Not all skaters, making their debut at the world championships, receive gold medals. How clean should the rental program be for judges to score high for a beginner! Ilya Kulik was able to do this at eighteen in 1995. Talent and zeal helped the guy get into the national team of the country and win Olympic gold. This article is about this and much more from his biography.
Biography
Originally a conqueror of ice from Russia. Ilya Kulik was born in the capital in 1977. Figure skating chosen in his 5 years. He loved to watch television programs with speeches of champions on ice, and once told his mother that he really wanted to ride the same way. The woman decided that this was a good choice for the child and took him to the sports section of figure skating.
Gromov, a school coach, began to practice with the boy. He liked the plasticity of the child, and, literally on the fly, the clutching elements that the instructor showed. Gromov transferred the young talent to the more experienced coach Kudryavtsev, under whose leadership at the age of 13 Ilya won his first award at the junior tournament in Norway.
The beginning of a sports career
Unique talent and zeal in training raise the bar of Ilya's achievements in figure skating. By the age of 17, he took a dominant position in the world among men's performances. His debuts at the European and World Championships in 1995 earned him gold medals. With his performances, he burst into the world of solitary figure skating, showing all the power of sliding, artistry in gestures, the ability to cleanly perform complex elements and jumps. This is exactly what spectators remembered for renting the skater Ilya Kulik.
Coach T. A. Tarasova
In the next season, the skater begins to train with Tatyana Anatolyevna Tarasova. It was easy for her to work with Ilya, since he had both innate and artistry, and plasticity. She suggested that the skater complicate the drawing of his program by adding complex artistic elements in conjunction with new jumps. Most likely, Ilya could not master this program, so he was very worried at the European Championship in 1996. But it was this tournament that became the testing ground for new programs. However, it is worth remembering that athletes sometimes do the impossible and become winners.
“It had a sobering effect,” the skater comments on his failure. - Each athlete needs to experience this. When this happened to me, I realized that just being good is not enough. Therefore, he took appropriate measures to become the best. "
Ilya goes to the World Cup and becomes a silver medalist, with one judge lost to his opponent.
The skater regained faith in his strength and confirmed that his achievements were not accidental, becoming a winner in the 1997 and 1998 Russian championships, and won the Grand Prix finals in 1997.
Olympics in Nagano
Participation in the championships and enhanced training in connection with the preparations for the Nagano Olympic Games were not in vain. Rehearsed in America, where there is no problem renting ice. Tatyana Anatolyevna Tarasova created a balanced program for Ilya with complex choreography, in which both natural artistry and the skater's musicality were revealed. A short debut set to music by Jean-Michel Jarre. Free on Gershwin’s work “Blue Rhapsody” (blues).
Thanks to his clean rentals of short and free programs, Ilya Kulik makes the most significant achievement in his biography - he becomes the champion of the 18th Winter Olympic Games in 1998 in Nagano (Japan) among men's figure skating men. If we consider the performance "under the microscope", then he was the only one who performed all the jumps cleanly. Only Ilya made the fourth element - a sheepskin coat. He performed a series of five triple jumps and two triple axels. None of the participants had such a rich program.
Kulik's demonstration performances in front of the Japanese public were no less interesting. This is the "Mortal Kombat of the Samurai." The room is not very simple, but spectacular. Ilya became the first loner, whom Tatyana Tarasova brought to the top of Olympus.
Athlete's career could continue. In 1998, he turned 21 years old, but he, having received a serious back injury in 1999, decided to stop performing. Ilya Kulik’s sporting achievements include occupied first places at the World and European Championships, Grand Prix finals and victory at the Nagano Olympic Games. And this is for that short period of time when the young skater took off, from 1990 to 1998.
Life Outside of Sports
Since 1999, Ilya turned into professionals. Living in the States, he took part in the American projects "Champions on Ice" and "Stars on Ice".
They bring the popularity of Ilya overseas. In 2000, he tried himself as an actor, playing a ballet dancer in the film Center Stage ("The Stage"). In 1999, I. A. Kulik graduated from the Russian State Academy of Physical Culture.
In 2001, Ilya Averbukh invited the champion to take part in the Russian version of the show "Dancing with the Stars." In 2008, Ilya and Ekaterina Gordeeva, by this time his wife, were heading to Moscow for the shooting of the program "Ice Age-2".
Personal life of Ilya Kulik
More than 18 years have passed since Ilya completed his sports career. He stopped appearing at major competitions. The audience that was rooting for this young, talented skater forgot him. New talents came to replace, and the young generation of fans turned their attention to them. This is due to the fact that after leaving sports, Ilya Kulik remained in America and continued to participate in various shows of this country related to figure skating.
During a tour with the programs of the ice show Stars On Ice (“Stars on Ice”) in 1999, he became close to the Russian figure skater Ekaterina Gordeeva, who also performed there. The woman after the death of her husband Sergei Grinkov, with whom she rode a pair, remained with her little daughter to live and work in the States.
In general, Ilya and Katya have known each other for a long time. From childhood, they were engaged in figure skating in one section in Moscow, then they crossed paths several times at tournaments when Katerina’s husband was still alive. And it so happened that fate brought them together far from their homeland. Ilya married Catherine in 2001. The wedding was in California, where the skaters lived and currently live.
Children come first
A couple of years later a daughter Lisa was born. Ilya and Katerina are raising two girls. The eldest from her first marriage is Dasha. Katerina was worried that her daughter would not get along with her new husband, but fears were in vain. Ilya made friends with Dasha and even became her figure skating coach. Whether the girl will practice skating as professionally as her parents is unknown. The main thing is that sport is useful for a child.
Having become parents, the skaters began to devote less time to the rink, the figure skating of Ilya Kulik and Katerina Gordeeva faded into the background while the smaller daughter was growing up. Children were brought up by themselves, not trusting this role as a nanny. Parents speak Russian with the girls at home.
Father and mother instilled a love of figure skating for their daughters. In 2007, Katerina and the girls went to the rink at the celebration of Mother's Day. In the photo, Dasha is 15 years old, Elizabeth is 5, and her mother is 36.
Kulik and Gordeeva are watching their physical form, despite the employment of children. It’s a shame for the skaters not to do this, Ilya and Katerina say. A man tries not to gain weight, is fond of martial arts. He likes tennis. Children do not give a lazy lifestyle.
When the girls were young, the skaters trained in turn and minimized their participation in the show programs. If it was a tour, then someone went on tour, and someone stayed with their daughters. This explained why Katerina did not perform with Ilya in pair. For this type of skiing you need to devote a lot of time, serious and lengthy training.
When the daughters became older, the parents made several joint rooms. They performed with one of them at the opening of the Pegula Ice Arena at Pennsylvania State University as part of the first round of the Family Sauce Family Skating Tribute Musselman concert, part of the Oxytrol series for NBC Skating. It was November 3, 2013.
Ilya Kulik now
Perhaps this is all that could be told about the career of the Olympic champion. Currently, Ilya Alexandrovich Kulik is 41 years old. It goes on ice 3-4 times a week. Trained for an hour in order to keep the body in good shape.
Since 2016, he and his wife have been working on the Romeo and Juliet ice show. The public saw him in 2017. In the same year, Ilya and Katerina were in Moscow on the anniversary in honor of the 70th anniversary of the honored trainer Tatyana Anatolyevna Tarasova, where they performed with a joint number. Ilya continues to engage in coaching at the established figure skating school.