Sports career

Olympic champion 1984 in pair skating
silver medalist of the 1988 Olympic Games
3-time world champion (1983, 1985, 1988)
Europe (1984-1986)
multiple champion of the USSR.

Valova and Vasiliev became the first sports couple to perform a triple parallel jump.

Coaching career

Immediately after finishing his professional career, he went into business. Then I decided to take up coaching. One of Vasiliev's first students was the Lithuanian couple Elena Sirohvatova and Oleg Shlyakhov.

In 2001, after a conflict with the former coach Natalya Pavlova, Tatyana Totmyanina and Maxim Marinin, who by that time were silver medalists of the European Championship, went to Vasiliev. Vasiliev changed the couple’s style, invited choreographer Giuseppe Arena, and Svetlana Korol also continued to work on the productions. It was with Vasiliev that the couple achieved their main successes - they became Olympic champions in 2006, two-time world champions and five-time European champions.

He also worked with singles athletes, for example, from 2002 to 2003, Victoria Volchkova trained with him.

Recently, the most successful duet trained by O. Vasiliev was Maria Mukhortova and Maxim Trankov (Russian champions in 2007 and multiple winners of the European Championships). The Mukhortova-Trankov couple broke up immediately after the 2010 World Cup.

Personal life

From 1984 to 1992 he was married to Elena Valova. In his second marriage he has a daughter, Ekaterina. Currently divorced. In December 1997 he moved to the USA, to

Oleg Vasiliev is a Soviet figure skater who achieved the title of Honored Master of Sports thanks to victories in the USSR championships, as well as in the international arena, including a gold medal at the 1984 Olympics. In 2016, he was invited to the rating show “Ice Age”, where Vasiliev, after many years of coaching, again felt the taste of competition as a participant.

Oleg was born and raised in Leningrad in the family of Kim Mikhailovich and Lyudmila Konstantinovna Vasiliev. When the boy was five years old, his mother decided that he should take up sports, since he was growing up sickly and weak. The choice fell on the figure skating section at the Central Park of Culture and Leisure named after. That is, Oleg began to study not at an indoor skating rink, but on the river, in the open air.

At first, Vasiliev competed in singles and achieved some success, for example, winning the championship and the USSR Cup among juniors. Subsequently, he moved to the Yubileiny Sports Palace, where the famous one became his coach. A competent specialist immediately noticed that Oleg would look much better in a pair, and put him in a duet with Elena Valova.

Sport

When Oleg Vasiliev began performing in pairs figure skating, he was already 18 years old, and his partner Elena was 15. But the young people quickly found mutual understanding and reached great heights together. They won gold at the World and European Championships three times each, and in 1984 they became Olympic champions. There is nothing to say about silver and bronze awards; there were many more of them.

Oleg Vasiliev and Elena Valova at the 1984 Olympics

By the way, Vasiliev and Valova turned out to be the first sports couple to perform a triple parallel jump in the history of figure skating. In the 90s, Vasiliev left for America and went into professional sports, which is very developed in the United States. He has medals from the US Open, World Challenge of Champions, Masters Miko, Legends and other tournaments.

At the end of his career, the skater took up coaching. His first students were the Lithuanian couple Elena Sirohvatova and Oleg Shlyakhov. Later, silver medalists of the European Championship and , who, under the leadership of Vasiliev, achieved outstanding results: won the 2006 Olympics, twice reached the top step of the World Championship and won the European Championship five times, came under his wing.

Oleg Kimovich also worked with single skaters, including Russian Victoria Volchkova, but recently he began to pay more attention to children and juniors.

Oleg Vasiliev got into the popular reality show “Ice Age” in 2012, when he was invited to be one of the jury members in the unusual season – “Ice Age. Professional Cup". Then there were no actors, musicians or boxers at the skating rink, but only professional athletes who had gone through figure skating school.

