Coach Arkady Chernyshev biography personal life. Arkady Chernyshev (coach) - biography, information, personal life

Chapter Eight TARASOV AND CHERNYSHEV

Yuri Mashin, appointed in 1962 as chairman of the Central Council of the Union of Sports Societies and Organizations of the USSR (one of the variants of the name of the Ministry of Sports in Soviet times), confirms the determination of Chernyshev and Tarasov to work on equal terms and, in professional matters, in complete independence from leaders of all ranks. , including from the machine itself. “When I headed the Central Council,” he recalled, “CSKA coach Anatoly Tarasov and Dynamo coach Arkady Chernyshev came to me. They came and asked from the doorway: "Do you want us to win the world championship?" - "What's question?" - I answer. “We are two antipodes, but we are ready to unite to win together! But we have conditions. First, whatever you call us, we must be equal. Second, we make decisions, and you support them. ”

Tarasov remembers the history of their joint appointment to the national team differently. From 1948 to 1962, they led the team of Moscow and the USSR in turn. First Tarasov, then Chernyshev, then again Tarasov, again Chernyshev ... Sometimes they trusted her to Yegorov. The statistics, it must be admitted, are merciless. During the four years that Chernyshev headed the national team (1954-1957), the team won two world championships and the Olympics. And only in 1957 she became the second at the World Championship held in Moscow, having not lost a single match, but having made two draws with the Czechs and Swedes. For the next three seasons, Tarasov was the eldest: two silver medals at the world championships and an Olympic bronze. In 1961, Chernyshev again took the national team to the World Cup in Switzerland - the result: only third place.

“It's hard to say,” Tarasov writes in his book “Coming of Age”, “how long this leapfrog would have continued if one fine day in 1963 we were both not invited to the Central Council of the Union of Sports Societies and Organizations of the USSR to Leonid Sergeevich Khomenkov. From the very first words, Leonid Sergeevich explained that from now on we would be preparing the national team together ... "

And although Tarasov, apparently, names the date inaccurately (the USSR national team with new coaches was supposed to go to the World Cup in the USA in March 1962, but did not go there for political reasons), I am inclined to believe his version. (A well-known specialist in athletics, Khomenkov was then deputy chairman of the Central Council.) “This is not only a request or advice,” Khomenkov continued. - This is a decision of the Central Council, and you must comply with it. An order is an order. And different characters are good. You will complement each other ... "

The son of Chernyshev, Boris Arkadievich, has his own version of the appearance of the tandem. “In 1962,” he said in an interview with the press service of the Moscow hockey club “Dynamo”, “the chairman of the USSR Sports Committee Nikolai Romanov invited his father to his place:“ Arkady Ivanovich, after all, you and Tarasov are two of the most experienced and authoritative coaches in our country. Maybe it’s in the interests of the national team to work together? ” Chernyshev replies: "Of course, you can work, but we have such different views on hockey that it will be difficult for us to find a common language." But Romanov began to insist. Then my father said: "I can only agree to this if I am a senior coach, and Tarasov will help me as a second coach." Tarasov agreed to these conditions. Although when Anatoly Vladimirovich worked for four years as a senior coach in the national team, he repeatedly invited his father to be his second coach, but he refused. In the national team, Chernyshev and Tarasov had a kind of division of labor: their father focused on tactics and strategy of playing with a future opponent, and Tarasov was mostly involved in the training process. Although they discussed all the fundamental issues together. "

And finally, another version of the story with the appointment of Tarasov and Chernyshev. “I already remembered with a kind word the head of our country's sports in the post-war years,” Anatoly Vladimirovich writes in the book “Hockey. Pioneers and newcomers ". - It was he who once had the idea to put me and Arkady Chernyshev on the same team - at the head of the USSR national hockey team, giving us equal power and rights. Inviting us into the office and not even allowing us to sit down (and this was the only such case in my memory), he immediately declared: “From this day on, both of you are the senior coaches of the national team. Go and work! ” And we, slightly shy and numb with surprise, silently left the office, although we had something to say to the head of our sport. Until that day, we had worked separately for many years and seemed to be at opposite poles. This is understandable. We have different characters, different interpretations of hockey ... How is it - to work on equal terms, to divide everything in half? But that strange order, combining the efforts of two dissimilar coaches, brought many victories to Soviet hockey, and we, both coaches, were completely satisfied. And one more thing, in my opinion, is very important: it has enriched us. Yes, in communication, mutually learning from each other, we have become richer as individuals, as specialists. It was as if we entered into an unspoken competition: no one wanted, at least in the eyes of a partner, to look weaker, less competent in something. So we got a strong alloy. "

