boys don't enter skating here.

"The downside of the Russian system for the average person is that it can make them lazy. If you work hard like crazy, you get $100 per month. Yet, if you do nothing the government will still pay you $100, so for many, they find no reason to try harder. In America, thankfully, it's different. The harder you work, the better you do and Russian figure skaters learned this lesson as children. Literally, their job was skating and the more they worked, the more success they achieved, so our skaters know how to work and that is where they are different than the average Russian. Because of this, those of us that were successful skaters can put our talent to work as coaches and reap great results in this environment that provides money, ice and students."

Nikolai Morozov: Prodigy of the Pack

Former ice dancer Nikolai Morozov came to the U.S. in 1995 as an on-ice partner with now-reigning World ice dance champion Tatiana Navka. "Nikolai and I did okay together," recalled Navka. "We were almost the same height, which is not so good for results in ice dance."

Eventually Morozov switched partners and Olympic gold medal- maker Tarasova agreed to take him as a student. "It was short- lived. I decided to give up on dance as a competitor and instead look to the future. There were so many couples ahead, and at that time, talent alone was not the only thing necessary to move up in the standings - it was a very political atmosphere. If my partner and I couldn't win, I didn't see the point and Tatiana Tatasova understood. It was at that time she asked me to stay on and work by her side. If I had to guess why, probably because I can skate pretty good - probably better than half of my students," said Morozov, laughing.

Nikolai Morozov and Evgeny Platov

In 2002 it was his collaborative efforts with Tarasova and star pupil Alexei Yagudin that changed Morozov's and Yagudin's lives forever. "Alexei and I basically started at the same time with Tatiana and then I transitioned from student to coaching assistant," he said. "While searching for new music for his 2001-2002 season, I came across the song 'Winter' by the group Bond at Virgin records in New York City and immediately rushed back to the rink to play it for Tatiana and Alexei. He really liked it and that night we went to his apartment and began working on the choreography, right on his living room floor until around four in the morning," Morozov said.

Asked to describe the theme initially envisioned for "Winter," Morozov said the title made it hard to imagine anything else. "We were thinking, 'What are people doing in the wintertime, when that first snow comes out?' They're throwing snow in the air, they're happy, they're jumping in the snow," he said. "That was the feeling we wanted to give the program." Arguably destined to go down in skating lore as the most beloved Olympic men's short program ever, "Winter" helped garner Yagudin the Olympic gold medal and a record number of perfect 6.0s just one month later at the 2002 World Championships.

The victories also launched Morozov's solo career as a coaching and choreography force.

Less than six months after the jubilation of the Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake, he and Tarasova split. Morozov stayed at the Newington, Conn., rink where he now trains top ice dance teams Elena Grushina and Ruslan Goncharov from the Ukraine, Melissa Gregory and Denis Petukhov of the United States, and Chantal Lefebvre and Arseniy Markov of Canada. Morozov said that in ice dance he thinks the woman has the tougher job of the two. "She has to be veiy special, that's for sure. Men can be just okay, but if he skates with a really beautiful woman, the couple will work. The reverse will not. If the man is beautiful, and the woman is nothing special - so to speak - they will probably never be great."

The Morozov name has become synonymous with the choreography of skating's glitterati, as champion performers such as Michelle Kwan, Sasha Cohen and Kevin van der Perren have all come to the Newington rink for cutting-edge artistic interpretations.

"When I went out on my own as a coach in late 2002, it was very easy for me to work with anyone, because I had been involved in skating for so many years already," he said. "I never felt I had to prove myself. It was actually shocking how many skaters started using programs I helped design."

Marina Zoueva: Keeping It In the Family

There have been many tragedies in figure skating history; the fatal 196Os crash of almost the entire U.S. team is perhaps the foremost. But nothing grips people's hearts like young love cut down in the prime of life. When Olympic pairs champion Sergei Grinkov crumpled to the ice on a November morning in Lake Placid, NY, there were two women by his side at the moment of his death: his partner and wife Ekaterina Gordeeva, and their longtime choreographer Marina Zoueva.