Oleg Vasiliev and Daria Moroz in the show “Ice Age”

In the fifth season, Oleg Kimovich again occupied the referee's chair, but in 2016 he decided to return to the ice as a full-fledged participant. Oleg Vasiliev in the sixth season of “Ice Age” performed together with the actress, star of the films “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina!” and "Grandfather Mazaev and Zaitsev."

However, in the middle of the project, unexpectedly for everyone, the man announced that he was leaving Ice Age. He said that the reason for his departure was his work schedule, which did not allow him to remain on the project. But, perhaps, this was a big shock for Daria Moroz, who never expected that she would have to look for a new partner. The actress told reporters that nothing foreshadowed such changes a few days ago. Vasiliev was later replaced in the show by someone who had dropped out earlier.

Personal life

As often happens in figure skating, the duo of skaters turned from a sports couple into a married one. In 1984, Oleg Vasiliev married his permanent skating partner, Elena Valova. The couple lived together for 8 years, but divorced in 1992. Moreover, as Oleg Kimovich said in an interview, the entire divorce process took only three days.

Vasiliev later remarried. His new chosen one, Valentina, also comes from St. Petersburg, where the woman remained to live even when her husband left for work in the USA. Valentina has her own business in St. Petersburg, which she did not want to part with. Living in two countries and meeting 3-4 times a year could not strengthen the family. And even the birth of their joint daughter, Ekaterina, did not help: Oleg Vasiliev’s second marriage also broke up. And this time the divorce lasted three years.

One of Oleg Vasiliev’s most high-profile novels is considered to be his courtship of his ward Tatyana Totmyanina. They hid their relationship for a long time. But in October 2004, trouble happened to Totmyanina. At the Grand Prix stage in Pittsburgh, the girl was seriously injured. While being supported, Tatyana fell and hit her head on the ice, immediately losing consciousness. Her partner was terribly worried; he understood that he had made a technical error, which led to a terrible fall. The figure skater was taken to the hospital and was diagnosed with a concussion. All this time it was Oleg Vasiliev who was next to her. As it turned out later, at that time they were already a couple, but this tragedy brought them together even more.

And everything would have been fine, but only in Moscow Oleg Kimovich still had his legal wife Valentina. So the reason for the discord in their relationship was not only distance.

After everyone found out about their romance, Totmyanina began to tell her friends that she would soon marry Oleg. But at the last moment the man refused, deciding that, having failed to save two families, it was not worth creating a third.

The man is credited with having an affair with Maria Mukhortova at the time when he was training their couple with. Their relationship became known after Trankov announced that he was leaving Maria and would ride together with.

The current situation was commented on by the President of the Figure Skating Federation, Valentin Piseev. He said that a pre-Olympic gathering of figure skaters in Sochi was planned for June 2009. Vasiliev immediately showed that he had no desire to go there. A couple of days later, the Federation received a letter from Mukhortova, where the girl asked to let her go to her grandmother in Lipetsk, who was seriously ill. As a result, Maxim Trankov went to Sochi alone. As it turned out, at that time Oleg Kimovich and his ward Mukhortova were vacationing on the Mediterranean Sea, and the sick grandmother in Lipetsk was just an excuse.

They say that he still did not marry Totmyanina for other reasons, and not because of fears of not saving the family, since in 2013 the man finally entered into an official marriage for the third time. True, Vasiliev married a woman far from figure skating. His chosen one was Muscovite Natalya, for whom he returned to Russia from the USA. And in 2014, at 54 years old, he became a father for the second time.

This time, Oleg Kimovich prefers to keep his personal life away from the public, so he has neither Instagram nor other social networks, and photos of him and Natalya together appear on the Internet extremely rarely.

Oleg Vasiliev now

For a long time, Vasiliev lived and trained athletes in the USA; he had his own figure skating school in Chicago. But today he returned to Russia. Until 2017, Alexandra Proklova and Alexandra Proklova skated under his leadership, but in May 2017 Oleg Kimovich announced that his work with the couple had ended.

