November 1 1998 years
A 63-year-old man died of acute heart failure at the Aeroport station in Moscow. Stanislav Zhuk — figure skater, coach. "Emperor of Ice".
He said to his students: "Can't do it? Is it hard? Get off the ice!"
(figure skater, rival Oleg Protopopov)
Was born in Ulyanovsk in 1935. He grew up plump and slightly bow-legged - his peers teased him mercilessly for his build and surname.
After school, he enrolled in the Leningrad Physical Education College. He often went to the rink to practice speed skating and considered a career in hockey. One day, he replaced his partner in a pair with an aspiring athlete and his future wife. Nina Bakusheva — that's how I came to figure skating.
At 22 he became a master of sports.
In 1958, at 23, he performed his partner's support for the first time (Nina Zhuk) on one straight arm. At the time, it was considered dangerous, and some judges refused to count it (at subsequent championships, this element was allowed and considered "high-level performance").
According to experts, he invented about 20 different elements in figure skating.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he and his wife became four-time Soviet Union champions in pairs skating. They also won silver at the European Championships three more times. These were the first Russian medals in pairs figure skating at such a high-level competition.
At 26 he went into coaching.
At 30 he became an Honored Coach of the USSR.
Trained many talented figure skaters, including the legendary Irina Rodnina и Alexey Ulanov, the first Soviet singles skater to win medals at the world championships, Sergey Chetverukhin, the first Soviet medalist at the European Championships in women's singles figure skating Elena Vodorezova.
Zhuk was called a "champion-churning machine." Over 20 years of coaching, his players won 67 gold, 34 silver, and 35 bronze medals at international championships.
He was a member of the party, but never put politics first.
When we left the Soviet Union and came to the World Championships in Copenhagen for the first time in 1982, he was the only one who, not afraid of the KGB that was hanging around him, came up to us and kissed us.
(figure skater Lyudmila Belousova, who left the USSR)
He had a reputation as a demanding coach, never mincing words. But if one of his students was injured, he would accompany them to the doctor, leaving everything else behind.
Trained a lot and cruelly
(Tatiana Tarasova)
This cruelty was dictated by concern for the skaters. Our sport is one of the most dangerous. Stanislav Alekseevich's cruelty was aimed at ensuring that we carried out his instructions as precisely as possible. This saved our health.
(Irina Rodnina)
Since the late 1960s, his colleagues have been hounding him in the press for his alcoholism.
In 1983, at 48, Zhuk was removed from coaching the USSR figure skating team. Sovetsky Sport reported that nearly half of Zhuk's students had left at one point or another amidst scandal. One of them, Sergei Grinkov, Sports officials promised to send him to serve in Siberia if he refused to leave on his own.
In 1986, a denunciation against Zhuk was filed with the CPSU Central Committee: his former student Anna Kondrashova and choreographer Marina Zueva accused the coach of “immoral behavior”—he allegedly harassed young figure skaters.
One of his favorite students, Elena Vodorezova, was also asked to sign the denunciation. But she refused and wrote a letter in defense of the coach.
These nasty rumors started spreading just when I became seriously ill and Zhuk came to the hospital every day, talked to the doctors, and asked when I could return to the ice.
(Elena Vodorezova)
No evidence was ever found to support the accusations.
If I had really done such things, I probably would have been sent to prison long ago.
He tried working in Japan, but returned after a few months: he was unable to train competitors for Russian athletes.
He retired at 52.
Since the mid-1990s, he has again consulted for the Russian national team. He developed techniques and systems of figure skating elements, many of which are still used today.
He died suddenly, on his way to meet with newspaper readers.
