Alexei Mishin

Early years

Born in Sevastopol, Mishin spent his childhood in Tbilisi and later moved to Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) with his family. He was interested in mechanics from an early age. He started skating relatively late, at age 15, after his parents brought him to the rink. His father skated with him to get him interested in the activity. Mishin was first coached by Nina Lepninskaya, a pupil of Nikolai Panin, and later by Maya Belenkaya.

Competitive career

Mishin competed in singles within the Soviet Union and won the bronze medal at the 1964 Soviet Championships. In 1966, he took up pair skating as an experiment, teaming up with his first and only partner, Tamara Moskvina. They were coached by Igor Moskvin. Together they won the 1969 Soviet Championships, defeating both the two-time Olympic champions Ludmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov, and the future champions Irina Rodnina and Alexei Ulanov. They went on to win silver at the 1969 World Championships. At the European Championships, they won silver in 1968 and bronze in 1969. Moskvina took time off to have a baby and they decided to retire to concentrate on their coaching careers, with Mishin focusing on coaching singles while Moskvina focused on pairs. Mishin was 28 when he retired from competition and he said he was glad to start coaching when he was young.

He later stated:

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

Coaching career

Mishin graduated from university with a degree in mechanics and his dissertation focused on the mechanical base of figure skating technique. He started with coaching junior ladies to success at national and international competitions, but later switched to men's singles. He rapidly became a well-known coach, due to his training methods that made the skaters learn jumps very quickly. 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.

Mishin prefers to work with men's single skaters. The most successful students are Alexei Urmanov the 1994 Winter Olympics champion, Alexei Yagudin the 2002 Winter Olympics сhampion, a four-time World Champion (1998, 1999, 2000, 2002), and Evgeni Plushenko the 2006 Winter Olympics champion, 2014 Winter Olympics gold medalist, two-time Olympic silver medalist, and three-time World champion. Plushenko came to Mishin without his parents when he was eleven years old. Then Mishin became Plushenko's father figure, both on and off the ice. Since that time, they have been working together for nearly twenty years.

Plushenko later described Mishin as "Professor Higgins", a character from George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion:

Mishin was like a second father, like Professor Higgins. He taught me how to behave in public. In which hand should I hold the knife, and fork. He pulled me out of the dirt, put me on my feet, and made me into a person.

On the subject of female students, Mishin said in 2009, "better one man of average talent than two super-talented ladies" because "compared with women, men are more sporty and talented and able to learn artistic elements faster" but women are "delicate material":

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

Nevertheless, one of his current students is ladies' single skater Elizaveta Tuktamysheva, the 2015 World champion, the 2015 European champion, the 2014–15 Grand Prix Final champion and the 2013 Russian national champion. On the junior level, she is the 2012 Youth Olympics champion, 2011 World Junior silver medalist, and 2010–11 JGP Final silver medalist.

His current students also include: Alexander Petrov, Elizaveta Nugumanova, Artur Dmitriev Jr., Petr Gumennik.

Other notable former students also: Yuri Ovchinnikov, Vitali Egorov, Anna Antonova, Tatiana Oleneva, Oleg Tataurov, Ruslan Novoseltsev, Elena Sokolova, Ksenia Doronina, Tatiana Basova, Andrei Lutai, Sergei Dobrin, Katarina Gerboldt, Artur Gachinski, Maria Stavitskaya etc.

Mishin is a professor at the Lesgaft School of Sports Science and Physical Education and gives seminars all over the world. He is taking part in the development of a figure skating device which measures the number of revolutions in jumps when attached to the skater's body. According to Mishin, this device has already been patented.

Mishin is based at Saint Petersburg's Yubileyny Sports Palace for most of the season but has annual summer training camps in various locations, such as Jaca (Spain), Tartu (Estonia), and Pinzolo (Italy).

Personal life

Mishin is married to Tatiana Mishina (née Oleneva), a former figure skater. They coach together and separately. They have two sons, Andrei Alexeevich Mishin, born in 1977, and Nikolai Alexeevich Mishin, born in 1983.

Orders and rewards

Publications