Petrov is the first

There was no Vladimir Petrov - the legendary central forwarder of the legendary three Mikhailov - Petrov -Kharlamov

Until his 70th anniversary, he did not live four months, until the 50th anniversary of acquaintance with the bosom friend Boris Mikhailov-only a month.

The great Petrov was always a little in the shadow of his great partners-they were brighter and more colorful, each in their own way. But without Petrov, neither one nor the other would take place to the extent that they took place fully and precious. And they would not have lived life, maybe the best three in the history of domestic hockey.

He, especially at sunset of a playing career and in his subsequent life, had the face of a Roman legionnaire. Emotions were not often reflected on it, a smile was a rare phenomenon - his face quite adequately reflected internal concentration, absentness and even a certain detachment from the world. Others accepted this feature of Vladimir Petrov for indifference, but with external phlegmaticity to live as intensely and full of as he could, few could. Passions in this nature were boiling serious, but not ostentatious.

Those who saw the game of the famous army three with their own eyes, and not as a retro, are not least remembered by incredible confidence emanating from the center forward. Together with the unique professional advantages of the dispatcher and sniper, this cemented the game of almost the best link in the world hockey of the 70s, more sharply and more spent the quality of his stunning partners-the indefatigable fighter and scorer Boris Mikhailov and the inimitable Valery Kharlamov.

The lack of jealousy in relation to friends was absolutely - as they had, when Petrov, it happened, came to the fore. As at the 1973 World Championship in Moscow, when the account of Vladimir Petrov turned out to be incredible 18 abandoned goals, and on the account of the first five-all 50, exactly half of the unique result of the USSR national team.

Titles and records can be listed for a long time, it is enough to name the titles of a two-time Olympic champion, 9-time world champion and 11-fold champion of the USSR.

Legends were formed about Petrov’s debate with Anatoly Tarasov himself - here the braid sometimes found on a stone, but Tarasov did not spread rot for the subsidiary and stubbornness of the ward, he understood and appreciated it for the main thing. It was useless to argue with Viktor Tikhonov closer to sunset of his career. The death of Kharlamov left them with Mikhailov together. They still worked together in Leningrad, then everyone went on their own way, turning into a life path, bloodly connected with hockey.

Petrov was quite held as an extraordinary functionary, despite the fact that he did not like to remember the years of leadership by Russian hockey. And his short presidency was in the early 90s, and these were the most difficult years for his beloved game that appeared on the edge of the abyss. Hockey was threatened with what became with the state, one of which he had recently been, and Vladimir Petrov did everything to preserve the living life of the game. Mistaken, overcoming, struggling, building a perspective. It was all that the achievements did not disappear in vain, he gave them out and continued to give them to the very end. It was possible to disagree with him, and categorically, but his opinion, especially on fundamental issues, was never spontaneous and rash.

He lived in hockey in different qualities and positions. They know little about one side of his life, and he considered his activities in the documentary (primarily) cinema of one of the main ones. When we, sitting in the hotel room in Kazan (it was during the festival of sports films), tried to calculate the number of tapes, the creation of which Vladimir Vladimirovich was directly related, it turned out more than two dozen. Everything is about hockey, about mentors, friends and partners, about great confrontations and great personalities. And Petrov began to producing and promoting films even when no one, including hockey bosses, had no affairs about that hockey and his people. He saved hockey from oblivion, understanding how easily it was possible to lose and lose the most important thing.

Now I can’t remember exactly if there is a film about him. He did not climb into the heroes as a man, alien to self -promotion and pathos.

But in our memory it will remain just as Petrov First.