Alexei Yagudin

Aleksei Konstantinovich Yagudin was born on March 18th 1980 in Leningrad (now
St. Petersburg), Russia. He was named after his grandfather, Aleksei.

He was an ailing boy and the doctors told his mother, who was a skater, to take him to the rink. He was four years old.

Lyosha's first rink was in church which was nationalised during the war. His
first coach was Alexandr Mayorov. Aleksei really admired him.

When Lyosha was eight years old on the one of children competition of figure
skating he made 50 "revolvers" on each leg. It was the begining of the figure
skating legend named "Aleksei Yagudin".

In the year of 1990 Mayorov moved to Sweden and Aleksei begans training
for Aleksei Mishin. So he moved to Yubileiny Sport Club (in St. Petersburg). As a 10 year old boy he was doing two triple jumps in his program.

The year 1991 was a sad year for Aleksei. His parents Zoya and Konstantin got divorced. Konstantin abandoned the family and moved to Germany and Aleksei has never seen him since. Now he says: "I do not want to see my father. My mother raised me and she was like a mother and a father."
He lived with his mother and granny Maria in one flat (russian called
"comunalka") with other family. Once he said: "My dream is to have our own
one-room flat and eat bananas every day!" Maybe this is why one of his 1997 season
programs was "Akuna Matata" or "One Banana".

Aleksei was seventeen when he won gold medal at World Junior Figure Skating
Championchips in 1997 in Australia. This time he said words that are known by all his
fans: "When I'd won this competition I said WOW!" he smiles. Anyway in the same
year he won World Figure Skating Championchips bronze. Aleksei Yagudin came to
the elite of figure skating.

In 1998 Alyosha won his first title of World Figure Skating Champion. It was in
March. Two months later, in May, he changed coach and with his new trainer,
legendary russian skater Tatiana Tarasova, moved to the USA.

Zoya Alekseevna remembers that when Aleksei was a child he dreamed to be an
engineer or a taxi driver: "Our room floor was full of bricks, cars, toy-castles &
so on...", she smiles. Now Yagudin has three real cars and he enjoys driving them. As all russians he loves fast driving and sometimes he has had trouble with the US police.

Also in the USA Aleksei bought a pet, an American cocker-spaniel, named Lawrence after Aleksei's favourite program "Lawrence of Arabia". Lyosha calls him Lawrie and tells us: "All my life I've been dreaming of a dog. Tatiana Anatolyevna said that she would buy me a dog if I did 10 perfect jumps. I was doing them again and again but she was never satisfied. So I went out and bought it myself." Now Lawrie lives in St.Petersburg with Aleksei's family because Lyosha lives in his friends flat in the USA.