Ate at McDonald’s and slept on an air mattress: how young Roman Kostomarov survived in the USA

The fig­ure skater trained over­seas and won the Olympics, return­ing to Rus­sia only after fin­ish­ing his career.

Roman Kos­tom­arov start­ed fig­ure skat­ing at the age of 9 — quite late. But he quick­ly achieved suc­cess, becom­ing the world junior cham­pi­on. Despite this, Kos­tom­arov left for the USA to build a career.

How did Roman Kostomarov live in the USA?

Once Kos­tom­arov quar­reled with the coach­es — he was fined and dis­qual­i­fied for a year. Then 21-year-old Roman decid­ed to move to the USA — to Natalia Linichuk’s group. Since 1998, he per­formed in tan­dem with Tatyana Nav­ka, and then with Anna Semen­ovich (even­tu­al­ly returned to Nav­ka).

Kostomarov and Semenovich

In the USA, Kos­tom­arov had to live on $150 a month. He did­n’t have enough mon­ey for prop­er food, so he ate at McDon­ald’s. He rent­ed a house with sev­er­al peo­ple and slept on an air mat­tress on the floor, and devot­ed all his free time to train­ing.

Added to all these dif­fi­cul­ties were prob­lems in the mar­riage. A month before leav­ing Rus­sia, Roman Kos­tom­arov mar­ried his beloved Yulia Lau­to­va. The wife refused to go with her hus­band to the USA, so for the next four years they saw each oth­er very rarely.

How did Kostomarov’s period in the USA end?

Kos­tom­arov passed the tests that befell him with dig­ni­ty. The fig­ure skater admits that they strength­ened his char­ac­ter, made him stronger and brought him clos­er to the main achieve­ment in his life — Olympic gold in Turin.

After the 2006 Olympic Games, Kos­tom­arov end­ed his career and returned to his home­land. Then a new round in Roman’s pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ty began: he became a reg­u­lar par­tic­i­pant in var­i­ous tele­vi­sion projects relat­ed to fig­ure skat­ing — “Stars on Ice” and “Ice Age”.