The situation with the appointment of Tarasov and Chernyshev most likely developed as follows. The third place of the USSR national team at the 1961 World Championship (and before that - the third place at the Olympics in Squaw Valley) forced the then head of the Central Council Nikolai Romanov (he transferred the case to the Machine in 1962) to look for a way out of the routine that had turned into a routine with the replacement of Chernyshev with Tarasov and vice versa. And the wise Romanov came up with the idea to unite two specialists. He tested the idea in informal conversations with assistants, hockey specialists. She did not evoke approval: the views on the game of Tarasov and Chernyshev were too different.

Nevertheless, Romanov continued to insist on his own. Both coaches really visited him, and Khomenkov, and U Mashina. Romanov met with them literally on the eve of Mashin's arrival in his office. Organizational issues were discussed at Khomenkov's, Romanov's deputy, and then at Mashin's. Have Machine - in order to enlist the support of the new sports leader in preparation for the World Cup, which the Soviet team did not have a chance to attend in the end. An experienced apparatchik, Mashin discussed, just in case, the candidacy of coaches with his curator at the Central Committee of the CPSU Shelepin. Only after that did he meet with Tarasov and Chernyshev and, it is worth noting, he acted far-sightedly, recognizing the right of coaches to independence in professional matters. The appointment took place in the late autumn of 1961.

From the very first days of the joint work of Tarasov and Chernyshev, Mashin supported them. He told, for example, how one day, before the World Championship-63, Tarasov appeared in his office and said that "Loktev should not go to the tournament." "Why?" - Mashin was surprised. In his place, anyone would be surprised, because Loktev at that time was one of the strongest Soviet hockey players, and the three forwards, which he entered with Almetov and Aleksandrov, were considered the number one three in European hockey. “He smokes,” Tarasov replied succinctly. "Is the decision final?" - just in case, Mashin specified. “And irrevocable,” Tarasov put an end to it. "Pinwheel", government telephone, in the office After the announced decision not to include Loktev in the car, the car was torn from calls, but the sports director, as he had promised the coaches, kept their side. The decision on Loktev, of course, was made by his coach at CSKA - Tarasov, but everything was discussed with Chernyshev.

Both coaches, as they later admitted to each other, were, to put it mildly, surprised by the decision to form a tandem. Tarasov generally thought that they would not be able to work together. “We are very different,” he said, recalling the then appointment, which became fateful for Soviet hockey in general and for the USSR national team in particular.

But they never had quarrels, they never undermined each other's authority - "even in those days when one of us was fired and replaced by another." Tarasov does not deny that at first they had "some kind of dislike for each other, which is not so difficult to understand: we, in fact, competed with each other in absentia." Since they were put in turn at the head of the national team, they knew for sure: if not one, then the other would again become the senior.

The usual structure was broken. Tarasov and Chernyshev, who agreed with the arguments of the sports (and party, of course) bosses, most of all worried about the different views inherent in both of the training regime, classes, discipline and - what is especially important! - different understanding of the general principles of hockey, different views on the tactics of playing in defense and attack.

The constant conflicts between Tarasov and Chernyshev is another myth designed to emphasize the “intolerable” character of Anatoly Vladimirovich, his “unbridledness”, the desire to crush everyone who was on his way or next to him. In reality, Tarasov and Chernyshev made up a coaching pair, phenomenal not only for Soviet, but also for world sports. Nine victorious world championships and three gold Olympics in a row - this will never be repeated by anyone. But this is the tip of the iceberg of the art of coaching. The intense joint work of the two coaches remained out of sight of the general public.

Of course, they couldn't do without disputes in tandem. But the matter did not come to quarrels. The feeling of self-irony inherent in both saved. “I am happy that fate has united us,” wrote Anatoly Vladimirovich in an essay about Chernyshev published in the World of Hockey edition. “But when she bred us (and some people used to count on an aggravation of relations), a black cat never ran.”

