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Her dance duet with Alexander Zhulin did not receive the well-deserved regalia, their personal life together also soon collapsed . Sport tells the story of a strong woman who managed to overcome scandals, pain, cruelty with dignity and become happy. On Tuesday, one of the most sophisticated figure skaters in the country, Maya Usova, celebrates her anniversary.
“I blamed the sport and everyone around me”
In 1993, Usova and Zhulin became world and European champions for the first time and were considered favorites for the upcoming 1994 Olympics, but at the pre-Olympic European Championship they lost to Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean, who had returned to amateur sports, and in Lillehammer to Oksana Grischuk and Evgeniy Platov. Usova arrived at the 2003 World Cup in Washington as a coach. She worked in Tatyana Tarasova's group. Having caught Maya in the smoking room near the sports palace, where the competition was taking place, I arranged an interview with her and heard a real confession.
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“Natalya Dubova paired me with Zhulin in 1980, and for eight whole years we were the fourth dance duet in the USSR,” Maya recalled. “Only in 1989, when Marina Klimova and Sergei Ponomarenko were unable to take part due to illness participation in the European Championship, we went instead of them. I had a complex of fourth place for a very long time.”
As Usova admitted, sometimes she wanted to give up everything, but she and Zhulin were fans of figure skating. “There were difficult trainings, and difficult situations at competitions,” said Maya. “It seemed that at the next competitions everything would be fine. When everything remained the same, it seemed that at the next – and so on for nine years! And yet we got our hours”.
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But after Lillehammer it seemed that everything was over. The family that Usova and Zhulin created in 1986 could not be saved, and the Olympic gold slipped away from their hands. Only after two months (as Maya emphasized, the most difficult in her life) she realized that the Olympic Games are not everything, and figure skating is only part of life. Usova answered very frankly when asked if she blames figure skating for destroying her family.
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“Love left before,” Maya emphasized with a facial expression that I still remember. “When this all happened, I blamed the sport, and everyone around me. But what does figure skating have to do with it? It’s not just skaters who are breaking up their families, and blame This sport is just stupid. I won’t tell you any details, as Grischuk does, who started an affair with Zhulin. I don’t like it when they dig through my underwear.”
Despite the divorce, which was not just difficult, but truly scandalous, the Usova/Zhulin duo continued to perform in professional shows after the 1994 Olympics. The real sensation was the castling that took place after Nagano, where Grischuk and Platov won their second Olympic gold. The unpredictable Oksana paired up with Zhulin, but this duo performed on the show for a very short time. But Usova and Platov stayed for four years.
“Stacks of suitors are not lying under my feet”
“I am grateful to Zhenya and Tatyana Anatolyevna, who contacted me,” Maya recalled. “Before the first training session with Platov, I was very worried. I never thought that at the end of my career I would skate with another partner, and Zhulin would leave me. It was very difficult, “But after four years of joint performances with Platov, I realized: partners on ice can be just good comrades.” Platov himself said that after Grischuk, training and performing with Usova seemed like a resort to him.
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In 2002, after 14 years of performing on the Tom Collins tour, Usova’s professional career ended. And again an offer came from Tarasova, for which Maya never tired of thanking the coach. Moreover, she said that she often wanted to bury herself in her own shoulder, sit, and talk about her problems. For a long time, Maya had only one such shoulder, her mother’s, and then Tatyana Anatolyevna appeared in her life. Although, as the then-beginning coach emphasized, working with Tarasova was not an easy task, and there was practically no free time left.
The two-time Olympic medalist, who trained with Dubova throughout her career, began training universities with the then already recognized master Tarasova together with Nikolai Morozov, but he very quickly chose to go on an independent voyage. Usova regarded this step as a betrayal and specifically emphasized that she would never allow pain to be caused to a person who believed in her.
Usova spoke very frankly then about her secret dream: “Many people wonder why I am alone now. I am a free woman, I can do whatever I want, and there are no stacks of suitors lying under my feet. There is a person whom I love, but to connect with I can’t tell my fate. Maybe everyone thinks that I’m so unapproachable, strong and beautiful that they can’t even approach me, but I’m ordinary!”
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After working with Tarasova, the Russian champion stayed in the USA for some time, training young skaters. And in 2005, she came as a guest of honor to the World Championships in Moscow, where she met Anatoly Orletsky, doctor of medical sciences, leading surgeon at the sports trauma department of the CITO, and married him. In August 2010, perhaps the skater’s most cherished dream came true: she had a daughter, Anastasia. After this, Usova practically disappeared from the radar in the world of figure skating, although, while working as a coach, she received an ISU technical specialist license and in Washington said that she was interested in trying herself in this capacity.
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