Alexei Mishin

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Alexei Mishin
Mishin with Plushenko in 2004.
Personal Info
Country: Flag of Russia Russia (Flag of the Soviet Union Soviet Union)
Date of birth: March 8, 1941 (1941-03-08) (age 67)
Former Partner: Tamara Moskvina

Alexei Nikolaevich Mishin (Russian: Алексей Николаевич Мишин, born March 8th, 1941) is a Russian former figure skater and a current coach. Among Mishin's current and former students are Olympic champions Alexei Urmanov,Alexei Yagudin, and Evgeni Plushenko. Mishin has also runs summer seminars. Among the skaters who have attended those are Gheorghe Chiper and Stéphane Lambiel.

[edit] Biography

Mishin was spent his childhood in Tbilisi and afterwards moved to Leningrad with his family. He was always interested in mechanics,[1] but at the age of 15 started skating. He was first coached by Nina Lepninskaya,[2], a pupil of Nikolai Panin.

Mishin competed in singles within the Soviet Union and in 1966 he started competing internationally in pairs with Tamara Moskvina. Together they won the 1969 Soviet Figure Skating Championships defeating both the two-time Olympic Gold medalists Ludmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov, and the future champions Irina Rodnina and Alexei Ulanov. They went on to place second at the 1969 World Figure Skating Championships. They won the silver medal (1968) and the Bronze medal (1969) at the European Championships. They later decided to retire to concentrate on a coaching career. Mishin was 28 at the time.

He comments:

Me and Tamara Moskvina were famous in the USSR: people recognized us in the shops, we could buy a car...[3] But from the very start I looked forward to train other people and never regretted becoming a coach.[1]

Mishin graduated from university with a degree in mechanics and started his dissertation on the mechanical base of figure skating technique. He started teaching singles and soon became a well-known coach, due to his training methods that made the skaters learn jumps very quickly.[4] In addition, he has authored several books on the biomechanics of figure skating and jumps which have been published in Russia, Germany, China, Japan and several other countries.[4]

Mishin is married to Tatiana Mishina (née Oleneva), a former figure skater, and they coach together and separately. They have two sons.

He prefers to work with men's single skaters:

Coaching women is dangerous — there's always probability that the story of Pygmalion will recur periodically. My wife was a mere pupil at first. See, what has eventually happened?[1]

He also jokingly[citation needed] says that Russian women are not very good for figure skating: "They are just too strong and big".[5]

Mishin is a professor at the Lesgeft School of Sports Science and Physical Education and give seminars all over the world.[6]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c TV-park magazine (March 28, 2003). Interview with Alexei Mishin (Russian). Retrieved on 2008-02-04.
  2. ^ Biography at Olympic encyclopedia (Russian). Retrieved on 2008-02-04.
  3. ^ That was difficult task due to the shortages of several goods. See Economy of the Soviet Union.
  4. ^ a b Barry Mittan (December 26, 2004). Russia's Mishin Is Dean of Coaches. Retrieved on 2008-03-18.
  5. ^ Alexei Mishin quotes. Retrieved on 2008-02-04.
  6. ^ Alexei Mishin and "Mishin's Magic Vest". Retrieved on 2008-02-04.

[edit] External links

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