The great athlete was born at the Volkhovo station in the Novgorod region on August 3, 1949. His father was called Vasilyev Ivan Alexandrovich, and his mother was Vasilyeva Valentina Petrovna.
Defender both by vocation and character
Knights such as Valery Ivanovich Vasilyev are necessary on the earth. They are protectors by calling, by their human nature, as they say, from God.
Obviously, Vasiliev managed to take place, to show his impressive potential. No wonder the world ratings, naming the names of the players of the symbolic World Team, assigned the role of a defender to a hockey player from Gorky in it five times: in 1974, 1975, 1979, 1979, 1981.
At home, eight times (in 1973-1979 and in 1981) Valery Vasiliev was among the six brightest Soviet stars. A photo of him, the winner of the 1981 Canada Cup, adorns the NHL Museum of Glory.
The life credo of such heroes is to be like an icebreaker: take the blows of fate, spare, protect others from them, be kind and strong, assert justice, be a support for family and friends, endure suffering ...
Such was the fate of the great athlete, world and European champion 1970, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982, winner of the 1981 Canada Cup.
This was remembered by everyone who died in 2012 with a heart streaked with traces of three heart attacks, Valery Vasiliev.
The biography of an outstanding athlete in its official form, from our point of view, contains a number of myths that we will try to dispel.
Myth 1. Death of a father from an accident.
It is mentioned that the father, Vasiliev Ivan Alexandrovich, was prematurely “killed in an accident ...”.
This is not entirely true. The father of the future athlete was a worthy man, an officer with the rank of captain, a front-line soldier who went through the Great Patriotic War. He served in a military unit near the Volkhovo station, and studied at the Leningrad Military Academy.
Valery Vasiliev always painfully told this story. His father, Ivan, went to classes on trains of a passing direction. On that fateful fall day, September 27, 1949, he jumped into a freight train car. The convicts rode in it. When one of them asked his father to give him a drink, he did not refuse. The escort being here began to shout that it was not proper. Ivan Vasiliev began to prove to him that one should not treat people like that. Just before the fight did not reach.
At this time, Ivan Vasiliev drove up to the desired station (Volkhovo). He jumped off the foot of the train and ... got a deadly bullet in the back. The offender (guard) then brazenly lied that he took the officer for the escaping prisoner. But his words became the basis for an official explanation: Ivan Vasilyev died in an accident, they say, the escort was overlooked.
We paid such close attention to this story, because so far this false formulation of "accident" appears in the official biography of the athlete. Is it time to change it? At least out of respect for the memory of Valery Vasiliev.
Myth 2. Hooligan youth
He entered the history of hockey with a nickname coined overseas. Canadians, who fully tested him in power fights, called with respectful apprehension the "master of the taiga." Comrades in Moscow “Dynamo” and the USSR national team, closest friends (Valery Kharlamov and Alexander Maltsev) jokingly said that Valery Vasilyev is a “Gorky punks”. But it was nothing more than friendly teasing.
To the delight of millions of spectators, he realized himself in sports, and with the Penal Code the hockey player always lived in friendship.
His mother worked as a seller in the dairy department of the store. They did not live well, but not hungry. Valery and his elder brother Oleg earned money by catching birds, and then trading them: a piece of gold. The Vasiliev brothers grew up and matured on the street. Among the friends of the brothers were criminals. However, Oleg and Valery did not allow themselves to be unlawful. But they learned the main thing in street science: to always be ourselves, to be sincerely friends, to be able to stand up for ourselves and not give friends an insult.
It is possible that young Valery Vasiliev would have had conflicts with the law if he hadn’t been playing hockey and playing in the Dynamo children's sports team (since 1961). The first coach of the young talent was Troitsky Igor Petrovich. He managed to forever put in his boy’s heart a love of hockey. And he had more than enough sporting data: the guy was already distinguished by his natural remarkable strength (transmitted to him by kind from his mother’s grandfather). This power was special, family, it is given with birth, this cannot be acquired by training. The young defender Valery Vasiliev quickly progressed.
The beginning of a sports career
Fifteen-year-old athlete was entrusted to play in the “B” class of Gorky's Dynamo.
In the season 1966/1967 he, having played several matches for the Gorky “Torpedo”, came into the view of the trainer of the Moscow “Dynamo” Arkady Chernyshev. He invited him to play for his club.
This was a new frontier in the biography of the athlete. He found a club that became his family for as many as seventeen seasons.
While still in the status of a junior, Valery Vasilyev loudly declared himself, being recognized by experts of the junior world championships of 1968, 1969. the best defender, where the Soviet team won first II, and then I place.
USSR team
02/25/1970 the athlete played his debut match for the USSR national team. However, soon, "breaking the regime", the hockey player Valery Vasiliev was removed from the game. The biography of the athlete in this wording sets out this fact. What did this “regime violation" really look like? What is hidden behind a suspiciously streamlined wording. We find the answer in one of Vasiliev’s later interviews.
On the eve of the foreign tour, ending their first hockey season with the “Izvestia Prize”, the happy recruits of the USSR national team Valery Vasiliev and Viktor Polupanov “at the Maltsev’s apartment” drank a couple of bottles of wine and had fun. We didn’t even talk about strong spirits, because the next morning we should have left. Valery and Victor were sober and only late for the departing bus for about fifteen minutes. However, they were treated excessively harshly.
Myth 3. Tarasov is the shore of Firsov and Kharlamov, not putting them to training with Vasiliev
Left behind for senior teams, defender Davydov and striker Firsov reacted differently to what happened. Davydov acted wisely, because the guys did not come drunk, without a fume, but only with a faint smell of wine. Firsov, however, put on the incident in the form of an incident and reported to Tarasova. He take and expelled recruits from the team.
