Irina
RODNINA

My goal since childhood has been to avoid the doctors. I go to them only when things get really bad. As for old professional diseases: torn shoulders, concussion, spinal injuries – I treat them on my own. They bother me from time time, but I try not to take medications. *

I love high heels, but sometimes I put on platforms. But I do not really like accessories; I only wear classic stud earrings. This became a habit ever since I started skating with Alexander Zaitsev –he tore my earlobe once when he caught on a large earring.

I think the main thing is moving towards your goal. When it is really important, you don’t think about how much work it will require. They wrote about me that my life was limited because of sport ... That’s nonsense. Well, I didn’t play in the sandbox, but I loved figure skating ... Sport actually teaches you to defeat yourself, not your rival. And that’s the most valuable victory.

All my life I was terribly afraid of losing; it seemed to me the most terrible thing in the world. I was afraid in August, September, October, and by January, when the main competitions of the season began, this fear disappeared, melted away without a trace. It took fierce work to push it out.

To give away victories to rivals? No way! At the 1972 World Championships, I stepped out on the ice with a hole in my head. The day before the competition, I fell from a two-metre height, hit my temple hard and was unconscious for two hours. The doctors said there was no way I could skate. But I stepped out on the ice. At such times you don’t think about the consequences. In hindsight you begin to realise the risk. I have needed glasses ever since that incident. I like making gifts, but not this kind of gifts.

We are the children of the victors’ generation. Our parents won the war and we were brought up in the same spirit. And what would the young people of today die for? They prefer to live and work without lofty rhetoric about serving the Fatherland. They want compensation. Therefore, we will remember the glorious past, watch Slovenia’s Petra Majdic competing with broken ribs, and hope that our athletes will not fall out of the race in a similar situation...

* The information is based on the accounts of the personas featuring in this section as well as accounts of their family members, acquaintances and colleagues