The name of figure skater Yulia Lautova is not well known to a wide range of sports fans due to the lack of significant titles and victories at major international tournaments. However, for more than ten years she was the first number of the Austrian national team, she skated beautifully and many connoisseurs of women's figure skating fell in love with her. For several years, Julia was the wife of a more famous athlete - Olympic champion in ice dancing Roman Kostomarov.
The start of the journey
Yulia Lautova was born in Moscow in 1981. From the age of four, the girl began to engage in figure skating. Yulia's physical characteristics allowed her to hope that she would make a good single skater, and she worked hard at the rink for several hours a day. The first coach in the sports biography of Yulia Lautova was Elena Chaikovskaya, the legendary Russian specialist, Honored Coach of the USSR. Later, the girl moved to the group of Marina Kudryavtseva, on whose account there were such pupils,like Elena Sokolova, Ivan Bariev, Alexander Uspensky.
Social and economic cataclysms in Russia in the early nineties forced Yulia Lautova's parents to pack up and emigrate abroad as soon as possible. So at the age of twelve, Julia ended up in Austria, where she continued to figure skating.
However, local specialists were not as strong as Russian ones, so at the first opportunity the girl returned to Moscow, where she continued to cooperate with Marina Kudryavtseva with an Austrian passport in her pocket.
Debut on big ice
Despite the fact that in Russia, Yulia Lautova did not stand out so much from other skaters, in Austria she was head and shoulders above the local athletes. Debuting at the national championship at the age of thirteen, she won the gold medal with ease and consistently maintained the position of the team's number one throughout her career.
Yulia Lautova started performing at major international tournaments quite early. At the adult World Championships in 1995, she made her debut at the age of fourteen. At that time, there was no age barrier, according to which girls were not allowed to play in adult tournaments before the age of fifteen.
Yulia successfully passed the qualification and earned the right to compete in the short program. The lack of experience has already affected here, and the Austrian girl did not qualify for the free program, taking the final 27th place.
Most successful forit was the 1997 World Cup. Yuliya Lautova placed 11th in the short program and then shocked everyone with a brilliant free skate, which the judges rated quite highly. According to the results of the entire tournament, the girl took eighth place, which was her highest achievement for many years to come.
Trophies and defeats
After the successful performance of their young athlete at the 1997 World Championships, Austrian figure skating fans hoped that Yulia Lautova's future career would continue to develop upward. However, after the inevitable restructuring of the youthful body was completed, Yulia was never able to maintain her former flexibility and plasticity.
She still glided well on the ice, even improved her choreography, her skating became more adult, feminine, but Yulia failed to make a qualitative leap in technical terms. The best skaters on the planet with each performance complicated their program, introduced cascades with triple jumps, while Yulia could hardly do a single triple. So she performed, alternating failed performances with relatively successful ones. There were times when she could not even qualify for a free program at major tournaments.
Nevertheless, Yulia Lautova has several significant trophies on her account. She won twice at the Karl Schaeffer Memorial, held in her native Austria, took awards at the Ondrej Nepela Memorial.
However, the biggest success for her was the silver medal at the Grand Prix in St. Petersburg in 1997. Yulia lost only to the mistress of the ice - Irina Slutskaya, and, according to many witnesses of those events, Yulia Lautova deserved to win that evening. Slutskaya skated unsuccessfully, fell all the time, but the judges pulled the hostess of the tournament to victory.
Finished her sports career, a native of Moscow in 2004, noting herself a successful performance at the European Championships, where she entered the top ten.
Personal life of Yulia Lautova
Having finished with sports, it was possible to think about the family. In 2004, Yulia Lautova and Roman Kostomarov officially formalized their relationship, having met for some time before that. However, the Russian figure skater, who had a reputation as a brawler and don Juan, was not the most ideal spouse.
Three years later they divorced, Julia left for the USA, where she became engaged in coaching.
