Sochi Olympic pairs champions Tatyana Volosozhar and Maksim Trankov didn’t retire with any fanfare, but chose not to defend their gold medal in PyeongChang. Now, in a new interview with International Figure Skating, the Russian pair said they have “said goodbye to figure skating as competitors.”
They said they didn’t make it big news but it was “obvious to everyone.”
The two-time Sochi gold medalists are still heavily involved in the sport. Last year, they performed as the title characters in choreographer Ilya Averbukh’s “Romeo and Juliet” ice show. They published a book about their career, titled “Two Sides of One Medal,” which they hope inspires fans to take up sport.
Trankov worked as a figure skating commentator in PyeongChang while Volosozhar attended as a fan. But as his reputation grew, Trankov started to take professional classes at the Moscow School of Television and Radio to continue his broadcast career.
Trankov is coaching Russia’s fourth-place finishers in PyeongChang, Yevgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov. Once that announcement was made, he said he got calls from other teams, but declined. He wanted to focus on just one team. And when they’re done competing, Trankov said that will conclude his career as a coach.
“I thought after I won the Olympic title that I’ll never have to skate that much again and that would be great, but it turned out that I’m skating even more,” he said in the interview. “So, that’s my life now. I’m on the ice all the time and unfortunately, I almost don’t see my daughter. We miss each other and we see each other only in the morning or during a break. I’m trying to rush home to see her and to play with her.”
Volosozhar and Trankov’s daughter, Anjelika, was born in February 2017. The new parents say of course the toddler will learn to skate, but they have no wishes for her to become a top-level athlete – the Russian ladies’ field is notoriously tough – or even to take up pair skating.
“I never want my daughter to do pairs,” Volosozhar said. “Only if she says it’s working for me and if I see that she likes it, is suited for it and wants to do it, then I’ll help her. But basically, I want to shield her from pairs skating as much as I can because it is a sport with a high risk of injury.”
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