Tamara Moskvina

Early life

Tamara Nikolayevna Bratus was born 26 June 1941 in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), the daughter of Serafima and Nikolay Bratus. She had two sisters. During the Siege of Leningrad in World War II, her family evacuated to a small village in the Ural Mountains where her mother had relatives. Moskvina grew to only 4'10" due to childhood malnutrition during the war years. The family returned to Leningrad in 1948. Her father, from Kiev, died suddenly at the age of 47.

As a skater

Moskinva began skating in Leningrad at the age of 10, after her father obtained used skates for his daughters. Ivan Bogoyavlensky was her first coach. She practiced at the Iskra and Dinamo rinks, the latter of which was on a tennis court. Igor Moskvin became her coach in 1957. She moved to an ice rink on Vasilyevsky Island which opened in 1958 after conversion from an abandoned church.

Moskvina became the Soviet national ladies' champion for the first time in 1962 and would win the title four more times. Her best finish at an international competition in singles was 14th at the 1965 European Championships. Moskvina may have been the first to perform what is now called a Biellmann spin. She was inspired after seeing a gymnastics competition and began attempting it on the ice. She included the spin at the 1960 European Championships.

At Moskvin's suggestion, she decided to try pair skating. As he later explained, the leading women's coach in those years was Tatiana Granatkina-Tolmacheva, who worked in Moscow and led a group of girls of the same age as Moskvina. Tatiana's husband, Alexander Tolmachev, headed the Figure Skating Federation of Moscow, so Mosvkina, who did not train under Tolmacheva, had little chance to stay in the team. Her first partner was Alexander Gavrilov, with whom she won the 1965 Soviet national title. He retired at the end of the season.

Later in 1965, Moskvina teamed up with Alexei Mishin, whom she had trained alongside when they were both singles skaters. They won bronze at the 1966 Winter Universiade and were sent to their first European and World Championships in 1967. Yubileyny Sports Palace became their training site after its opening in 1967.

Moskvina/Mishin won silver at the 1968 European Championships. The following season, they defeated both the two-time Olympic gold medallists, Ludmila Belousova/Oleg Protopopov, and the future champions, Irina Rodnina/Alexei Ulanov, to win the Soviet national title. Moskina/Mishin took bronze at the 1969 European Championships and then silver at the 1969 World Championships. Moskvina decided to retire from competition in 1969 to start a family.

As a coach

Moskvina became interested in a coaching career during her competitive years. She earned her doctorate in educational psychology from the Leningrad Academy of Physical Culture.

Moskvina has coached at the Yubileyny Sports Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia, for almost her entire career. She was one of the first Soviet coaches to collaborate with the skating world outside the Soviet Union and its satellites. She contributed a report on the 1970 European Championships to Skating Magazine, an American publication, which at that time required clearance through the central news agency in the Soviet Union. She co-authored the International Skating Union's judging handbook for pair skating in 1984. During the 1990s, Yubileyny suffered from poor-quality ice and other problems, resulting in limited training time even for top skaters.

In 1998, Moskvina and her students spent some time at the Stamford Twin Rinks in Stamford, Connecticut. In 1999, Moskvina moved to Hackensack, New Jersey's Ice House and spent several years coaching there. In 2001-2002, she returned to Yubileyny where she continues to coach.

Moskvina coached the following pairs:

Moskvina coached some pairs in collaboration with her husband, Igor Moskvin (Kyoko Ina/John Zimmerman), and some with former students Artur Dmitriev and Oksana Kazakova. Her pairs have worked with various choreographers, including Alexander Matveev, Tatiana Druchinina (until 2011), Valeri Pecherski, Igor Bobrin, and Peter Tchernyshev. Former student Oleg Vasiliev coached Tatiana Totmianina/Maxim Marinin to an Olympic gold medal after Moskvina sent them to him.

During her own skating career, both in singles and in pairs, Moskvina was known for including unusual flexibility moves in her programs. She has passed this on in the choreography for the various pair teams she has coached, inventing many unique pair skating elements in which the man and woman, although performing different movements, still work together as a unit. This style of choreography is sometimes referred to as "opposition choreography," as opposed to shadow or mirror skating, when the two partners perform similar movements in unison together.

In 2011, Moskvina said she planned to retire after the 2014 Olympics but would continue to advise pairs in addition to writing a book on her coaching experiences.

Personal life

Tamara Nikolayevna Bratus married Igor Moskvin in 1964. They have two daughters, Olga Igorevna Moskvina (born 12 April 1970), a linguist, and Anna Igorevna Moskvina (born 14 June 1974), an economist who graduated from Columbia University (NYC).

Awards

Moskvina was inducted into the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2005.