Alexei Konstantinowitsch Jagudin

Alexei Yagudin
Full name	Alexei Konstantinowitsch Jagudin
nation	Russia
birthday	March 18, 1980
place of birth	Leningrad,  Soviet Union
size	175 cm
Career
discipline	Single run
Trainer	Tatiana Tarasova, Alexei Mishin
choreographer	Nikolai Morozov
status	resigned
End of career	2003
Medal table
Olympic medals 1 × 0 × 0 × World Cup medals 4 × 1 × 1 × EM medals 3 × 2 × 0 ×
winter Olympics gold Salt Lake City 2002 Men's  World figure skating championships bronze Lausanne 1997 Men's gold Minneapolis 1998 Men's gold Helsinki 1999 Men's gold Nice 2000 Men's silver Vancouver 2001 Men's gold Nagano 2002 Men's  European figure skating championships gold Milan 1998 Men's gold Prague 1999 Men's silver Vienna 2000 Men's silver Bratislava 2001 Men's gold Lausanne 2002 Men's
Placements in the figure skating Grand Prix
Podium placements 1. 2. 3.  Grand Prix Final 2 1 0  Grand Prix competitions 12 2 2

Alexei Konstantinowitsch Jagudin ( Russian Алексей Константинович Ягудин , listen ^{? / I} ; English Alexei Yagudin ; born March 18, 1980 in Leningrad , Soviet Union ) is a former Russian figure skater who started in a single run . He is the Olympic champion of 2002 , the world champion of 1998 , 1999 , 2000 and 2002 and the European Champion of 1998 , 1999 and 2002 .

Career

Alexei Konstantinowitsch Jagudin was born on March 18, 1980 in what was then Leningrad, now Saint Petersburg . He began figure skating at the age of four, which his mother, Soy, encouraged him to do. His father divorced his mother when Yagudin was a child and left the family. Jagudin, who was an only child, from then on lived alone with his mother. Jagudin could do all double jumps before he was ten and all five triple jumps before he was twelve. Up to this point he was trained by Alexander Majorow . When he went to Sweden in 1992, Jagudin was introduced to the famous trainer Alexei Mishin . He trained in Mishin's group from now until 1998.

In 1994 Jagudin began to compete in international competitions. In 1996 he became World Junior Champion in Brisbane, Australia . He contested his first world championship in 1997 in Lausanne and finished third straight away on the podium. He won his first major international senior title a year later, at the 1998 European Championships in Milan before his future rival Yevgeny Pljuschtschenko . At the subsequent Olympic Games in Nagano , Jagudin struggled with severe pneumonia and still came in fifth. A month later he won his first world championship title in Minneapolis in front of local hero Todd Eldredge and compatriot Plyushchenko. He was the first Russian to become world champion after the collapse of the Soviet Union and, at 18 years and 15 days, the second youngest world champion in history, after Donald McPherson , who was six days younger than Jagudin at the 1963 World Cup . Two months after this triumph he ended his collaboration with Alexei Mishin and switched to the famous trainer Tatiana Tarasova . She was to remain his trainer until he retired in 2003.

The notorious rivalry between Yagudin and Pljushchenko began when they were both still training in Alexei Mishin's group, but got even stronger when Yagudin switched to Tarasova. Yagudin claimed that Mishin had preferred Pljushchenko to him because, unlike him, he was not prone to contradictions and did not hesitate to follow what Mishin asked of him.

In the 1998/99 season Jagudin won eleven of the thirteen competitions in which he participated. Including the professional world championship ahead of Kurt Browning and the Grand Prix final . Above all, however, he defended both of the big titles from last year. At the European Championships in Prague he won again before Pljushchenko, as well as at the World Championships in Helsinki .

At the beginning of the next season, 1999/2000, Jagudin struggled with injuries. He had to skip the Grand Prix final due to knee problems and lost the national championships and the European championship in Vienna against his rival Pljushschenko. At the World Championships in Nice , however, he was again at the height of his performance and won for the third time in a row at World Championships.

The following 2000/01 season would be a difficult one for Jagudin. He concentrated more on the artistic part of the program and came up with even more difficult choreographies with new, innovative sequences of steps. The consistency in the jumps suffered as a result. He was also plagued by injuries again and again. He was defeated by Pljushchenko at the Grand Prix finals, the national championships and again at the European championships . Shortly before the World Cup in Vancouver , his right foot was injured again, which led to a disastrous performance in qualifying for him. In his qualifying group, he was only fifth. In the short program, however, he showed an outstanding performance that earned him a standing ovation and great compliments, especially with regard to his fighting performance, after all the problems. In the end it was enough for the runner-up world championship title behind Pljuschtschenko.

