Alexei Mishin: “I like Yuma Kagiyama. I think he will win this year’s Worlds. His virtuosic command of the skate will allow him to excel, even without a full set of quadruple jumps.”

Interview with Alexei Mishin.

original source: RT dd. January 17th 2025 by Elena Vaitsekhovskaya

In the interview posted on RT, Alexei Mishin talks about quadruple jumps, development of figure skating, men’s single skating and coaching. Here’s a translation.

“Q: At the Russian Nationals, your athlete Evgeni Semenenko managed to reach the podium from ninth place in the short program. When an athlete makes such significant mistakes, do you, as a coach, feel responsible?

Alexei Mishin: I do feel responsible, specifically in this case. Let me explain. Initially, Zhenya struggled with the quad salchow, and we systematically worked on this jump using the method I adhere to: through triples, through a significant number of repetitions. Thanks to this, the salchow came into good condition. However, we did not do such work on the quad toe loop. I regret this, but that’s how it turned out.

But I want to say that Semenenko’s mistake in this jump at the competitions was not caused by him being wary or unsure of the jump; rather, the opposite. He did it too powerfully, too high, even overrotated it. The usual manner of executing this jump always involved leaning the body forward, so in this case, because of the powerful take-off, his body went a bit backward, which didn’t allow Evgeni to land successfully.

Q: Coaches tend to see a mistake even before it happens. At what moment did you realize that Semenenko would not handle the jump?

Alexei Mishin: I was confident he would execute the toe loop. I did not anticipate the failure at all.

Q: The world has been using your research for many years in studying multi-rotational jumps, and Alexei Urmanov mastered the quad toe loop back in the late 1980s. Why have such quad jumps like the lutz, flip, and loop only recently become common? What needed to happen for such a significant breakthrough in difficulty?

Alexei Mishin: Speaking in terms of physics, the laws are constant, nothing new has been invented in that regard. What is happening now, I would explain by stricter adherence to the same principles. Even when I was writing my dissertation in 1973, I noted that there are two components in a jump — the translational, from take-off to landing, and the rotational.

When talking about a large number of rotations, the rotational component is crucial. A person cannot increase height by a third or double, but it is entirely feasible to increase the rotation speed. If we look at how skaters jump now, I wouldn’t say that they jump higher than, for instance, Jozef Sabovcik (a two-time European champion and medalist at the Games in Sarajevo. — RT) did in the 80s. But they are clearly striving to improve the rotational component.

Q: How would you explain that skaters, who apparently have enough physical strength and height, chronically under-rotate jumps?

Alexei Mishin: I don’t often talk about this, except in my professional circle, about what I see as the modern technique of jumping. It involves grouping during the take-off, reaching maximum rotation speed, and maintaining it until landing. If an athlete starts to open up too early, it means the speed will drop. Consequently, the jump will be under-rotated, no matter how high it generally is.

Q: Do you like the current trend in men’s single skating towards a focus on the number of quads?

Alexei Mishin: Yes.

Q: And you’re not at all concerned that most lack the energy for steps?

Alexei Mishin: It’s normal. When mastery of quads stabilizes, steps will necessarily appear. Some might consider my view old-fashioned, although in reality, it is progressive. Figure skating without complex jumps is like a soup made from an axe — it has no future.

Q: Recently I came across an interesting discussion online. It’s said, if a level four step sequence was worth 15 points instead of four, everyone would quickly start working in that direction.

Alexei Mishin: It’s true.

Q: So, does it make sense to change the rules in this respect? Or should we first increase the value of jumps?

Alexei Mishin: You raise a topic I honestly hadn’t thought about. After they increased the importance of spins, the quality improved significantly.

Evgeni Plushenko, back in his day, performed a couple of not very good rotations in a camel spin, followed by an intermediate position, after which he added one and a half rotations in a Biellmann spin. Everyone was delighted. Or recall the step sequnce of Viktor Petrenko, whom I deeply respect: “Tram-pam-pam — taram-tam-tim-pam-pam…” It was the simplest set of steps (referring to “La Traviata” during the Lillehammer Games season. – RT).

Q: But there are other examples too. Patrick Chan, Mao Asada, who performed phenomenal one-foot sequences. But, broadly speaking, it didn’t really reflect in their scores.

