“Mom made the decision.” Averbukh told how he got into figure skating

Russian Olympic silver medalist, coach and choreographer Ilya Averbukh told how his career as a figure skater began.

— How did your career start?

— Each of us has touching stories. When I was a child, my mother decided that I should take up figure skating. I worked in an open rink and got kicked out everywhere. In the Soviet system, everyone was accepted and expelled just as easily. My mother took me to another section, then decided that she would train me herself. Although she was a microbiologist by profession, she only knew that she had to stretch her arms and legs and shouted that she had to push harder on the ice. She sewed me a jumpsuit with the inscription “Eeyore”, which the hockey guys made fun of.

Nothing worked for me in single skating, I didn’t land a jump. But then a big incident happened: Lyudmila Pakhomova told me that I should go dancing. I went to CSKA. “Everything went away there quite quickly,” reports the correspondent according to Averbukh’s words.

Averbukh is a 2002 Olympic silver medalist in ice dancing. He is also the owner of a complete set of world championship medals.