2024-04-02 08:00:00
Igor Larionov and Elena Batanova are one of the most exemplary married couples in the history of Russian sports. Having married in the mid-80s, the hockey player and figure skater have been happy together for almost four decades.
Larionov achieved world fame in hockey – he won two Olympics and raised the Stanley Cup over his head three times. But Batanova’s career turned out to be much more modest – despite serious prospects, her highest achievement was silver at the Junior World Championships in the dance couples competition. Elena worked with Tatyana Tarasova for some time, but spent the main part of her sports career together with Lyudmila Pakhomova.
“The sports biography of Batanova and Solovyov quickly ended. So quickly that I simply don’t want to talk regarding them today, and if I do remember, it’s only to say: it was I, Pakhomov’s coach, who was defeated in the fight for a better future for these young people. I saw, I felt, I guessed something, but I rejected it, I didn’t want to believe it, I was engaged in self-deception, and in the end I didn’t win anything. I also lost, the guys themselves lost, our sport also lost, because in the person of Batanova and Solovyov I might get an interesting dance couple,” the coach wrote in her book.
Larionov was able to meet his soulmate thanks to not the most pleasant circumstances – during the 85/86 season he was declared “restricted from traveling”, received more free time and once crossed paths with a beautiful figure skater near the CSKA arena. A year later the couple got married.
In 1987, Elena made Igor happy with her first daughter – she was named Alena. Years later, she would receive a dose of popularity in the media when she talked regarding her illness, anorexia:
“This is scary. Of the 10 years of anorexia, at least six I was not myself. There was another person in my head with whom we talked every night. They decided how to eat, how many times a day, whether to go to this or that meeting. And if we go and eat, how many days should we fast? It’s true – I really thought regarding suicide.”
“The country is learning to think in a new way. It’s time for us athletes to do this too!” – Larionov wrote in the late 80s, in an open letter for Ogonyok magazine, and a few months later he found himself in North America. There, Igor and Elena will have two more children – daughter Diana and son Igor.
“We have been living in North America for three decades. When we left the Union, of course, we celebrated the New Year more. But since then we celebrate Christmas, like everyone else here, on December 25th. This is the main holiday, and New Year is now just a regular change of the calendar and a glass of champagne. The year changes, what’s wrong with that? And Christmas is a real family holiday, when everyone gathers in one house,” moving overseas changed the traditions in the family of Larionov and Batanova, but did not in any way affect the harmony in their relationship.
However, in the end the Larionovs returned to Russia, where Igor Nikolaevich, not at the first try, but launched a successful coaching career. His beautiful wife probably still inspires him to this day.
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