Tarasov and Chernyshev immediately agreed on the division of powers in the national team. “They learned, - recalls Boris Mikhailov, - to solve all problems exclusively among themselves and came to the team with a clearly developed common opinion. Therefore, hockey players rarely argued with them, there was no point. There were, of course, moments when Volodya Petrov could express his position, say, to Tarasov, but Chernyshev immediately supported him. It was impossible to cope with two giants! "

Any personnel changes in the country (and hockey was no exception) were approved by the Central Committee of the CPSU on Staraya Square. There, they were told that they were "assigned to a responsible area of ​​work," and clearly explained what results were expected of them.

In the evening, in Tarasov's apartment, in a spacious kitchen (for the sake of truth, let's say that we still couldn't do without a traditional Russian drink), they also agreed that the staffing table, according to which Chernyshev was called a "senior coach", and Tarasov was simply a "coach" , for them - an empty formality. They assumed the same rights and responsibilities and, most importantly, the same responsibility for the strategy, tactics, staffing of the national team, for the quality of its preparation, the training process, for the functional state of the players. Nobody knew what and how they agreed during their gatherings, from prying eyes and ears carefully guarded. Having agreed, they forgot about the unaccepted arguments and did not change the position they had developed. And Tarasov, whose wayward character was not heard only by those who were not interested in hockey at all, never presented himself as an informal leader in a tandem, which, of course, he remained.

For a very short time, Anatoly Kostryukov was involved in the tandem. He worked with them in the 1961/62 season, but soon he was recalled to the Sports Committee, and he became involved in the second national team. “With me,” Kostryukov recalled, “there were no agreements. We did everything collectively, but the decisions were made by Arkady. He was in charge of the process as a whole. "

About three months before his retirement after Sapporo-72, Arkady Ivanovich talked about how the tandem worked since its inception: “At first, we trained together, both went on the ice, he worked with the strikers, and I worked with the defenders. Now Tarasov conducts classes, but we carry out all the preparatory work - drawing up a training plan, dosing loads together. So we have practically no separation of duties. "

Particulars don't count. They were treated without mutual resentment, considering them inevitable.

Boris Mayorov recalls that there was no limit to Tarasov's fantasies and inventions. “And how emotional Anatoly Vladimirovich was,” says the captain of the national team for many years, “so imperturbable is Arkady Ivanovich. Tarasov was a creative, inventive person, but in case of failure he could turn everything upside down in the heat of the moment. Fortunately, there was a sensible Chernyshev nearby, who masterfully, as befits a subtle tactic, conducted the game. I have never met another coaching tandem in sports where people complement each other so naturally. "

“As for the leadership of the team during the games,” recalls one of Chernyshev's favorite players, Yuri Volkov, “here the first word belonged to Chernyshev. There was no dual power. How could it be otherwise? Arkady Ivanovich's character was firm, masculine, and if he decided something, it was difficult to convince him. This required special arguments. And I will note that, according to my observations, the relationship between these two outstanding personalities was respectful. Tarasov called Chernyshev Adik, who in a friendly way called him Anton. " Hockey players called Tarasov "a whip", and Chernyshev - "a carrot".

“But there must be a demand from one person? - Tarasov and Chernyshev were told. "Which one of you?" - "From both!" - answered the masters.

It was always easy for Tarasov to work with Chernyshev also because Arkady Ivanovich, as Tarasov put it, "never kicks off on his own." “Let's say, - said Anatoly Vladimirovich, - we agreed on something with which Arkady Ivanovich did not agree at first. And then there was failure. No, Chernyshev will not complain to anyone that he personally, they say, thought differently. And he will not reproach me: “Well, what, they say, did I tell you? ..” He is a persistent human being, Chernyshev. Persistent in everything. "

