Nikolai Velikov, the coach of Ekaterina and Fedor Sokolov:
"A skating pair is strong if the lady is strong"
Unlike most of his peers, Nikolai Velikov didn't have to ask his parents to buy a pair of skates for him. The coach of 7 junior world champions in pair skating and several world champions in senior pair skating (including the 1994 World Champions Evgeniya Shishkova and Vadim Naumov and the year 2000 World Champions Maria Petrova and Alexei Tikhonov) hit the ice when he was 15 and working as a welder at a factory in the-then Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) of the 60s. The reason was… Cherchez la femme – even two of them. He once watched the film "Sun Valley Serenade" featuring 3-time Olympic Champion Sonja Henie and also fell in love with a girl who was a skater. Nikolai wanted to spend more time with her. This adolescent crush didn't flourish into a long-term relationship, but Velikov's coaching career did, as well as his professional and personal relationship with Lyudmila Sinitsyn, now a renowned pair skating coach Lyudmila Velikov, whom he married a few years after he started skating on his own. It was a great experience talking to Nikolai during the 2008/09 Israel Nationals in Metulla.
From welders to skaters
-Nikolai, you started skating much later than most other skaters, yet, were able to begin your coaching career when you were in your early twenties.
-I was skating with Lyudmila, my future wife, but an illness kept me off the ice for a long time and I had to quit skating. We got married when I was still being ill, I switched to coaching, and Lyudmila was my first trainee. I didn't want her to quit because of me and found her a new partner. But this new skating partnership lasted only for a year and a half, and soon we began coaching together. At least she couldn't blame me for deterring her from skating.
-And a few years later you broke into the international arena as coaches.
-That's right; we've coached 7 junior pair champions, and 2 senior pairs who became world champions. Our first significant success came with coaching Marina Poplavskaya and Alexei Pogodin. They became the national junior champions of USSR. The first pair that got to the podium at international competitions was that of Nellie Chervotkina and Viktor Teslya.
Staying with juniors
-Have you always coached in St.Petersburg?
-Yes. I also worked in Tatiana Tarasova's group when she was coaching Irina Rodnina and Alexander Zaitsev and Irina Moiseeva and Andrei Minenkov. This added a lot to my coaching experience. She's s a workaholic –can stay on the ice all day. And notably, she would go through fire and water for her students.
-Your students have mostly been junior champions. That's the niche you feel most comfortable working in?
-Yes. I realized a long time ago that I prefer working with juniors most of the time. I see my students becoming senior champions with other coaches and sometimes other partners. For example, Maria Petrova was junior champion with Anton Sikharulidze, and Marina Mukhortova and Maxim Trankov [the current European sliver medalists] were junior champions as well training in my group.
New trainees from the capital city
-And now could you say a few words about Ekaterina and Fedor ]Sokolov]?
-They came to me in December 2007 as an already-fledged couple having trained in Moscow for a few years. I needed some time to ease myself into working with a new pair stamped with a style of a different coach.
-Could you elaborate on that a bit more?
-Fedor was a good single skater. He trained under Rafael Arutyunyan, and has good basic skills. Ekaterina started skating later, and needs to catch up. Usually the female partner is the core of a skating pair – if the lady is strong, the pair is strong too. So, Ekaterina and Fedor need to work a lot to build on unison and stability. It will take at least a year.
Crabbed Age? Not in figure skating
-For many years you had been working under the old judging system. What's your attitude to the innovations that have been introduced to it in recent years?
-It's a mixed attitude. I believe that the artistic impression is the most important part, and it cannot be achieved under the new system – a lot of elements are stretched out in time to gain higher technical levels, especially the spins and spiral sequences. Figure skating is an intrinsically difficult sport, and most elements need years to master. So, there's enough to judge the difficulty without the proscribed duration and movement.
Some personal information
Nikolai and his wife Lyudmila have been married for about 40 years. They have a daughter, who's tried various sports ranging from snowboarding to rock climbing, and two grandsons. Both of their grandsons do skating.
