Figure skating fans do not need to explain who Alexander Gorelik is. This outstanding athlete has made an invaluable contribution to the history of sports. Together with Tatyana Zhuk, he won many awards and became the silver medalist of the Olympic Games in Grenoble.
Biography and first steps in sports
Alexander was born in Moscow in 1945. At the age of ten, he came to a sports school in Sokolniki to learn how to skate well.
He received the initial base of skate ownership from coach Elena Vasilyeva. Then Gorelik switched to pair skating. His first sports partner was Tatyana Sharanova. The guys practiced a lot and in the end showed pretty good results. In 1962, at the Winter Spartakiad, they took third place. They brought bronze from the well-known international tournament "Blue Swords", which took place in the GDR.
In 1964, they took second place in the figure skating championship in the Soviet Union. Then the skaters began to try their hand at major competitions. At the European Championships, Gorelik and Sharanova took seventh place, and only fifteenth at the World Championships. Not quite a good rental upset the athletes, and the couple broke up.
Success and achievement
It is not known how Alexander’s further career would have developed if Stanislav Zhuk had not intervened in his sporting fate.
The coach noticed Gorelik in 1963, he really liked the athlete. When the sports couple Gorelik-Sharanov broke up, he suggested that Alexander ride with Tatyana Zhuk. Tanya was the sister of the coach, he personally worked with the girl and knew her potential.
The decision was very successful, and the new duo began to progress rapidly. At their first performance in 1965 at the World Championships, skaters won bronze medals.
At the World Championships in Davos, the greenhouses Zhuk-Gorelik became silver champions, losing only to the famous pair of those years Lyudmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov.
Then, in 1968, despite Tatyana’s injury, they prepared and performed well at the Olympics, winning well-deserved silver.
On this Tatyana Zhuk ended her career and devoted herself to the family and the child. Alexander also left the big sport and became a commentator on television. He received the title of Honored Master of Sports of the USSR, conducted reports with Nikolai Ozerov, and he was also invited to shoot various films and programs. For example, in the film "Blue Ice" Gorelik played a major role - the greenhouse skater.
After Tatyana left maternity leave, Alexander Gorelik worked with her at Circus on Ice. He tried himself as a figure skating coach. Alexander was preparing young athletes from the USSR team for the XII Olympic Winter Games in 1976 in Innsbruck.