It was not easy to convince Chernyshev of the expediency of the proposals; he carefully weighed everything, but at the same time trusted Tarasov's intuition. Tarasov noted the absence of prejudice in his colleague and knew: Chernyshev would never say "No!" only from ambitious considerations, from a desire to disagree with the proposed options just because they were not offered to them. “And the fact that he will listen distrustfully to your arguments and even after all his objections have been exhausted, he will prefer to measure not seven times, but many more, - well, this is his manner, and in the first period of joint work she and seemed a little strange to me. And then I was only grateful to her, because this unhurried, unhurried Chernyshev in working out fundamental decisions balanced the poles in our tandem. "

In a Bernese hotel, in Tarasov's room, on one of the days of the 1971 Swiss World Cup, Tarasov and Chernyshev were discussing the functions of Maltsev, who played in the same troika with Firsov and Vikulov. Dynamo player Maltsev in the club team stood out sharply among tall, strong hockey players who could endure colossal physical activity - excellent technique, unpredictable moves, unwillingness to roll back deeply for specific defensive actions. Chernyshev at Dynamo did not even try to break Maltsev, retrain him, because he understood that in attack this outstanding forward, without wasting his forces behind, could bring much more benefit - there is someone to work out in defense and for him. In Switzerland, both coaches were concerned about the weak play of this link in defense. One of the defenders of the five, Ragulin, also acted not quite smoothly. Tarasov and Chernyshev were looking for an answer to the question, due to which it would be possible to strengthen the defense in this link. “The decision,” Tarasov recalled, “suggested a simple one: to oblige the center forward (that is, Maltsev) to help the defenders more energetically. As we say in such cases, to be in the attack zone "third" in order to have time to return back. "

Tarasov insisted on such a decision. Chernyshev was against it. He believed that there was no need to make a defender out of Maltsev, because his main advantage was the ability to throw goals. Chernyshev managed to convince Tarasov to leave everything as it is. The coaches, risking, of course, came to the conclusion: let Maltsev's line allow more than others, but there will be a chance that it will score more than others. And so it happened. Firsov, who won the title of the best scorer of the world championship for the fourth time (11 goals), Maltsev (10) and Vikulov (6) scored 27 (!) Goals. Moreover, what is important, they played especially effectively in the decisive matches.

In Switzerland, the USSR national team won the ninth world championship in a row. It was last championship, where the team was led by Tarasov and Chernyshev. The ill-wishers of the coaches, forced to admit the fact of the record, nevertheless tried to belittle the outstanding result, stating that the European title was not won along with the world title. For the tandem, the term was even coined - "lucky". Since 1971, the international hockey authorities have introduced a rule according to which the points scored by European teams in matches with overseas ones did not count towards the continental championship. The Czechoslovak team lost to the American team. For the European part of the tournament, this defeat did not matter. The Soviet team drew one match against the national team of Czechoslovakia (3: 3), and lost one match (2: 5). Ours had no more misfires, and the Czechoslovakian hockey players, in addition to the Americans, also lost to the Swedes. And so it happened: in the world championship they lost to the USSR national team, but in Europe they were ahead of it. The absurdity of the "championship in championship" formula is obvious. The world champion is the world champion for that, to be considered the strongest in the whole world, including in Europe. However, those were the rules at the time. This "paper failure" at the European Championship was put forward as the main argument for the failure of the national team coaches.

In training, Tarasov almost always worked on the ice. Chernyshev is behind the side. It was believed that the coaches had agreed on such a distribution of positions during classes in advance. Few, however, knew that Chernyshev, due to severe chronic sciatica, was deprived of the opportunity to direct the training process on skates with a stick in his hands. When in the summer Chernyshev and his children went on vacation to the village of Dzhemete near Anapa, he, according to the testimony of his son Boris, "buried himself in the sand and warmed his back for hours."

“But at the same time,” Tarasov said with knowledge of the matter, “Arkady, having thought through and planned the training in all the details, conducted it from behind the board no less interesting and productive than if he was on the site”.

Tarasov, it is worth noting, believed that "working with a team is incomparably easier if you are on the ice next to the athletes and, as it were, let the rhythm of training pass through yourself." “I have seen many coaches, both domestic and foreign,” he said, “who, preferring in principle to manage a training session“ from the ice, ”were forced for one reason or another to manage it from behind the board. And I have never seen greater skill than that of Chernyshev. "

It is curious to look at Chernyshev through the eyes of Tarasov. Chernyshev himself, I must say, never wrote anything; only his rare observation notes about matches or tournaments are known. In the late 60s, Tarasov invited Chernyshev to write a book together, but Chernyshev refused. "You are a writer," he said with the irony familiar to their conversations, "and you write."

