Minenkov, Andrey Olegovich

Irina and Andrei were paired by their first coach Igor Alexandrovich Kabanov , when they were 12 and 13 years old, respectively. When Kabanov was offered a job in the Sports Committee, he “handed over” the pair to the beginning coach Tatyana Tarasova .

The first success came to a couple at the 1975 World Cup in Colorado Springs , when, after withdrawing from the competition, Lyudmila Pakhomova and Alexander Gorshkov due to Gorshkov’s illness, they sensationally became world champions. The following year, 1976, they become the second at the Olympics in Innsbruck , losing to the famous Pakhomova - Gorshkov . At the world championship of the same year, the alignment of places is repeated - Moiseeva and Minenkov are second again.

In 1977, the couple won the title of champions of the Soviet Union, despite the injury of Irina received at the warm-up right before the performance. A week later, at the World Championships in Helsinki, during the original dance, the partner falls. But they execute the free program so brilliantly that for the first time Moiseyeva and Minenkov become European champions.

In 1977, Moiseeva and Minenkov won the world championship for the second time in Tokyo. In 1978, in Strasbourg, they again won the European Championship with a free program, the first time in figure skating staged with a single storyline to music from one musical work (the musical West Side Story).

In 1979, Moiseeva and Minenkov decided to end their 10-year cooperation with Tarasova and change their coach (according to Tarasova in the book “Four Seasons”, she herself refused athletes, tired of conflicts).

The new mentor of the couple is Lyudmila Pakhomova. However, soon after the end of the winter Olympic season of 1980, and this community fell apart.

In recent years, Natalya Dubova has worked with them. The permanent choreographer was Elena Matveeva - the former ballerina of the Bolshoi Theater.

On November 27, 1983, in a festive atmosphere at the Luzhniki Sports Palace at the tournament for the prizes of the Moskovskiye Novosti newspaper, Moiseev and Minenkov said goodbye to the sport.

Performances on the ice of Moiseeva and Minenkov were largely innovative, ahead of the time by years, were very popular with the audience, but were not accepted by experts.

Irina Moiseeva and Andrei Minenkov in 1984 had a daughter, Elena.

After the end of his sports career, Andrey Minenkov decided to do science. He graduated from the Moscow Institute of Radio Engineering, Electronics and Automation ( MIREA ), then, in 1989, he defended his thesis on a familiar topic - it was an analysis of how a skate glides on ice (work was performed at the Research Institute of Mechanics of Moscow State University , supervisor A. A . Shakhnazarov ).

In the wake of the " perestroika ", he headed the structure created by the State Sports Committee, which was engaged in the financing of sports science, - the association "Soyuzsporttehnika".

Next, Minenkov decides to go into business. In 1993, he and his partner founded a company that began trading in new imported brands of ice cream on the Russian market. Currently, the Kholod trading house is the general distributor of Mars ice cream in the CIS (such brands of ice cream as Mars, Snickers, Bounty, Twix, etc.), and the official distributor of Nestle ice cream ”And sells many more types of frozen foods (shrimp, vegetables, etc.).

In 2006 and 2007, Andrei Minenkov participated as a judge in the RTR television show “Ice Dancing” and “Ice Dancing. The Velvet season".

• Medal "For Labor Valor" (04/09/1980) ^[1]

• Habitat cold (inaccessible link) interview was published in the journal " Business Journal " No. 1 of January 18, 2005 .
• A. Minenkov on the website of V. Solovyov
• A. Minenkov on the site of the "Modern Museum of Sports"