It is unlikely that Vasily Tikhonov, the son of the famous hockey coach, could circumvent this sport. And so it happened - he became the successor to the sports dynasty, which so far has three generations.
Biography
Vasily Tikhonov was born in May 1958 in Moscow. His father was still playing for Dynamo Moscow. Four years later, he switched to coaching. Therefore, it is not surprising that Vasily Tikhonov was practically born "with a club in his hands." All his childhood he was with his father in hockey pitches. The father probably hoped that his son would become more successful in the ice arena than he would.
But Vasily and then repeated the fate of his father. His career as a defender was short. But he was always in demand as a coach.
In 1968, when Vasya was ten years old, the family changed their place of residence and left for Latvia. This was directly related to hockey - his father was offered the post of mentor of Dynamo Riga. Then the team was in the second league. Viktor Tikhonov was able to bring players to leading positions in the championships of the USSR.
Vasily Tikhonov in the arms of his father, 1959.
Meanwhile, the status of the father did not affect his son in any way, and Latvijas Bērs from the second division became Vasily’s debut adult team. In a couple of years they will enter the first league, but by then Vasily will decide on the end of his playing career. He realized that as a player he would not achieve special heights, so he decided to try out coaching luck. It was 1977, when he was only 29 years old.
Coaching
Again, I had to start work from the bottom. Vasily Tikhonov got a job in Riga sports school, worked with teenagers. Over time, viewers began to notice that the pupils of Tikhonov show beautiful hockey and rise in the standings. This was also appreciated by the sports leadership - in 1985 Vasily Tikhonov was entrusted with the Dynamo junior team from Riga. Here, the mentor worked for five seasons.
Then in Russia there were "dashing 90s", which also affected sports. In a situation of chaos and uncertainty, Vasily Viktorovich receives an offer from the Finns. And in 1990, Tikhonov left for the city of Pori to train the youth “Esset”. The progress of the youth team was obvious, and in a year Tikhonov will go to work with the main team of this club.
Soon the professionalism of the Russian coach was appreciated in America. In 1993, V. Tikhonov accepted the offer to take the second coach from the NHL San Jose Sharks.
Hockey Dynasty: Vasily Tikhonov, Victor Tikhonov Jr. and Victor Vasilyevich Tikhonov.
Then there will be several more foreign teams, including the American Kansas City Blades, the Finnish Lucco, and the Swiss Langnau.
By the way, during his life in Finland, Vasily learned the language in his own system. This despite the fact that the Finnish language is considered quite complicated. For this, he even lived for the first time in Finland alone, without a family - so as not to hear Russian speech completely and quickly join the language environment.
Return to Russia
Vasily Tikhonov returned to his homeland in 2002, when his father invited him to work in pairs. At that time, Viktor Tikhonov coached CSKA hockey players from Moscow.
Subsequently, Vasily Viktorovich will take over the administrative part of the work and will hold the post of vice president. He worked with CSKA until 2010.
He tried to establish independent work in the Russian clubs Avangard (2010-2011) and Ak Bars (2011). But in 2012, he returned to CSKA, already to the position of adviser to the manager. A year later, he will again become part of the coaching staff, but then a fatal event will occur that cut short his life.
In August 2013, a tragic event occurred, as a result of which Vasily Tikhonov died at the age of 55. He was at home (on Novy Arbat Street) and was trying to cut off part of the protective mesh that covered the facade of a residential building. According to neighbors, he often said that robbers could easily climb into her apartment. Unable to resist, Tikhonov fell out of the window of the fourth floor. His body was found on the pavement near the house, a knife was lying nearby, with which he tried to cut the net.