Peru, Anatoly Vladimirovich, owns an essay about a colleague, published in the first issue of the World of Hockey magazine in 1993 and characterizing not only Chernyshev, but also Tarasov himself. “Every coach,” writes Tarasov, “interest in another coach depends, probably, first of all, on whether a colleague has his own views on the sport they serve. This is the main thing, but, perhaps, not less than I am always interested in the moral image, ethics, morality of a person. And whenever I think about these topics, not in general, but in relation to the sport to which life has been given, the first one who comes to mind in such cases is Arkady Chernyshev. I think about him and his life often. And I invariably come to the conclusion that if Chernyshev's life as an athlete and teacher was happy and even enviable, then the whole atmosphere of his childhood played a significant role here.

The family where he grew up was large: in addition to Arkady, there were four more brothers and three sisters. And the sport was loved and respected by the elders. Moreover, without him, life in the Chernyshev family was not even conceivable. The elder brother and two sisters of Arkady Ivanovich are among the first graduates of the Institute of Physical Education. And besides, one of the sisters, Raisa, became the wife of Vitaly Arkadiev, and they lived in the Chernyshev family for a long time. You can imagine - as a boy already in love with sports, living under the same roof with Vitaly Arkadiev, one of the most erudite and, I would say, the most ideological of our athletes! This alone could determine a different fate. And then, not far from the school where Arkady studied, there was Infizkult, whose students, of course, underwent practical training in this school. The infizcultists of that time were all as if on selection, not only enviable craftsmen in various sports, but also their passionate propagandists.

There were no children's teams at the time of his childhood, because for some reason it was believed that sports almost hurt children. And Arkady (fortunately he was a tall boy) from the age of fourteen added his age to himself: otherwise who would have allowed him, for example, to play football for the club named after Kukhmisterov? And when his real years came to seventeen, in 1931 he was officially invited to “Metallurg”, where both brothers Arkadievs played - Vitaly, who would later give all his talent to fencing, and Boris, with whom so much is connected in the history of national football. Two years later, Chernyshev will begin to play not only for the first football team“Metallurg”, but also for the first hockey (talking about Russian hockey) and the first basketball ...

Chernyshev is a hockey player before his eyes. In winter, his role changed dramatically: on the ice he was a striker, right wing. And after all, with whom he played next - with Yakushin himself! Four times as part of “Dynamo” won the USSR Cup (the national championships at that time, with the exception of 1936, were not held), Chernyshev was devilishly inventive, cunning, worked, as they say in such cases, not with a stick, but with his head ...

Before Chernyshev, who was finishing active performances in football and hockey, an acute dilemma arose: football or hockey? I don’t undertake (and who will undertake it?) To simulate the inevitable in such cases internal struggle. Moreover, it is known what, in the end, Chernyshev preferred.

But the question is: if there is more glory in football, why did he choose ice hockey - a new game, almost unknown? Is it because, by coincidence, he saw her abroad earlier than others - and by this alone, therefore, he could be useful at home? Or maybe it was lit up, inspired by the impressions of the game of the Canadians? After all, she really made at that time a huge, incomparable impression. Canadians seemed to be virtuosos in literally everything. Even in the ability to fight. Arkady Chernyshev's character, with all his external restraint and equanimity, is extremely combative. Before him lay two roads, and he - in full accordance with his nature - decisively chose the least rolled.

Chernyshev himself managed to play ice hockey - three seasons. And the Dynamo team, of which he was a playing coach, won the first national championship. And together we had to work for the first time in 1948, when the Moscow team was waiting for the meetings with the LTC team (Prague). Arkady Ivanovich and I were among other coaches preparing the Moscow team for these matches. And since then, one way or another, our destinies are linked. "

I don’t remember that one major coach wrote so warmly about another major specialist, with whom he formed a unique tandem in the USSR national team for a long time, but who, at the head of “Dynamo” in the country, was its direct competitor and fierce rival. Tarasov's essay is entitled “Friend and Rival”.