In April 2018, Oleg Vasiliev was inducted into the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame. And in the same month he underwent hip replacement surgery, years of training and past injuries on the ice took their toll.

Awards

1983 – gold medal at the World Championships in Helsinki
1984 - gold medal at the Olympic Games in Sarajevo
1984 – gold medal at the European Championships in Budapest
1985 – gold medal at the European Championships in Gothenburg
1985 - gold medal at the World Championships in Tokyo
1986 – gold medal at the European Championships in Copenhagen
1988 - silver medal at the Olympic Games in Calgary
1988 - gold medal at the World Championships in Budapest

A well-known Russian coach commented especially for SE on the results of the Moscow Grand Prix stage and explained why he has not been working with high-level skaters for two years

A well-known Russian coach commented especially for SE on the results of the Moscow Grand Prix stage and explained why he has not been working with high-level skaters for two years

Vasiliev went into the shadows almost immediately after the duet of his students, Maria Mukhortova and Maxim Trankov, broke up. Back then I couldn’t believe that this care would last for a long time. After all, among Vasiliev’s wards were Turin Olympic champions Tatyana Totmyanina and Maxim Marinin, and specialists with such experience are a piece of goods. However, the coach did not appear at competitions for almost two years. And so I came to Moscow for the Grand Prix stage - to take out on the ice an Italian couple who had recently started skating.

We met on the podium immediately after the end of the sports pairs tournament, in which the Russians Tatyana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov won.

- Oleg, what fate? Figure skating people are tired of wondering: where did Vasiliev go?

I'm still there - in Chicago. Last year I practically didn’t work. I was taking care of my daughter: she had finished school, and I had to decide on further study or work. This year I trained quite a bit. Mostly small children. The Italians with whom I came to Moscow appeared at the end of last summer and agreed to work for several weeks. The fact that they were on the list of Grand Prix participants was purely an accident. Some withdrew due to injury, some got sick, so we were invited.

THE ESSENCE OF JUDGING REMAINED THE SAME AS WITH GRADES 6.0

- But have you at least followed pair skating for the last two years?

Hardly ever. More precisely, I follow certain names, results, new products, but, of course, I don’t watch all the competitions in a row.

- Why? Not interested?

What could be interesting here if people without two jumps, two throws and with poor support score 130 points, showing the best result of the season? Agree, there is something wrong with this. I understand the spectators who began to leave the stands after the appearance of the new judging system. They simply stopped understanding figure skating.

- You were once a member of the technical committee of pair skating of the International Skating Union...

I haven't been there for a year and a half now. In 2008, it was decided that the technical committee could not have two representatives of the same country. Since, in addition to me, the very respected specialist Alexander Lakernik was on the committee from Russia, the question of which of us should leave was not even raised.

- Before leaving the technical committee, did you try to say that pair skating was going “in the wrong steppe”?

But I don’t think it’s going somewhere in the wrong direction. The question is different. The fact is that the judging is inadequate to the skating. They are trying to fight this, they are constantly training specialists, analyzing certain situations, and quite tough, but...

At one time, the previous system with a score of 6.0 was criticized for the fact that it lacked specifics, and judges were guided not by criteria, but by feelings. Now there are criteria, but the essence of judging remains the same. This also applies to the second assessment for components, and a rather biased approach to the first, technical one. If Patrick Chan in Canada with three falls wins with a colossal amount, why can’t a Russian athlete get the same points when performing in Russia?

The human factor in figure skating judging has always been, is and will be. You just can’t cross a certain reasonable line.

I agree. When I saw Volosozhar and Trankov’s sky-high scores for the free program on the scoreboard, I felt embarrassed.

And me too.

WHEN THE BODY FALLS INTO PIECES

When you stopped working with the Mukhortova/Trankov couple, I honestly didn’t doubt for a minute that you would soon have new high-level students. Why didn't this happen?