Alexei Mishin: In my recent book, I wrote about the trend towards unification. For instance, nowadays, we all use digital photography. However, many are returning to film, believing analog photography, like vinyl sound in music, has its charm and offers different sensations.

That’s exactly what we’ve lost in figure skating too. We stopped doing compulsory figures, and this affected our quality of step execution. Chan, for instance, I know, worked extensively on compulsory figures. I remember times when an athlete’s charisma would enhance their scores. Today, however, we have just a technical sum. Everything is becoming mathematized, and I’m not sure that’s correct.

Understandably, contemporary figure skating is moving forward, as is all of our lives, but it sweeps away certain things that we later recall with nostalgia.

Q: Who would you now call the most charming male single skater in the world?

Alexei Mishin: I like Yuma Kagiyama. I think he will win this year’s World Championships. His virtuosic command of the skate will allow him to excel, even without a full repertoire of senior quadruple jumps.

Q: So, you don’t consider it a drawback that Kagiyama is small?

Alexei Mishin: When he skates, I don’t see it. What truly amazes me is his skating mastery. I’m not trying to judge who’s better or worse, just reasoning. In my view, there are athletes whose second score is based, simply put, on interactions with the audience through their eyes, hands, and other movements. Look below — there often lacks exits, deep edges, or gliding. But the person skates incredibly brightly.

There’s another way of skating, based on the interaction of the skate with the ice. With Kagiyama, as with Patrick Chan, Yuzuru Hanyu, this is what I really appreciate.

Q: In your opinion, what makes Ilia Malinin especially good?

Alexei Mishin: First of all, he jumps uniquely. He spins very quickly in the air. The same can be said about Vladislav Dikidji. He is well-trained technically, but innate qualities lie at the foundation, of course. You can never make a slow spinner spin quickly.

Q: Many of those who have trained with you are now becoming coaches themselves. Among those in the public eye are Evgeni Plushenko, Alexei Urmanov, Oleg Tataurov, Artur Gachinski. Whose work do you appreciate the most?

Alexei Mishin: I like the very fact that my students are becoming coaches. Good ones, by the way. I see a brilliant talent in Alina Pisarenko and Olya Efimova, although these names might not be familiar to everyone.

Q: Can you explain what this talent entails?

Alexei Mishin: Let’s see: Oleg Tataurov has become a wonderful specialist, but he became famous primarily through working with a unique athlete — Dikidji. The girls I mentioned are working with small, yet unknown little ones and raising them into remarkable skaters because they teach them very correctly from the very beginning. Since my wife Tanya now seldom goes to the rink, I have needed help. Those who lay the bricks of our success. And I know exactly what kind of coaches I need.

Q: What type are they?

Alexei Mishin: Those who delve deep into the athlete. I can say that not all are like this. I recall the now outstanding coach Tamara Moskvina when she first started her coaching career. She always traveled with her athletes everywhere, never missed a detail, both at the rink and outside it. She constantly monitored them: “Straighten your leg, raise your hand higher.” It’s not enough just to stand at the boards and provide general direction; you need to immerse yourself in the profession — like Eteri Tutberidze, like Sergei Davidov, and many other specialists, including my students, are doing now.

Q: And some don’t even bother to wear skates when they go out to train.

Alexei Mishin: I work in skates. Here is the point: if we view training as a technological process, a coach brings more benefit to the athlete when standing next to them on the ice.

Q: Aren’t you scared? That you might fall, that your bones aren’t as strong as they were in your youth…

Alexei Mishin: You know, in the last 20 years of my life, there was only one period when I wasn’t skating, and I really regret it. My leg was injured, and I thought that perhaps I could manage by directing from beyond the boards. Even being at some camps in America and Europe, I coached in shoes, which is completely unacceptable by Western standards.

Q: Did they make that clear to you?

Alexei Mishin: No, they continued taking lessons in silence, but I quickly came to the conclusion that it was wrong. As soon as I stop coaching on skates, I think I’ll be taking a step towards my sunset. And if I stop coaching altogether, it would be the final sprint, cutting the ribbon at the finish.

Q: You have many other interests in life, I know.

Alexei Mishin: That’s my flaw.

Q: On the contrary, Tamara Moskvina likes to emphasize in interviews that figure skating is just one of the components of her life.