At that time in 1995, Zoueva was living and coaching in Ottawa, Ont., Canada. "After reaching fifth place in ice dance at the 1977 World Championships, I stopped competing and went to school to get degrees in both sport and art. Right away I started to teach and moved to North America in 1991 after doing a bit of choreography and consulting with some students for a pro event," she said. "It was nothing formal, but they gave me an invitation to teach in Canada at the established Minto Skating Club. I made a decision to move right away, and felt it would be a wonderful opportunity for my son, who was 7, to learn another culture and to become bilingual."

Zoueva said she loved her years in Canada. "My son Fedor [Andreev] has done well in his continuing career as a men's singles skater," she added.

But in 2001 coach Igor Shpilband asked her to join him in Michigan, and now they co-coach at the Arctic Edge Arena in Canton. "It's fantastic - we have our own ice sheet just for us, eight hours a day, and it's strictly for our students. Presently we're coaching seven dance teams, and six of them compete internationally." While Zoueva likes to give all of her teams equal billing, it's the hot young U.S. national dance champions Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto that have ignited the ice dance world. Zoueva is not one to play favorites, especially considering that Belbin is the longtime girlfriend of son Fedor.

"Tanith and Ben are the youngest top dance team in the world, and a joy to work with. They are fast, energetic and very good friends with each other. They show each other considerable respect, yet are constantly laughing during practice. My role was to teach them how to be champions. How to say, 'World - look at us! We'll be next - tell everybody that you have seen next year's champions!' "

Zoueva said the major difference she finds teaching in the United States and Canada, compared with Russia, is the number of students. "Right away I had so many more skaters to teach," she said. "In Russia we had only a few, and our salary came from the government - not from the skaters. But, that also gave us a lot of time to devote to just a few promising students."

Oksana Grischuk and Evgeny Platov

Being a female coach made no difference in her homeland, according to Zoueva. "Men and women were treated the same in Communist Russia. Igor [Shpilband] and I work so well together because we trained at the Red Army Club ice dance school in Moscow, under the same trainers, so we share a common approach to coaching," she said. "We're responsible for creating two new competitive programs for each dance team. I create the lifts and spins; Igor does the main footwork and steps. Then we work together on improvements and corrections. We have similar ideas and I think we're both forward-looking and progressive - we share the same vision of figure skating.

"Basically I create very fast, and tend to like to do it more for the exhibition numbers. Igor, on the other hand, loves to make competition programs, which is great because it's so hard. All of the elements in pairs and singles take a lot of time, and with ice dance you constantly have to create new steps and moves to keep the audience's attention, yet without the drama of the lifts, jumps and throws of pairs skating. That can be tough. Capturing an arena's attention just from steps is hard to do, and luckily for our teams, this is something Igor is great at."

The Payoff

All of these famous former competitors-turned-coaches have more than their origins in common. As teachers, they have continued to live by the creed that hard work produces results. And for those whose jobs it is to direct the young talent of today, that means their work ethic - built through the adversity they faced in their homeland and fine-tuned along the way - is a huge factor in their coaching roles. Evgeny Platov summed it up: "I always thought coaches had it easy, that as skaters the pressure was on us. Now I know differently. Just when the students finish their practice and leave the ice, a coach's day begins - plans to be made, programs to create, a million little details. If onl\y I knew that back then, I would have given them a lot more credit."

"She can get skaters to believe in themselves and in her. She tells them 'the beautiful lie,' until it becomes the truth. The trick is to make them believe, and she has that gift."

- Evgeny Platov describing Tatiana Tarasova

"The U.S. skating programs operated under Russian tutelage are in good hands, and the huge infusion of Russian culture into the American training methods is producing good results"

- Alexander Zhulin

"When I went out on my own as a coach in late 2002, it was very easy for me to work with anyone, because I had been involved in skating for so many years already. I never felt I had to prove myself. It was actually shocking how many skaters started using programs I helped design."

- Nikolai Morozov

Copyright Ashton International Media, Inc. Feb 2005