To be honest, I'm just tired. I was tired of fighting for results, tired of fighting with “heavy” athletes, and for me they were all like that. It's no secret that sometimes I took on those that other coaches simply didn't want to deal with. After working for the Russian Figure Skating Federation for ten years and not hearing even a simple human “thank you” at the end, I realized that I didn’t want to continue all this. It was quite offensive. So I left. Consciously.

- And no one tried to bring you back?

When potential students called me, I told everyone that I was on short-term vacation. I can’t say that the phone rang around the clock, but there were such calls.

- Was there no nostalgia?

Absolutely. During that period it was difficult for me not only psychologically, but also physiologically. I felt like my whole body was starting to fall apart. Psychology and physiology are generally very closely related. When there is severe and prolonged stress, the body cannot help but react to it. Accordingly, I had to think not about figure skating, but about getting myself back to normal.

NOT ALL RAW MATERIALS CAN BE MADE “CANDY”

- From what you have seen in pairs skating this season, can you say what you like and who is interesting?

I like the Volosozhar/Trankov pairing. I see enormous potential in them. I don't like Alena Savchenko and Robin Shelkov. I found absolutely nothing new in their programs. All this is a repetition of what has been passed, and not the best repetition. There are interesting Canadian pairs, but they are not yet ready to fight with the leaders. There are Americans who do quite complex programs, but they do not have outstanding quality of skating and it will not appear in a year. I also like Yuko and Sasha (Kawaguchi/Smirnov. - Note E.V.), especially their free program this season. I don't like Vera Bazarova and Yuri Larionov. This concerns not what they do, but the external state of the couple. As a professional trainer, I can clearly see that a partner weighing 33 kilos simply cannot cope with the tasks that she should cope with. She generally looks like a not very healthy person on the ice, and this is wrong. You cannot put results above health. There are also Stolbova and Klimov. If they find ways to realize their potential, they can be relied upon in the next four years after the Games in Sochi. This can be a very technically strong and interesting pairing. But not today.

The Chinese remained. In general, I have nothing to say about Qin Pan and Jiang Tong, except that it’s hard to ride in your thirties, especially when you don’t want to. And they clearly continue to perform not entirely of their own free will. Hao Zhang and his new partner have an interesting quad twist of the third level. However, we went through this stage - tall, powerful boys and tiny girls - more than twenty years ago.

- Not very optimistic.

You see, pair skating is a rather difficult sport. It is almost impossible to lure athletes there. We get people who, for some reason, are not useful in single skating, and it is very difficult to make “candy” out of such material. As Alexey Nikolaevich Mishin likes to say, only not very good goods can be made from not very good raw materials. Raising a high-class pair is equally difficult in all countries. It's all about hard work and challenging teamwork.

- But such work is nevertheless going on in several countries at once.

Agree. And I hope to see its fruits. Unless, of course, the promised end of the world happens in mid-December.

IS IT POSSIBLE TO RETURN?

Do you agree that one of the most powerful and creative coaches in the world is still Tamara Moskvina, who almost thirty years ago made you and Lena Valova Olympic champions?

I partly agree. Take the same Yuko and Sasha. They have a very interesting free program in terms of staging. I see that both the guys and the coaches have done a tremendous job. All that remains is to achieve stable execution of technical elements.

You said that you see high potential in the Volosozhar/Trankov pair. And when Maxim left you two years ago, did you understand his decision?

The fact that Maxim did not have a good relationship with Masha Mukhortova was clear to me even before I started training them. Therefore, his departure was completely justified: if Maxim wanted to achieve something in sports, he had to look for a partner with whom he would be more psychologically compatible. So the decision to leave was absolutely correct. Another question is how everything was done. In my opinion, it didn't turn out very nice.

Now that you observe Trankov from the outside, don’t you think that some problems remain unresolved?

Good question. But can I leave it without comment?

- Then answer honestly the other one: do you assume that you will return to work in the Russian national team again?

Theoretically yes. But this can only happen if certain people leave figure skating forever.

