Four years earlier Kulik, an immensely talented but erratic skater, put it together on the night of the men’s final in Nagano after not winning an international medal for two years.

The top skaters of the early 1990s grew up in the former Soviet Union and their coaches were part of the successful system.

However, those coaches now are nearly 20 years older and leaving the teaching ranks to other, less-talented coaches.

Tarasova, after developing seven Olympic champions, now doesn’t have any students. She likes her job as a consultant to the Russian skating community in Moscow after spending years in the United States.

Viktor Kudriatsev developed Kulik before Kulik went on to win the ’98 gold with Tarasova. After nearly 50 years of coaching, Kudriatsev is retired.

Kudriatsev, Tarasova and Mishin have developed more than a dozen individual winners at junior worlds for the Soviet Union or Russia. All three coaches are well past 70.

Plushenko was the last to have significant success in the senior ranks. Russians who won junior world championships in this decade are out of skating for two years already.

“Life is changing, a person is changing,” Mishin said, referring to the differences in Plushenko from the silver medal days of 2002 to now.

But he could also have been talking of today’s Russia, where young athletes have other interests and there are no more state-sponsored schools and lessons for talented youngsters. What was free in the Soviet Union now costs the skaters.

There also is more freedom to travel, and some skaters leave Russia to train.

The Soviet Union broke up in 1991 and there are now 15 republics. Where Ukrainians and Belorussians once represented the same nation as Russians and Lithuanians, the talent now is spread out.

Even a smaller republic such as Georgia can produce an individual to challenge the top skaters. At this year’s European championships, 16-year-old Elena Gedevanishvili of Georgia was fourth in the women’s short program.

To win an Olympic gold medal is simple, according Mishin.

“It takes a talented and hardworking individual,” he said, “and a good coach.”

For Russia, it appears neither is on the horizon.

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