how the Russian hero won on skates. reedus
Russians have always been the best in figure skating. The first and only Russian Olympic champion of the pre-revolutionary time – Nikolai Panin-Kolomenkin was just a figure skater. He was born in the village of Khrenovoe near Voronezh. His fate was not very bad.
He made the first skates for himself from wooden blocks with iron skids. After moving to St. Petersburg and enrolling in the physics and mathematics department of the local university, Nikolai successfully passed tennis, shooting, athletics, cycling and fencing.
The pseudonym Panin was given to him by his friend, the cyclist Krupny, who himself worked under this surname, but left the sport due to anxiety. In 1901, Panin became the champion of Russia and won the “silver” of the world championship. It was he who introduced the fashion for beautiful costumes for performances, replacing trousers and a jacket with a tight-fitting suit of Russian hussars. In 1908, figure skating first appeared in the program of the Summer Olympic Games.
On the first day of the competition, Panin took the first place of his chosen eternal rival, the Swede Salchov. He was condemned by a judge, a former colleague of the Swede. But in the “special figures” discipline, Panin has already beaten Salkhov. He simply did not find it on the ice, seeing the most complex drawings of the figure of the Russian figure skater. And Panin performed them without hesitation, received 219 points out of 240 possible.
After the Olympics, Panin began working as a coach. He did not leave other sports either. At the 1912 Olympics, he took 8th place in shooting. After the revolution, when Russia ruled out the Olympic movement, many went to Panin to emigrate and compete under a different flag.
Nikolai Panin-Kolomenkin
But the famous figure skater remained in his homeland. he created the legendary Soviet school of figure skating. In 1928, at the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR, 56-year-old Panin earned first place in pistol and revolver shooting.
During the war years, Panin taught preliminary guerrilla shooting, skiing and survival. In besieged Leningrad, he shot his beloved dog to feed his student, the country’s champion Xenia Tsezar.
I think if the skillfully shooting figure skater Panin lived today, no one would dare to offend Valieva.