Elena VAITSEKHOVSKAYA

Oleg Kimovich Vasiliev(born November 22, 1959, Leningrad, USSR) - Soviet figure skater, USSR champion in 1986, three-time European (1984, 1985, 1986) and world champion (1983, 1985, 1988), Olympic champion in 1984. Honored Master of Sports of the USSR (1983), Honored Trainer of Russia. He performed in tandem with Elena Valova.

Sports career

Bronze medalist of the 1981 Winter Universiade in men's single skating - performed a pair free program, replacing pair elements (lifts) with jumps.

Valova and Vasiliev became the first sports couple to perform a triple parallel jump.

Coaching career

He also worked with singles athletes, for example, from 2002 to 2003, Victoria Volchkova trained with him.

Recently, the most successful duo trained by O. Vasiliev were Maria Mukhortova and Maxim Trankov (Russian champions in 2007 and multiple medalists of the European Championships. The Mukhortova-Trankov couple broke up immediately after the 2010 World Championships. After that, Oleg Vasiliev trains mainly children.

Until 2014, he coached the pair Katharina Gerboldt/Alexander Enbert and the Italian pair Nicole Della Monica/Matteo Guarise in St. Petersburg. After the Olympics, the Italian couple moved to other coaches, but continues to consult with Vasiliev. After the 2014 World Championships, when it became known that Vera Bazarova would no longer perform with her former partner Yuri Larionov, he repeatedly spoke in interviews about the merits of Bazarova, and on April 9, 2014 it became known about the creation of a new pair Vera Bazarova / Andrey Deputat under the leadership Vasilyeva. The couple trains in Moscow, representing Moscow and the Republic of Mordovia.

Personal life

From 1984 to 1992 he was married to Elena Valova. In his second marriage he has a daughter, Ekaterina. Currently divorced. In December 1997, he moved to the USA, to Chicago, where he worked with Totmyanina and Marinin. After 2006 he returned to St. Petersburg, and after 2010 he left for the USA again.

Sports achivments

Results in amateur sports

(with E. Valova)

Competitions	1980-81	1981-82	1982-83	1983-84	1984-85	1985-86	1986-87	1987-88
Winter Olympic Games				1				2
World Championships			1	2	1	2	2	1
European Championships			2	1	1	1	2
USSR Championships		5			2	1
Skate America		3	1
NHK Trophy							1
Nebelhorn Trophy		1
Tournament for prizes from the Moscow News newspaper	3		3	1				2
Coupe des Alpes	1

Olympic champion and coach of Olympic champions, figure skater Oleg Vasiliev, dreamed of going to Beijing and supporting the Russian team at the 2008 Games.

But representatives of winter sports have just begun active preparations for the new season. So Oleg Kimovich and his athletes followed the progress of the Olympics whenever possible, in between training sessions.

And then they left altogether - to Sweden for a training camp. We returned home at the beginning of September, rested for a day, and went back to the skating rink, now our home, at the St. Petersburg Figure Skating Academy.

Looking there, I barely recognized Oleg Vasiliev. Usually agile, confidently performing (still!) many complex elements, he was wrapped in a warm jacket, moved slowly, and spoke in a hoarse voice. It turned out he had a cold. But, nevertheless, he did not cancel the training (and the meeting with the RG correspondent).

Programs will become simpler

Russian newspaper: Maybe we should have rescheduled the lesson, Oleg Kimovich?

Oleg Vasiliev: We really don't have enough time. Including because we returned from vacation and started training later than usual. For objective reasons: I had to attend the ISU Congress in Switzerland.

RG: And what was interesting at the congress?

Vasiliev: The most interesting thing is that in single skating, as well as in pairs, one element was excluded from the free programs. For women - one of the rotations, for men - a sequence of steps.

RG: Has the International Figure Skating Federation taken a course towards simplifying its programs?

