Childhood and youth
Maria was born in June 1972 in Moscow. In early childhood I became interested in figure skating. In Elena Vodorezova's (Buyanova) group, Butyrskaya was considered the best student until she switched to a new coach. Relations with Galina Vasilkevich did not work out from the first meeting. The girl began to develop complexes, self-confidence disappeared and a desire to leave sports forever appeared.
As a result, Maria was expelled from the figure skating school, and if not for Elena Tchaikovskaya, who accidentally learned about what happened, the country would never have recognized the champion. At the insistence of Elena Anatolyevna Butyrskaya, she lost the excess weight gained over several months of break and returned to the ice arena under the wing of Vladimir Kovalev.
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Maria Butyrskaya and children
In interviews, Maria often mentions Viktor Kudryavtsev, with whom she practiced her jumping technique until it became automatic. But the main mentor in her sports biography remained Tchaikovskaya, who formed the unique style of her pupil, which is often characterized as ballet.
Maria Butyrskaya told how she miraculously became a mother at 44 years old
Butyrskaya considers her third pregnancy a miracle. It is very difficult for a woman to become pregnant after forty years old, and even doctors warned Maria that she did not have much chance of conceiving naturally and carrying a child to term. The athlete understood perfectly well that the doctors were right and that she should not hope for a miracle.
She had already begun preparing for the IVF procedure, but suspected symptoms of pregnancy. After taking a quick pregnancy test, she received confirmation of her premonition. As a result, she became a mother when no one, including herself, believed in it, at 44 years old. Fortunately, Maria’s son was born healthy, and Butyrskaya herself also remained in good health after the birth. And on the air of “Secret for a Million,” the athlete showed fans her two-year-old child for the first time.
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Figure skating
Butyrskaya has 6 victories at the Russian Championship, 3 silver and 2 bronze medals. The first competitions on the world stage ended in failure - 29th place and loss of a ticket to the Olympics. Only 2 years later the figure skater was allowed to compete at the international level, and Masha justified the trust - she took bronze at the continental championship. Irina Slutskaya won gold for the first time. Butyrskaya would later win the medal of the highest standard “in Europe” three more times.
In 1998, she will be one step away from the Olympic podium, and a year later she will triumph at the World Championships. However, Maria recalled, the Russian Figure Skating Federation was not happy about that victory - the award was won by “not their own man,” not the one on whom the management was counting. But no specific names were mentioned.
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Maria Butyrskaya on ice
In total, the athlete has 12 prizes in international competitions, not counting Grand Prix tournaments. In 2003, Maria announced her retirement and switched to nurturing new stars.
She left the ice “in English” - having failed to qualify at the World Championships in Japan, she refused to skate the short program and went home. Then Butyrskaya regretted that she did not warn Elena Tchaikovskaya about the decision and did not admit that 4 days before the competition she twisted her leg and performed injections.
In 2011, the figure skater showed her fans an amazing figure (weight 45 kg with a height of 160 cm) by posing for Playboy magazine. The photos, according to fans, turned out to be sexy, but not at all vulgar, and Maria herself turned out to be an excellent model.
Russia's first gold in women's figure: World Championships, Maria Butyrskaya. She was 26 years old!
Today, almost no one at her age skates.
The 1999 World Championships in Helsinki became a legend - here, for the first time in history, a figure skater from Russia won gold.
The first Russian world champion in women's skating was Maria Butyrskaya . An event that now looks ordinary (since then the Russians have won the World Cup five more times and three times in the last 4 years), closed an era 20 years ago.
Some crazy numbers about the background of the women's national team at the time. They will definitely frighten humanists and fans who were brought into figure skating by Lipnitskaya, Medvedeva or Zagitova:
• 96 years without victories - neither under the USSR, nor during the Russian Empire (women have competed at the World Championships since 1906), our singles skaters have not won the World Championships;
• 78 sad tournaments (the championship twice went on a seven-year pause due to world wars) and only rare podiums - three in the 80s, three more in the late 90s;
• champions from 15 countries - not only Americans, Japanese or Germans won the World Championships, but also figure skaters from Norway, Holland, Austria - countries where figure skating does not seem to exist now.
