Celebrates the Past & Present & A New Career Path in 2022
When Tamara Moskvina’s father brought a pair of second-hand skates for his then 10-year-old daughter, little did he, or anyone else know that this gift would steer the course of her life for the next 70 years.
Born in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) in 1941 as Tamara Bratus, she first learned to skate on an ice surface that sat on top of a tennis court. Years later, she moved to train at a rink that was housed in an abandoned church. By the time she was 21, Moskvina had won five successive Soviet Union titles (1962-1966).
Looking back on everything she has achieved in her life, Moskvina still regards winning her first national title as one of her most cherished memories. “At the time there was the strong singles skating school of Tatiana Tolmacheva in Moscow and her top skater Tatiana Nemtsova, who was the champion for several years. She skated very well, and I looked up to her.
“My whole life I have considered myself as being just average and not very capable. I took a long time to learn anything, and I didn’t have good hearing. Because of this, the only thing I could do was to train more and to repeat things more in order to learn what others were doing. So, when I stood on top of the podium it was unexpected.”
Her late husband, Igor Moskvin, whom she married in 1964, began coaching her in 1957. Given the unfavorable situation with ladies singles skating in the Soviet Union at the time, he suggested she try pairs skating.
Moskvina first teamed up with Alexander Gavrilov and, in 1965, they captured the title at the Soviet Championships in the absence of Ludmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov, the dominant pairs team at the time.
Moskvin then decided his