Vasiliev: The point is different. It took athletes much more time to complete elements that became more and more complex every year. And the total rental time for programs provided for by the rules remains the same. No one will allow it to be increased. We decided that it would be easier and simpler to remove one element at a time.

RG: How did your couples, in particular the French-Russian duet Valery Vorobyov - Jerome Blanchard, react to these changes?

Vasiliev: But there is no such duet anymore. Valeria no longer studies with us. As for Jerome, at the moment he decided to try himself in a different field - not entirely purely sports.

RG: Did the guys quarrel? But why? Such a promising duet!..

Vasiliev: Nothing extraordinary happened in the relationship between them. It just suddenly became clear that Valeria’s personal interests do not coincide with the interests of the couple...

Mukhortova - Trankov are heroes

RG: It turns out that you now have only one pair, Maria Mukhortova - Maxim Trankov?

Vasiliev: And I have enough of working with them. In the coming season, the guys will fight for the World Championship podium, and this is quite a serious task. I now have neither the strength nor the time to search for young promising skaters. This was undertaken by our Figure Skating Academy together with the city federation of this sport.

RG: You worked for a long time - in France, then in the USA. Maybe there are talented girls there, bring them from there?

Vasiliev: I don't see the need. I don’t believe that our country is impoverished in sports talent.

RG: Do you believe in the Mukhortov-Trankov couple so much that you are ready to give it all your time?

Vasiliev: If I didn't believe it, I wouldn't work with them. They performed very well last season. They became prize-winners of the European Championship. And at the world championship they took seventh place, despite the fact that Maxim competed with a serious injury. I believe that in that situation it was close to heroism. Max's arm practically did not work due to problems with the joint in the cervical spine. Now, thank God, everything is great, he is cured.

RG: Recently there has been talk again that Maria and Maxim are in conflict with each other, as happened in previous years. They say you got it too...

Vasiliev: I don’t know who starts these conversations. Probably those who benefit from it. I dare to assure you: the situation in our creative group is absolutely normal.

RG: In previous years, this couple unfortunately gave reason...

Vasiliev: They just didn't work well with them. In my opinion, these are quite adequate young people. Hardworking and ambitious.

RG: What is their advantage over other skaters?

Vasiliev: In the technical complexity of the elements they perform. But above all in individuality. They have their own personality. They are recognizable. We have to work hard to make them more stable. This is a long job. I, the athletes themselves, and our psychologist participate in it.

In worries about a comfortable future

RG: Last year at the Russian Championships, where they came second, Masha and Maxim complained about the music of their free program, saying it was very annoying, which is why they didn’t win. How can you go out on the ice if you hate the tune you are performing to?

Vasiliev: We were forced to leave the old program "for technical reasons." Due to the fact that both our couple and another Russian duet chose the same music for the new composition. But our rivals submitted the topic to the federation a little earlier. And we just didn’t have enough time to redo anything. This year the situation is different. We are preparing two new compositions - short and free. I won’t say what kind of music. Let this remain our little secret for the time being.

RG: Will these already be Olympic programs for the 2010 Winter Games?

Vasiliev: No, only for one season. This year we are solving a specific task - to climb onto the podium at the World Championships. Let's complete it and move on.

RG: A year ago, you told me that your other students, Olympic champions Tatyana Totmyanina and Maxim Marinin, were going to return to amateur sports to compete at the Olympics in Vancouver. They, however, did not return.

Vasiliev: The guys really abandoned this idea. We decided to continue working as professionals while we were in demand there. Tanya and Maxim brilliantly defended the honor of Russia at the Games in Turin, and now they have the opportunity to earn money with their skills. Life in sports is too short, we need to have time to take care of a comfortable future. When they come to St. Petersburg, they train with me. They do not intersect with other pairs.

RG: Are you and your athletes preparing for the season in St. Petersburg and Sweden?

Vasiliev: We trained with Mukhortova and Trankov in Chicago for three weeks in July. We trained there in conditions close to ideal.

Weight loss