Igor Koshkin

Igor Mikhailovich Koshkin (Russian: Игорь Михайлович Кошкин; February 20, 1931, Leningrad – November 3, 1997, Saint Petersburg) was a Soviet and Russian athlete and swimming coach. Honored coach of the USSR.^[1]

Igor Koshkin was born in 1931 in Leningrad. He survived the Siege of Leningrad. He studied at the Leningrad Radiopolytechnic. During his student years, he practiced sports gymnastics and swimming. After serving in the Soviet Army in 1953, he began working at the Television Research Institute. He played for the team in the national team in Volleyball and Table Tennis. In 1959, he organized a swimming section for employees of the Television Institute, which later grew into the "Ekran" swimming school. In 1967, he graduated by correspondence from the Lesgaft Institute of Physical Culture.^[1][2]

He was a leading coach of the USSR and Russian national swimming teams from 1973 to 1992. In 1977, under his leadership, a swimming center was established in Kharkiv. From 1977 to 1985, he was annually included among the ten best coaches in Leningrad and was repeatedly named the best swimming coach in the USSR. He was included in the top ten coaches of Saint Petersburg of the 20th century.^[2]

He was an Honored Coach of the RSFSR (1973) and the USSR (1978), and an Honored Worker of Physical Culture of the RSFSR (1982).^[1]

He trained many outstanding swimmers who won 5 gold and 4 silver Olympic medals in the 1970s and 80s. Among his trainees are Olympic champions Vladimir Salnikov, Sergei Rusin, Dmitri Lepikov, Olympic medalists Viktor Kuznetsov, Aleksandr Chaev, Yevgeny Seredin. He trained twelve Masters of Sport of International Class, as well as four Honored Masters of Sport, who set more than one hundred world, European, and all-Union records, winning more than fifty medals at the Championships and Cups of Europe and the World.^[3]

Koshkin's developments in the field of zone training formed the basis of modern methods used today worldwide by leaders in global swimming.^[2]

He died in 1997 in Saint Petersburg and was buried in the Northern Cemetery of the city.^[1]