Butyrskaya arrived in Helsinki three months before her 27th birthday - a fantastic age for modern women’s skating. But even 20 years ago it was extremely young - a couple more details from that reality:
• before the Butyrka World Cup, the American women Tara Lipinski (at 14 years old), Michelle Kwan (at 15 and 17 years old), Chinese Liu Chen (at 18 years old) and Ukrainian Oksana Baiul (at 15 years old) won. The oldest champions in the 90s were 21-year-old Yaka Sato (Japan) and Kristi Yamaguchi (USA);
• in Helsinki, 13-year-old Sarah Hughes, 16-year-old Victoria Volchkova, 18-year-old Michelle Kwan, 17-year-old Yulia Soldatova - skaters from the final top 10 of the championship - skated next to Maria.
Butyrskaya, on the contrary, entered the elite late. Her first big tournament happened only in 1993 - 6 years before the main victory.
That World Championship turned into a terrible failure - Butyrskaya flew to Prague using the only quota from Russia, but took 29th place in the qualification (in 1993 it was first introduced before the main skates) and did not even make it into the short program.
Because of that disaster, Russia was left without figure skaters at the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer - our Federation harbored a grudge against Butyrskaya for a long time.
Maria was already 20 years old at that time - just transfer the situation to our days to understand the prospects. For comparison: Lipnitskaya, Sotnikova, Pogorilaya, Radionova actually ended their careers at this age.
But the next 6 years of Butyrskaya included many events:
• 5 victories at the Russian Championship - only in 1994 she lost to Olga Markova (pictured). Internal competition did not sparkle then, but it did not look completely hopeless - Markova, Slutskaya, Sokolova, Soldatova, Volchkova;
• 2 years without world championships – the consequences of the disaster at the World Cup in Prague.
• first big medal – bronze at Euro-96 in Sofia. There, by the way, for the first time in the history of the European Championships, a Russian figure skater, Irina Slutskaya, won;
• change of coach: in 1997, Butyrskaya left the gentle director of the “school” Viktor Kudryavtsev for the imperious Elena Tchaikovskaya. The figure skater often repeated how she missed a tough mentor who would stand with a stick - immediately after that victories came;
• gold at Euro 98 in Milan – part of a record series of 8 consecutive Russian victories by Butyrskaya and Slutskaya at the Euro, which our skaters will repeat no earlier than 2021;
• the long-awaited Olympics in Nagano, where Butyrskaya lost a medal to Chinese Liu Chen by one mark in the free program;
- bronze at the 98 World Championships in Minneapolis 2 months later - Butyrskaya’s first world podium.
And finally, the main point - gold at the 1999 World Cup.
It was only before the 1998/99 season that Butyrskaya first believed that she could win the World Championship. A dream that kept her in amateur sports.
“One day I had a dream. It’s like I come to the World Championship and win it. I understand that this is very unrealistic, but I will still skate as an amateur. As long as I can. Or until I become a world champion,” Maria explained why she does not move to professional shows, where she has long been expected.
But after the Olympics, Olympic champion Tara Lipinski (at 15 years old), Liu Chen (2 Olympic bronzes, 4 World Cup medals), Suriya Bonaly (3 World Cup silvers) left the ice. Michelle Kwan, the most stable figure skater of the second half of the 90s, announced that she was skipping the season.
However, a couple of months before the 1999 World Cup, Kwan suddenly resumed her career, won the US Championship and qualified for Helsinki. Butyrskaya was upset by this news.
“My jaw dropped. We will fight, I say. And she herself is shocked. Then I thought about it more calmly and came to the conclusion that it was simply stupid to be afraid of Kwan. I competed all year at a high level, but she only competed in Pro-Am tournaments. This is nonsense compared to amateur sports. This means that Kwan must be much heavier than me. And you need to win, first of all, psychologically,” Maria recalled her feelings from Kwan’s return.
In the short, Kwan really made a mistake - she fell from the axel, and Butyrskaya became the leader, perfectly skating the Irving Miles blues with a triple lutz in a combination with a double toe loop, triple loop and axel.
Before the free skate, two more skaters found themselves between Kwan and Butyrskaya - Russian Yulia Soldatova and Vanessa Gusmeroli from France. According to the old rules, Butyrskaya could now even let Kwan pass one place above herself.
But her free program (the first appearance in figure skating “Otonal” by Raul di Blasio) turned out to be victorious. Triple lutz, flip, loop, salchow in combination with a triple toe loop, axel, cascades of triple jumps with double jumps - with such a set Butyrskaya would not get lost even now.