Do not forget that they were not released to work in the national team coaches, but continued to work in their clubs. Dynamo was outright losing championships to CSKA. During the years that Tarasov and Chernyshev coached the army and Dynamo teams, CSKA won the USSR championship 18 times, and Dynamo only twice. It is believed that CSKA's selection capabilities were significantly higher than that of Dynamo. This is partly true, but only partly. Tarasov, nevertheless, worked harder than Chernyshev with young hockey players, turning them from promising into highly qualified masters, giving them loads that Dynamo never dreamed of.

Sometimes Dynamo did not become the first for completely inexplicable reasons. As, for example, in 1962. Dynamo forward Yuri Volkov recalled that that season the team was full of staff. The fight for the championship fell not with CSKA, which was going through difficult times, but with Spartak, in which the Mayorov and Starshinov brothers played brilliantly. In Dynamo, the tone was set by the Petukhov - Yurzinov - Volkov troika created by Chernyshev, but for some reason the coach did not put these attackers together for the game with another Spartak - Omsk. Dynamo played only a draw (1: 1) with the team that eventually took the eighteenth place among the twenty participants in the tournament. Volkov believes that this is exactly what cost Dynamo the gold medals: they were only one point behind Spartak. However, Dynamo lost both matches to Spartak.

Yurzinov believes that Dynamo failed to become the champion of the USSR primarily because of Tarasov. “This is, of course, a phenomenon not only in hockey, but in sports in general,” says Yurzinov. - Fantastic engine. After all, it was necessary not only to gather players into a team, but also to infect them with a common idea, to manage them. Tarasov succeeded. And at Dynamo we had a good, I would say, intelligent company.

Arkady Ivanovich Chernyshev himself is a wonderful man, educated, we all loved him, he loved us in return. In a word, a sunny coach! We lacked sports insolence, some kind of impudence, many of us could not step on our throats. Adik is a handsome, interesting, real Russian master in the best sense. He never tortured us, did not put pressure on us, did not strain us, and it seems to me that he didn’t really know how to swear. If he found out about a violation of the sports regime by one of us, then he pointed to it somehow embarrassed: they say, they saw you last night in such and such a restaurant, you drank there, look for the last time. "

Yurzinov, the youngest player of Dynamo at the time, was made the team captain at the age of 21. Why? Only because he was a non-drinker.

The already mentioned story with the removal of Loktev from the 1963 World Cup looks, I must admit, strange. Loktev himself, who was returned to the national team a year later, believed, according to Evgeny Rubin, that Tarasov did not take him to the team for reasons completely different from smoking. Many hockey players dabbled in cigarettes, and the coaches were well aware of this. “He (Tarasov) summoned me to his place,” Rubin Lokteva quotes in his memoir book “Pan or Lost!”, “And asked: do I know why he was expelled from the national team. I replied that I know - for smoking. “What a fool,” he says. - Remember last year and Sverdlovsk. Remembered? Then you can go. You are forgiven". Of course I remembered. I have friends in this city - a husband and wife. I invited them to the match, took them to the podium, and there was not a single free seat. I got two chairs, put them behind our bench, and made the guests sit down. Tarasov saw that there were strangers next to the team, and began to shout at them: they say, disgrace, they sent local spies to us. I said something harsh. He said nothing, but looked askance at me. I had no idea that he would take revenge on me. "

The presence of spare strangers next to the bench on the attached chairs, as if in a theater, revolted Tarasov. And who of the coaches, who always painfully perceive the appearance of strange people next to the team, would not be outraged? Loktev, who knew very well the rules of behavior of players within the team, not only did not ask Tarasov's permission for outsiders to appear next to the bench, but did not even inform him about it. Tarasov did not even allow generals into the army locker room. It quickly dawned on them that it was better not to meddle in there.

Loktev, of course, was offended that he did not play at the World Championships. And it is not excluded that it was only an offense (one must assume, first of all, against himself) that made him link smoking and the "Sverdlovsk history" into a single whole.