Vasilyev Valery Ivanovich then still was again invited to the main team of the country, and his friend Polupanov, “having broken”, ended his career.
After that slander, Valery, having told Firsov in the face that he was wrong, for some time motivatedly played in training against him in a tough forceful manner.
Tarasov therefore really separately planned training for Firsov and Vasiliev, but not because of the stiffness of the Gorky hull, but because of the conflict.
With Kharlamov, Vasiliev got along very well. On the eve of the game, he warned the namesake, who was playing on the opposite side: "Kharlam, do not go to the center." And Valery Kharlamov attacked from the edge. However, he did not have any training injuries.
Vasilyev's family
In 1973, Valery Vasiliev married.
He met his wife, Tatyana, on May Day holidays of 1972. "It seems like hockey weddings are contagious!" - the player of “Spartak” Alexander Yakushev joked not without reason .
After all, on April 30, he invited Vasiliev and Anatoly Motovilov to his wedding. After spending the night with Motovilov, Valery went to a demonstration the next day with his friend’s family and his wife’s girlfriend. So with a light hand of the Motovilov family the hockey player met his fate - Tatyana Sergeevna. The Vasilievs raised two daughters, Lena and Katya. And they delighted their grandfather and grandmother with four granddaughters and one grandson.
Myth 4. Vasiliev - an impenetrable block
Frankly, neither his own nor anyone else took care of him. He was not just strong, he was powerful, and without hesitation, he took upon himself the resolution of the situation at the most critical moment. According to the recollections of friends, Valery Vasiliev was distinguished by his enormous physical strength. (according to the brother of Alexander Maltsev, a hockey player broke through a board with a fist of impressive thickness.)
The Soviet super-defender loved the courage of martial arts with hockey players of the Maple Leaf Country. Moreover, Canadians were aware that Valery Ivanovich would not get into a fight, but would respond to rudeness strictly, and within the rules. In response to rudeness and unsportsmanlike cruelty for the presumptuous hooligans, the famous "mill" Vasiliev followed when the opponent flew over his back, and at that time the laces even burst and gaiters flew.
Vasiliev was a very brave man. There was even more courage in him than strength and health. Coaches should take more care of the best defender in the world.
In 1976, at the world championship in Katowice (Poland), the defender injured his arm. However, the USSR national team played there unsuccessfully, and Vasiliev felt that he needed. He did not descend from the ice. And after the match, already in the locker room, when the defender after the won match took off his leggings, the comrades were dumbfounded: it was filled with blood.
The second episode showing the courage of an athlete. Right at the 1978 Prague World Cup, Valery Vasiliev suffered a heart attack on ice. The hockey player fought in defense against fresh opponents, he practically did not take turns. He stood for himself, and for those who left with fractures Tsygankova and Lutchenko. After all, it was necessary to win gold, retaining the advantage of two goals.
At the same time, as if not paying attention to the fact that the “master of the taiga” was playing “to break”, Yurzinov and Tikhonov did not make any corrections to replace them. Vasiliev paid for the honor of the country with his health.
A few days later, upon returning to Moscow and confirming the diagnosis, the athlete played again. He did not tell anyone about a heart attack.
Brilliant defender Valery Vasiliev could still play at least five years. After leaving the USSR national team, Boris Mikhailov, Yurzinov and Tikhonov elected him captain of the national team. However, this was only a tactical move.
Vasiliev - retire!
Since 1984, the attitude of the coaches towards him begins to resemble a conspiracy. Tikhonov does not invite to the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo, they began to pester Dynamo. Tendentiously distorting the facts, they accuse of uncontrollability and violations of the regime.
"Valery Ivanovich Vasiliev - a hockey player is still promising!" - says the new coach of Dynamo Moiseyev, but very soon the club management will explain to him that a different opinion is taken as a basis, and that Vasiliev is a candidate for departure. Formally, the defender-hero was respected: the farewell match of the USSR team and the European team in 1984 ended with a score of 7-3.
The defender, still full of strength, skillfully connecting to the attack, superbly built, maneuverable on skates, the virtuoso of the power confrontation is ignored in preparation for the 1984 hockey competitions, as if he did not exist.
The hockey player told about all this indecent action with pain and longing. A powerful, but very mentally vulnerable person was Valery Vasiliev.
The cause of his death is three heart attacks, two of which overtook precisely at the time when, in his own words, "rotting."
About Vasiliev after a sports career
Valery Ivanovich in 1996-1997 He worked as a coach of the Moscow “Spartak”, and in 1998-1999 he worked as the Podolsk “Varyag”.
Then the deputy chairman of the board of trustees "Varyag". Since August 2011, he served as adviser to the president of the Moscow Dynamo. He was ill. Died April 19, 2012. He was buried at the
Troekurovsky cemetery (Moscow).Instead of a conclusion
The trainers' allegations about the addiction of defender Vasiliev to alcohol, which served as a formal reason for weaning him from big hockey, seem doubtful. Extremely dubious. According to the memoirs of his friends, Valery with them (not so often) celebrated significant victories with champagne. He recognized only this drink. The captain of the national team, enjoying authority for his dedication to the game, for justice in relation to his colleagues in the club, and for the kind of humor of a strong man, could not afford strong drinks.
His game had a unique pattern. He contributed to the high status of Soviet hockey. He was respected and loved in Dynamo and in the national team. He had very worthy friends: the Maltsev brothers, Valery Kharlamov ("Tell me who your friend is, and I will tell you who you are."). It was Valery Vasiliev and Alexander Maltsev, masters of the highest qualification, who gave the Moscow “Dynamo” that uniqueness, thanks to which this team very worthily opposed CSKA.