This is a rental from the European Championships. The video from the World Cup was not shown due to the terrible quality.
Before the last triple loop, Tchaikovskaya even shouted to her from over the side - “don’t!” – a double was enough to win. But Butyrskaya pulled out both the jump and the difficult exit from it.
“I heard it. And I thought: what if this loop will decide my whole fate? I can do it. If I throw it away, I’ll probably reproach myself for the rest of my life. Salchow, on whom I fell so much this season, did it, but I can’t do the loop, or what?” – Maria explained in an interview with Sport Express.
She had the right - during training, Butyrskaya experimented a lot with difficult jumps. Triple Axel, quadruple Salchow - sometimes it worked. Yes, 2 decades ago. Yes, at 25 years old.
Butyrskaya’s career ended in an unconventional way. At the 2002 World Championships, she again failed in qualifying - 11th place (this result was taken into account in the overall assessment and practically excluded her from the fight for gold). Maria packed her things and left Nagano, refusing to perform in the short.
The circle is closed - this tournament was the last in her career that lasted more than ten years.
Now Butyrskaya coaches in Krylatskoye, raises three children (her husband is hockey player Vadim Khomitsky) and sets the fans on fire with her fiery expertise about Zagitova, Medvedeva, Tuktamysheva and Tutberidze.
The World Figure Skating Championships start on Wednesday. Broadcast Schedule
Photo: REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski, Jerry Lampen, Blake Sell; Gettyimages.ru/Chris Cole/Allsport, Frank Peters/Bongarts
Personal life
Maria experienced a tragedy in her personal life. The first common-law husband, entrepreneur Sergei Sterlyagov, died tragically. As Butyrskaya said in 2019 on the show “Secret for a Million,” her husband became a victim of a carpenter who made furniture for their home. The figure skater herself found the killer and ensured that he received what he deserved. However, a number of media outlets wrote that the carpenter, who very easily confessed to the crime, was a figurehead. And Sterlyagov’s death may be related to business.
In a conversation with Lera Kudryavtseva, Maria also mentioned an affair with Marat Basharov. The actor dated the champion while he was married. And the paparazzi more than once caught the young woman in the company of Andrei Panin and restaurateur Andrei Skachkov.
Butyrskaya found her love in the person of hockey player Vadim Khomitsky. In 2006, the couple got married. The athlete gave her husband three children - sons Vladislav and Gordey and daughter Alexandra. Vlad studies at the Dynamo hockey school, Sasha plays tennis. The family lives in the Moscow region, in their own house. The champion publishes photos of her loved ones on an unverified Instagram account.
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Maria Butyrskaya and husband Vadim Khomitsky in 2020
Vadim is 10 years younger than his wife, and this difference initially bothered Maria. At the time of their acquaintance, the hockey player had no idea who was in front of him. And when I found out, I decided that I would take this impregnable fortress. He conquered Butyrskaya with devotion, right actions and constant signs of attention.
Maria and her husband have a weakness for expensive cars. For her wedding, Vadim gave her a purebred Hanoverian horse, which later had to be handed over to professionals in the stable.
Butyrskaya has a brother, Vladimir. Relatives do not maintain contact, and the reason for the discord is money. On the advice of his sister, the man kept a couple of tens of millions of rubles in a bank that “burst”, and blames Maria for refusing to help return them.
Maria Butyrskaya now
Butyrskaya trains children and occasionally appears in ice shows, although she emphasizes in interviews that she does not particularly enjoy such performances. Ilya Averbukh, in her words, stole the idea of the “Ice and Fire” performance. Registration of the brand cost Maria a tidy sum, she staged the first performances with her own funds (Alexey Urmanov said that she should also stay), but in the end the money is earned by someone else. The champion did not start a scandal or sue her colleague, because “he has a large number of important people behind him who do all this. It’s hard to compete with them, it’s better to take care of yourself.”
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Maria Butyrskaya in 2020
The athlete supervised two personal tournaments - the Prize of the first Russian figure skating champion Maria Butyrskaya in Moscow and the Open Figure Skating Cup named after Maria Butyrskaya in Kursk. But they will not be included in the calendar of all-Russian competitions, which upsets Maria. She suspects that some of the officials do not like the independence and pressure with which the ex-skater goes through life.