Johansson, who knew well the system of attitudes and tasks that Soviet players received from Tarasov and Chernyshev (the Swede was always interested in the Tarasov method of the training process, tried whenever possible to attend CSKA and the USSR national team trainings), was sure that “coaches often gave Yakushev a task to play against a certain the enemy, or, as they say in such cases in Sweden, was instructed to “put on the coat” on the opponent. More often than not, the choice fell on me. " The Swedish striker admitted that “even unbuttoning the“ buttons ”of the Yakushev’s“ coat ”you are wearing is difficult.” And the "coat" that Yakushev put on another Swede - Ulf Sterner - was, in Tarasov's figurative expression, "worse than a straitjacket."

Later, years later, Johansson helped Viktor Yakushev, who was in a difficult situation related to health. Yakusheva was trapped by coxarthrosis - deforming arthrosis of the hip joint. He could only move around the apartment with a cane, he practically stopped going out into the street: he lived in a five-story building without an elevator, it was impossible to go down and up with such a severe illness. Yakushev was saved by Tumba's arrival in Moscow. The Swede visited the Soviet capital to open a golf club named after himself: he was the main co-owner. He was told about the misfortune that happened to Yakushev. Immediately after returning home, Johansson announced a fundraiser through a sports TV channel and a hockey weekly to pay for Viktor Yakushev's surgery. It took a little more than a week to collect the required amount - the Swedish Ice Hockey Federation also helped. Operation Yakushev was performed in February 1992 in a private clinic in Stockholm. The worn parts of the hip joint were replaced with light titanium ones.

After his death, they tried to present Yakushev as another victim of Tarasov's "vengefulness." “Anatoly Tarasov,” wrote Sovetsky Sport, “distinguished Yakushev from the rest, turning a blind eye to the railroad’s weakness for alcohol. But once Anatoly Vladimirovich Yakushev himself did not forgive this ... In Stockholm, at a banquet at the end of the 1963 World Cup, which ended with the victory of the USSR national team, Yakushev, who had reached the required condition, went up to Tarasov and, without saying a word, pinched him on the nose ... At the guru Soviet hockey eyes on the forehead climbed in the literal and figurative sense. "

After the Stockholm episode, the authors believe, Yakushev had no chance of getting into the 64 Olympics in Innsbruck. And only after Yurzinov had an attack of appendicitis and the question arose of whom to replace him, the leadership of the Ice Hockey Federation proposed to the senior coaches of the teams major league choose between Viktor Yakushev from Lokomotiv and Yuri Drozdov from CSKA. Sovetsky Sport reports that only one coach voted against Yakushev. The coach's surname was not named, but it is understood that this is, of course, the vindictive Tarasov, who decided to annoy Yakushev and push another CSKA hockey player into the national team.

But this is not true.

It's not even that Tarasov always treated Viktor Yakushev with respect (there was a story with a pinched nose in Stockholm or it was invented - it doesn't matter). And the fact is that from the very first second of joint work in the national team, Tarasov and Chernyshev themselves, without all sorts of plebiscites, determined the composition that they needed at the world championship or at the Olympics. Innsbruck 64 is no exception. In Chernyshevsky "Dynamo" a very battle-worthy troika was formed: Petukhov - Yurzinov - Volkov. On her, as well as on the triplets Loktev - Almetov - Aleksandrov and the Mayorov brothers - Starshinov, the coaches were counting on the Olympics. Tarasov and Chernyshev were not going to break up these troikas without good reason. The tenth forward, Firsov, was in the main squad without a link. Player appendicitis is a good reason to change. It was Tarasov, after Yurzinov was in the hospital, who proposed the following variant of perturbations, with which Chernyshev agreed: to include Viktor Yakushev in the top three with Firsov and Volkov, but not with Dynamo Yuri, but with Tseskovsky Leonid, and take Petukhov to Innsbruck as the tenth striker ("Attached", as Petukhov himself called his functions in that situation). The new three became the most productive in the team - 21 goals scored (for Tseskov and Spartak - 18 each).