The 2001/02 Olympic season began for Jagudin with a disappointing third place at the Goodwill Games in September 2001 in Brisbane. From this point on, however, Jagudin did not lose any more competition this season. He won the Grand Prix final as well as the European Championship in Lausanne . His greatest triumph, however, was the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City . Not only did he become Olympic champion ahead of Pljuschtschenko and Timothy Goebel , he also succeeded as the first figure skater in 50 years to be placed in first place by every judge in both the short program and the freestyle. In addition, in the freestyle, which he ran to the film music for The Man in the Iron Mask , in addition to only 5.9 ratings, he received four times the top grade 6.0 for the presentation, including from the USA and Germany. Before him, no other figure skater had received the highest rating at the Olympic Games more than once.

At the world championship that year Jagudin made the triumph perfect and became world champion for the fourth time in his career and made history again in Nagano . He got the 6.0 six times in the short program and twice in the freestyle. This made him the first and only figure skater in history to receive six perfect scores in a short program, including the highest score for the required elements for the first time. Jagudin was the first figure skater since John Curry in 1976 to win the European Championship, World Championship and Olympic Games in one season. He was the first to win the Grand Prix final, which, however, had not yet taken place in Curry's time.

After the Olympic season, Jagudin was diagnosed with congenital hip damage, which forced him to retire, which he officially announced in October 2003. A month prior to the announcement, he was briefly arrested after driving drunk in the United States. Jagudin had already sought treatment in his homeland in 1999 for alcohol problems. After retiring from competitive sports, he switched to the professionals and toured with Stars on Ice and Ice Symphony .

In 2003 Yagudin was awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland of the Russian Federation.

In 2004 he advised Brian Joubert , a competitor of his former arch-rival Yevgeny Pljuschtschenko, and coached Andrei Grjasew , the 2007 Russian champion.

In 2005 Jagudin published his autobiography. Since that year he also appeared in numerous episodes of Stars on Ice, later Ice Age. In 2008 he tried his hand at the theater as an actor, playing the role of a Russian president.

In July 2007 Jagudin had a new hip joint inserted. In August he announced that he would return to competitive sports after four more years as a professional. His former trainer Tatyana Tarasova and his former choreographer Nikolai Morozov agreed to train him again if this is the case. In November 2007 Jagudin suffered a new injury and announced that a comeback would be too difficult under the circumstances.

On June 2, 2008, Jagudin's car was stolen, which also contained one of the gold medals he won at world championships. The car and the medal have not been found to this day.

Alexei Yagudin lives in Moscow today . Since 2008 he has been with the Olympic champion, multiple European and World champion in pair skating , Tatjana Totmjanina is in a relationship. Their child Jelisaveta was born on November 20, 2009, followed by their second daughter Michelle (Мишель) on October 2, 2015. In February 2016 he married Tatjana Totmjanina.

Results

Championship / year	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003
winter Olympics				5.				1.
World championships			3.	1.	1.	1.	2.	1.
European championships		6th	5.	1.	1.	2.	2.	1.
Junior World Championships	4th	1.
Russian championships	5.	4th	3.	2.	2.	2.	2.
-
Grand Prix competition / season	1994/95	1995/96	1996/97	1997/98	1998/99	1999/00	2000/01	2001/02	2002/03
Grand Prix Final				5.	1.		2.	1.
Skate America			3.		1.	1.	2.		Z
Skate Canada						1.	1.	1.
Sparkassen Cup			3.		1.
Trophée Lalique				1.	1.	1.	1.	1.
Cup of Russia			2.	1.

Z = withdrawn

Web links

• Alexei Jagudin in the database of the International Skating Union (English)
• Alexei Konstantinowitsch Jagudin in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} New Alexey Yagudin interview. April 16, 2008, accessed July 30, 2010 (English, translation of a Russian article on sovsport.ru of February 28, 2008). 
2. ↑ Yagudin wins; Goebel brings home bronze. ESPN , February 15, 2002, accessed July 30, 2010 . 
3. ↑ Alexei Yagudin - Online Interview. goldenskate.com, April 12, 2002, archived from the original on May 1, 2010 ; accessed on July 30, 2010 (English). 
4. ^ Yagudin arrested for DUI. CBC Television , September 1, 2003, accessed July 30, 2010 . 
5. ^ Yagudin Under Care For Alcohol Problem. The New York Times , June 12, 1999, accessed July 30, 2010 . 
6. ↑ Kathleen Bangs: Gladiator Gone Global - Alexei Yagudin. goldenskate.com, April 8, 2007, archived from the original on February 18, 2010 ; accessed on July 30, 2010 (English). 
7. ↑ Lynn Rutherford: Averbukh attributes success to persistence. (No longer available online.) Icenetwork.com, June 6, 2008, archived from the original on June 8, 2008 ; accessed on July 30, 2010 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
8. ↑ ^{a b} daughter for Totmianina and Yagudin . In: pirouette . Volume 48, No. 9, 2015, p. 7.
9. ↑ Ярослав КОРОБАТОВ: Татьяна Тотьмянина родила Алексею Ягудину дочь. Komsomolskaya Pravda , November 21, 2009; accessed July 30, 2010 (Russian). 
10. ↑ Totmianina and Yagudin married . In: pirouette . Volume 49, No. 3, 2016, p. 19.