Yesterday it was Leonid Arkaev’s 86th birthday and the RGF posted this lengthy biography in our daily bulletin. I thought it was very interesting. Apologies though, it’s not my translate, it’s auto generated so it might read a bit clunky in places
Honored Coach of the USSR and Russia
Head coach of the Russian men's and women's national gymnastics teams (1992-2004)
Multiple champion of Moscow
Two-time champion of the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR in the team championship
Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences
Professor, Corresponding Member of the Petrovsky Academy
sciences and arts
He was born on June 3, 1940 in Moscow.
Father - Arkaev Yakov Nikolaevich (1911-1943). Mother - Anastasia Petrovna Arkaeva (1911-2000). Spouse - Arkaeva Lyudmila Evgenyevna (born in 1941). Daughters: Ekaterina Leonidovna (born in 1965), Ksenia Leonidovna (born in 1975). Grandchildren: Nikita, Maxim, Elizaveta, Anastasia. Great-grandchildren: Polina (born in 2008), Boris (born in 2013)
Shortly after their marriage, Yakov Nikolaevich and Anastasia Petrovna Arkayev, who lived at that time in the Mordovian village of Saigushi, got a job in a camp for convicts as viceners. Later, they recruited for a chemical enterprise in Shchelkov near Moscow. The plant provided them with a room in Moscow, and their three children, the youngest of whom was Leonid, were born in the capital.
In 1943, Yakov Nikolaevich went to the front as a volunteer; in the same year, he died in one of the battles in the Kharkov region. Anastasia Petrovna and her children lived in evacuation in Mordovia until 1944.
In 1947-1957, Leonid Arkaev studied at Moscow Secondary School No 399. Then he entered the Moscow Engineering and Construction Institute named after V.V. Kuibyshev, who graduated in 1966.
Leonid became interested in gymnastics at school - since 1953. His first performance in the all-Union arena took place in 1957 in Riga at the Spartakiad of schoolchildren of the USSR. Already in 1958, he took part in international competitions between the teams of the USSR and Finland, received the title of master of sports, and the next year became a member of the national team of the Soviet Union. Leonid trained with the legendary V.I. Chukarin, and his teammates were such wonderful gymnasts as A. Azaryan, B. Shakhlin, Yu. Titov, V. Kerdemelidi, V. Leontiev, V. Lisitsky.
Until 1969, L. Arkaev played for the USSR national team. He became a multiple champion of Moscow, a two-time champion of the USSR Peoples' Games, a five-time USSR champion in the Moscow team, a silver medalist at the USSR championship in the crossbar exercise.
In 1973, immediately after the end of his sports career, Leonid Arkaev was appointed senior coach of the USSR men's national team by order of the head of the gymnastics department of the USSR Sports Committee Yuri Evlampievich Titov.
In the early 1970s, a long streak of unsuccessful team performances of Soviet gymnasts continued. After 8 years of unconditional hegemony on the world stage, at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, the USSR men's national team lost the championship to the Japanese and was in a catch-up position for many years. The result of our gymnasts' performance at the World Championships in Ljubljana in 1972 was very far from what was desired.
Since then, radical transformations have been carried out in the training system of the country's first team, the implementation of which is directly related to the name of Leonid Arkaev. The motto of the development of domestic gymnastics was "high-quality super complexity", and the strategic imperative "to catch up!" was pushed out by the call "to get ahead!" based on the implementation of the principles of advanced development and optimal redundancy in all areas of training.
Experienced colleagues helped Leonid Arkaev to take the first steps on the coaching path. One of those who believed in the young coach and supported his undertakings was Viktor Chukarin. The embodiment of the efforts of Leonid Arkaev and his students in medals and titles was facilitated by the support of G. Burjanadze, K. Wasserman. Among Leonid Yakovlevich's associates for many years were N. Tolkachev, A. Alexandrov, E. Nikolko, V. Alfosov, B. Pilkin, M., V. Safronov, M. Bulashenko, A. Yarmovsky, V. Potapenko, N. Andrianov, V. Holdushkin.
Leonid Yakovlevich began to carefully study the experience and prospects of competitors from the Land of the Rising Sun: he created a dossier on each strong Japanese gymnast, tracked all their performances. "Aheadgame" implied an approach to the next major international competitions with a more complex and better worked out program. As a result of the implementation of the new concept of training since 1973, the men's gymnastics team began to come out of the crisis. In 1974, she overtooke Japanese gymnasts at the World Championships in the free program.
2-3 years before the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, Arkayev, relying on the developments of a comprehensive scientific group headed by V.M. Smolevsky and V.S. Cheburaev, worked on exercises that were supposed to bring success to Soviet athletes. And success came. Our gymnasts - and that team consisted of truly outstanding athletes: N. Andrianov, A. Dityatin, V. Markelov, V. Marchenko - became the second in the team championship and won 9 medals, 4 of them - gold
Subsequently, Leonid Yakovlevich will be a co-author and executor of comprehensive target programs for the preparation of the national team for the Olympic Games of 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996 and 2000.
At the 1979 World Cup in the United States, Soviet gymnasts took the highest step of the pedestal in the team championship. Since then, domestic gymnastics has firmly held a leading position in the gymnastic world.
At the 1980 Moscow Olympics, Soviet gymnasts became champions in the team championship. Leaders of team A. Dityatin, N. Andrianov and A. Tkachev won four gold medals in certain types of all-around, brought 7 silver and two bronze awards to the national team's piggy bank.
The performance of Arkaev's pupils at the Olympics in Seoul in 1988 became one of the brightest pages in the history of Soviet gymnastics. Then Leonid Yakovlevich's wards won 8 gold medals. In addition to the victory in the team championship, the "gold" in certain all-around events was won by V. Artemov, D. Bilozerchev, V. Lyukin and S. Kharkov.
Already being Honored Coach of the USSR, Leonid Arkaev received a second higher education at the Malakhov branch of the Smolensk State Pedagogical Institute.
Later, he graduated from graduate school in Leningrad at the Lesgaft Institute, defended his PhD thesis.
In 1986, L. Arkaev is appointed head of the Gymnastics Department of the State Sports Committee of the USSR. He held this position until the collapse of the Soviet Union, while remaining the senior coach of the national team. For some time he was the chairman of the CIS Artistic Gymnastics Federation.
The participation of Arkaev's wards as part of the CIS national team at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona was again accompanied by the dazzling brilliance of medals. Both men's and women's teams won "gold" in the team championship; 5 times he climbed to the highest step of the podium of honor V. Shcherbo, Olympic champions became T. Gutsu and T. Lysenko.
After the collapse of the USSR, Russian gymnastics got into a very difficult situation. An unregulated outflow of leading coaches and gymnasts abroad has begun. Arkaev had to solve numerous problems with almost all types of training of Russian gymnasts (financial, material and technical, scientific and methodological, medical and biological, personnel and informational).
As a result of the efforts, the Russian national gymnastics team managed to find and then consolidate its leading position in the international arena, preserve the face of the national gymnastics school and domestic gymnastic traditions.
Con’t