Alexei Mishin: She was being cunning. She once confessed to me: “Lyosha, I put everything aside for work, absolutely everything.” And not only have I been the constant head of the department of skates and figure skating at the Lesgaft University for 30 years, I’m also always building something at my country house in my free time. Hardly anyone lives there, even Tanya was surprised once: why do we need all this? But I clearly understand that by engaging in building and everything else, I prolong my life. I write books at my country house, collect wall clocks and realize it’s somewhat pathological, but it really interests me. As does cooking.

Q: What traditional dish do you cook for New Year’s?

Alexei Mishin: Stewed lamb with potatoes in a 16-liter pot at the country house. It’s a huge, very beautiful dish, you get aesthetic pleasure while cooking it.

Q: Do you always have a large gathering for New Year’s?

Alexei Mishin: 20–30 people. Two sons with daughters-in-law and grandchildren, wife, friends of the sons — mostly from the tennis world, all our coaching staff that currently works with me.

Q: What’s the most memorable gift you’ve ever received from loved ones?

Alexei Mishin: A friend gave me a Jaguar car, though not for New Year’s, but for my 70th birthday. The car is still alive; my daughter-in-law is driving it now. This gift is pleasant to me primarily because it’s a memory of a wonderful person. His name was Mikhail Kuznetsov; he passed away in America. When I was last in that country, I went to the cemetery, stood near the wall where his ashes are cemented in a capsule, and said, “Thank you very much, Misha, for being in my life.”

He supported my group financially at some point, and I think the ascendance of Liza Tuktamysheva would have been impossible without his help. It was he who bought her an apartment where she could live with her mother after moving to St. Petersburg and train full-time.

Q: Are parents of tennis players and figure skaters equally crazy?

Alexei Mishin: I have a very unusual view of parents. I don’t see them as some kind of hindrance, but as a powerful creative force and a big impetus. In many cases, parents sacrifice everything for their child’s results: time, financial status, not only their own interests but also the interests of other children in the family. I knew several cases where mothers, dedicating their entire lives to figure skating, ended up without husbands. But I have always been lucky with the parents of my students. Whether in the past times when Urmanov, Yagudin, Plushenko, Tataurov, Gachinsky were skating, or now — they have been simply wonderful to my athletes.

Q: What does an athlete have to do for you to decide to stop working with them?

Alexei Mishin: I don’t see anything extraordinary in such situations. I even said once when we were discussing someone’s transition at the figure skating federation: “Divorces in our sport were, are, and will be.” But I want to say that very often an athlete’s departure from a coach creates two positives. The athlete gains the opportunity to try something new, to prove something to their former coach, while the coach gets grounds for analysis: why did it happen? What did you do wrong yourself? After all, no one leaves at the peak; departures are often during a decline. So, you break your head over why the peak didn’t happen or was very short-lived.

Q: What did you do wrong in your work with Matvei Vetlugin?

Alexei Mishin: We simply parted ways. Matvei is a very smart, sensible guy, understood that he could not be first in sports, but wanted to be number one in my group. But it turned out that he was chronically third. That’s how it happened, no one is to blame. I did not take one already adult and quite strong female athlete into my group. Now I think I did the right thing. She would have just distracted me from working with Zhenya, Gleb, with the little kids that I am now working with great pleasure.

Q: Almost all figure skaters go on tour after the December Russian Nationals. What does a coach do during this period?

Alexei Mishin: What wasn’t managed during the year. By the way, I have a very positive attitude towards my athletes’ New Year gigs.

Q: Because you get a percentage of the fees?

Alexei Mishin: My relationship with athletes does not imply that they pay me for participating in shows.

Q: But isn’t it usual for figure skaters to also pay their coaches for these performances?

Alexei Mishin: I don’t practice that. But I think that participating in shows is definitely necessary for figure skaters. In this regard, I am very grateful to Ilia Averbukh, Zhenya Plushenko, and Tanya Navka for inviting my guys to their events. These three individuals stand in one row with the leading coaches in my view. They are, in a sense, creators of figure skating.

Q: If any of those mentioned invited you to their play as a wise man, a wizard, or a fairy-tale dwarf, would you agree?

Alexei Mishin: Yes. But unfortunately, they don’t invite me…”

Related topics: Alexei Mishin, Ilia Malinin, Yuma Kagiyama