“When, on the eve of the 1964 Olympic Games, just before our departure, Vladimir Yurzinov unexpectedly fell ill and the Dynamo trio broke up,” wrote Tarasov, “a new link was created in a hurry: Leonid Volkov - Viktor Yakushev - Anatoly Firsov. And although Yakushev played with these hockey players for the first time (they “played” for a day), the new link made a significant contribution to our victory at the Olympics ... And later, in Ljubljana, when we put a new hockey player in the top three for Starshinov - Viktor Yakushev, and in Vienna, when the same Yakushev played in Almetov's troika, excellent links were obtained, although they had very little time to play. "

According to the newspaper "Soviet Sport", Tarasov still found a way to "leave with his nose" the player of "Lokomotiv" who was in disgrace. He played in Innsbruck so that the organizers of the Olympic hockey tournament did not have a shadow of doubt about who is the best striker of the competition: of course, Yakushev, who scored 9 goals in eight games! But Anatoly Vladimirovich allegedly persuaded the directorate not to hand over the prize to the laureate, but simply “give it to the team, which, they say, will figure it out. As a result… defender Eduard Ivanov became the best striker. "

Indeed - an out of the ordinary case, never repeated. But what actually happened?

Back in 1963, after the team won the world championship in Stockholm, Tarasov and Chernyshev faced a strange situation. From the tournament directorate, the coaches were not asked to name the best hockey player in the team in the role in which the directorate planned a player from their national team. The best goalkeeper was named the representative of Canada, who finished fourth and conceded 23 goals - 4 more goals than the gold and silver medalists; the best defender was asked to name the Swedish coaches, and the best striker was asked to name the Czechoslovak ones. There were no world champions among the laureates. The head of the International Ice Hockey League (IIHF), Englishman John Ahern, remarked, explaining the IIHF's decision, that there were no “stars” in the Soviet team who could count on the first prize. “Us,” Tarasov recalled, “it hurt a lot. Mr. Ahern, a respected man in the world of hockey, made an obvious and crude substitution of concepts. We really didn’t have soloists on our national team (and we are proud of that!). But in the USSR national team there were many extra-class players, truly outstanding hockey players. The people who were deciding the fate of the three prizes for the best players in the tournament simply did not understand that we could give this prize to almost every athlete. "

In Innsbruck in 1964, the directorate inquired about the opinion of Tarasov and Chernyshev regarding the candidacy for the best strikers. And, not receiving a specific answer in time, he handed over the prize at the awards ceremony, which took place after the final match, into the hands of the captain of the national team Boris Mayorov (which is why, perhaps, the public and the press decided then that the Spartak forward became the winner of the tournament). Seth Martin from Canada was named the best goalkeeper, Frantisek Tikal from Czechoslovakia was named the best defender. The striker was left behind the USSR national team. Yakushev was not on the lists of the directorate. He was included by journalists in the symbolic team, which, by the way, included three players at once - half of the national team! - from the team of Canada, which again ended up in fourth place.

“We gave the prize to Mayorov,” Tarasov wrote later, “so that he would transfer it to the team, and then we ourselves decided who was the strongest among us. At the general meeting, the hockey players agreed with the coaches that the prize should be handed over to Eduard Ivanov. " And Tarasov explained why: “Everyone played selflessly, everyone devoted their strength to victory to the end. But even in this friendly and selfless team, Eduard Ivanov stood out for his amazing courage. He himself was constantly looking for an opportunity to show his courage, selflessly, with a kind of bravado, not sparing himself, rushed with an open face under the throws of the puck, did not spare himself in search of tough single combat. And he did all this with a smile. And thus he inspired others with his enthusiasm. "

It is curious that the next year, in Tampere, where the Soviet team became the champion one round before the finish of the championship, the directorate again turned to Tarasov and Chernyshev with a request to name the best striker - the "quota" was given to the Soviet team in this case. The coaches did not gather the meeting. According to the assessments they put forward throughout the tournament, they identified three real contenders for the title of the best forward - Almetov, Loktev and Starshinov. “After thinking it over and weighing everything,” Tarasov said, “we decided to recommend Starshinov, who showed not only the game of an outstanding master, but also proved to be a wonderful comrade. He did everything that depended on him to help the championship debutant Anatoly Ionov enter the playing ensemble as an equal, and thus gave Anatoly the opportunity to play at full strength. "

TARASOV Joining the company with Mikhailov and Petrov, I was already psychologically prepared for the difficulties that awaited me in the main squad, for the colossal workloads accepted by CSKA. When I got into the main squad, I realized right away that there were different requirements and a different discipline. Hard