A few days ago, Russian figure skater Alexandra Stepanova announced the birth of her daughter and the continuation of her career with Ivan Bukin under the leadership of Alexander Zhulin. Is it possible for a young mother to win after pregnancy? Sport recalls the brightest cases.
The difficult happiness of Rodnina
In 1972, in Sapporo, the sports couple Irina Rodnina/Alexey Ulanov won Olympic gold. After that, she broke up. Ulanov paired up with his wife, the silver medalist of the 1972 Olympics, Lyudmila Smirnova, and for Rodnina, coach Stanislav Zhuk found almost unknown Alexander Zaitsev in Leningrad.
In Lake Placid, Rodnina won her third Olympic gold medal. For Zaitsev, she became the second. Irina's tears at the awards ceremony spoke of the cost of this victory.
The love story of Ekaterina Gordeeva
In the CSKA sports school, 11-year-old Katya Gordeeva was paired with 15-year-old Serezha Grinkov. As Catherine later admitted, she fell in love with a tall, handsome and reliable partner at first sight. Although the age difference affected, and at first Sergey looked at his partner as a younger sister, and preferred to twist novels with others.
In 1988, the pair Gordeeva/Grinkov won the first Olympic gold. By this time, Sergei no longer looked at Catherine as a sister. Marina Zueva recalled that she even staged programs for a couple as love stories. After the Olympic triumph, Gordeeva and Grinkov went to the ice theater of Tatyana Tarasova, performed at the world championships among professionals.In 1991, they got married, and the next year they had a daughter, Daria. A year later, the IOC allowed professional skaters to return their amateur status and take part in the Olympics. Using this rule, Gordeeva and Grinkov won the Olympics in Lillehammer, becoming two-time Olympic champions. Their daughter Daria was then one and a half years old.If Rodnina and Gordeeva became mothers already in the status of Olympic champions, then Tatyana Navka has a different story. The future Olympic champion of Turin lived in a civil marriage with Alexander Zhulin for several years. At the same time, the duo Tatyana Navka/Roman Kostomarov trained with Natalia Linichuk. She soon found another partner for Roman — Anna Semenovich. Navka, left alone, focused on her personal life. In New York, she married Zhulin, and a few months later Tatyana gave birth to a daughter, whom she named Alexandra after her father. And literally immediately went on the ice for training.
One of my mother's main fans was Alexandra, who at that time was five and a half. After the end of the dance tournament, the Zhulin family came to support the hockey players of the Russian national team.
In a recent interview, Zhulin emphasized that he had experience in preparing young mothers for the Olympics. Perhaps that is why Stepanova and Bukin decided to change coaches, leaving Irina Zhuk and Alexander Svinin? After all, with these coaches they went all the way from beginners to winners of the European Championships.