'His dad pushed him so hard': How Vladimir Bure drove son Pavel to success, and what it cost him

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Vladimir Bure pushed his boys hard. That’s how both of them made it to the NHL. But it was also why he became estranged from them in later years.

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The multi-medal-winning Olympic swimmer, the only Bure with his name on the Stanley Cup, has died at 73. The cause of death has not been released.

Intensity was all he knew, apparently. Raised in the Soviet sport system, his days were regimented, filled with relentless training and little downtime.

That focus he translated to training his boys, Pavel and Valeri.

Pavel was the first real superstar in Canucks’ history. His impressive level of fitness was a big part of that, and his father was his first trainer. Vladimir once dreamed his son would also become a swimmer — he claimed he tried to teach Pavel to dog-paddle when he was only three months old — but his eldest son took to hockey instead.

“It’s boring. It’s not interesting. Jump, swim, jump, swim. So what? There are many more interesting situations in hockey,” Pavel once told The Vancouver Sun reporter Mike Beamish.

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Vladimir obviously came around to his son’s passion because it was he who led his Pavel’s crucial big move out of the collapsing Soviet Union in late August 1991. Bure’s NHL rights were held by the Vancouver Canucks, but he had been under contract with the Central Red Army team — and by extension the Soviet sports machine — and the Moscow authorities hadn’t approved his transfer overseas.

But after the Soviet hockey team — coached by the notorious Viktor Tikhonov — left Bure at home for the 1991 Canada Cup because Bure was refusing to re-sign with the Red Army team, Vladimir knew the time was up. He quietly whisked Pavel and his younger brother to the U.S., arriving on the Manhattan Beach, Calif., doorstep of Ron Salcer, the Russian expat who would serve as Pavel’s agent for the next six years.

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Getting visas and other legal issues sorted out took two months, but Pavel was in Vancouver by November and his father arrived a month or two later.

The younger Bure signed a lucrative contract. After a time, his dad was quietly brought onto the payroll to work directly with his son and serve as a trainer for the rest of the team, working especially with injured players who had stayed at home while the rest of the team was on a road trip, former Canucks owner Arthur Griffiths said Thursday.

In the first few years, after the Canucks would finish practising as a team, rather than going off for lunch with his teammates, the Bures would go for another round of personal training.

No rest for the wicked.

“Pavel’s morning would be: swim for an hour, workout for an hour, and play tennis. And then play hockey. You could see the results,” Griffiths recalled.

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Griffiths said there was a time he ran into Vladimir at the Canucks’ team gym at the former Burnaby 8 Rinks. Griffiths usually didn’t work out at the team facility — why embarrass himself in front of real athletes, he quipped — but occasionally he did when things were quiet. To his surprise, Vladimir was there.

“And he goes, ‘Come here.’ So I go over to the bench, he gives me a barbell — 20 pounds or something on each. ‘Just bend over and do this 10 times and then push forward 10 times, and then lift it over your head 10 times. And do this every day and you’ll see results,’” Griffiths said. “It was so ridiculous. The results were unreal. It looked like I might have been an athlete.”

Former Canucks winger Geoff Courtnall recalled a man who loved his son deeply and was a big supporter of all his teammates too.

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“He was very supportive, always at practice. He would meet us after practice,” Courtnall said.

“But he was also very demanding. He was a very positive, supportive guy around us. I don’t know what he was like one-on-one with Pavel.”

His training techniques were unlike what Courtnall had ever experienced before. Lots of plyometrics, box jumps, light weights, but high reps.

“I trained with him a few times. We would go to UBC and he’d make us run sprints on the field for quite a while. Then we’d go to Pavel’s house on Marine Drive, and we did a whole circuit at Pavel’s home. It was very hard.”

The workout gear at Bure’s house was very simple, a few dumbbells, a barbell, an exercise bike, and a series of interlocking platforms to use for plyometric workouts, to raise and lower the heights.

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“Nobody was doing that at the time,” Courtnall said. “A lot of why Pavel was so good was because his dad pushed him so hard.”

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The elder Bure won four medals in the Olympic pool, a bronze in the 4x200m freestyle in 1968 in Mexico City, and a trio of medals in 1972 in Munich: a silver in the 4x100m freestyle — Bure was the Soviets’ lead swimmer and his team was in the lead after his lap, but the Americans overhauled the Soviets over the rest of the race — a bronze in the 100m freestyle — just a half-second behind Mark Spitz’ gold-medal winning world record time — and another bronze in the 4x200m freestyle.

“He never got over that,” Brian Burke, who was the Canucks’ director of hockey operations when Pavel  joined the Canucks in November 1991, recalled about Vladimir’s 1972 experience, coming so close to gold in two different races.

“I really liked him a lot. I remember when one of the boys wouldn’t play well, his dad would be sour. But that didn’t happen very often, since his son was such a magical player,” he said.

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“Pat Quinn liked him a lot. And Pat didn’t like anyone who wasn’t genuine.”

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By the mid-1990s, the family’s relationship clearly was becoming strained. The two-a-day workouts stopped, to Vladimir’s displeasure. And Pavel’s happiness with the Canucks as an organization was getting heated.

Big changes came in the summer of 1997. Pavel fired Salcer as his agent — hiring super-agent Mike Gillis — as well as his father as his personal trainer.

“I think it was hard on Pavel because the professional career was so demanding every day. I think Pavel got tired of his dad’s pressures,” Courtnall said. Courtnall had signed as a free agent with the St. Louis Blues in 1995, but the two had remained close friends and remain in touch today.

In 1999, Vladimir was hired by the New Jersey Devils as a fitness consultant. He remained on the payroll until 2003. The Devils put his name on the Stanley Cup after their 2000 and 2003 titles.

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By that point, the boys weren’t talking to their father. Whether they patched things up in later years isn’t known, but he clearly built a relationship with both of their wives.

Both Valeri’s wife, Candace Cameron Bure, and Pavel’s wife, Alina Bure, posted tributes on Instagram this week, honouring Vladimir’s memory.

“Everybody has to march to a different drummer. Pavel grew up watching his dad win Olympic medals and wanted to be the next Krutov or Larionov or Makarov, and he understood that’s how you get it done,” Griffiths said.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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