Russian Ice Divas, FTW!
I was amused by some comments on AJ's Formspring this weekend, and since I got hit by a bout of insomnia this morning, I thought I'd put together a little tribute to the notorious Pasha Grishuk. Love her or hate her, you don't have to be a "poofter bloke" to remember her!
I myself was firmly in the "hate" category for a long time. Ice dancing has always had a reputation as the most political discipline of a very political sport and the ice dance judging throughout much of the 90's was so blatantly biased that I actually stopped watching for several years in protest. It's only the last couple years that, thanks to the wonders of YouTube, I've gone back and filled in the gaps.
Oksana Grishuk (as she was then called) and her partner Evgeny Platov won the '94 Olympic gold medal, and proceeded to win the next 20 consecutive competitions, including a second gold medal in '98. They are the only ice dancers ever to win two Olympic gold medals.
The '94 Olympic gold remains controversial to this day. Grishuk and Platov beat both long-time rivals Maia Usova and Alexander Zhulin and ice dance legends Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean for the medal. Torvill and Dean skated two of their best performances (History of Love and Face the Music) in a long career of brilliant performances, but were screwed over by the judges, who claimed they did an illegal lift. Grishuk and Platov also broke the rules - skating too far apart for too long - but won the gold anyway.
Usova and Zhulin were more than just professional rivals of Grishuk and Platov. In the early 90's, the four skaters shared a coach, Natalya Dubova. At that time, Usova and Zhulin were married, but their relationship was a difficult one and Zhulin has a reputation as one of the most notorious womanizers in the sport. He and Grishuk embarked on an affair, and Grishuk has claimed that he offered to leave Usova and marry her if she would give up the sport. Things turned into even more of a soap opera when Usova walked into a restaurant in Hollywood one day, saw Grishuk sitting at the bar, and proceeded to come up behind her and smash her head into the counter.
According to rumor, Dubova kicked Grishuk out of her training center because of the affair (Grishuk says she left voluntarily), and she and Platov switched coaches to Natalia Linichuk. They later switched again, to Tatiana Tarasova, claiming that Linichuk "could not guarantee that they'd be first place," which pretty much says everything you need to know about mid- and late 90's ice dance in eight words.
Their Tarasova years are my favorite, especially 1997.
Their original dance that year was the Libertango. Unfortunately, the sound is slightly off in this recording from the '97 world championships, but you can see the speed and incredible footwork.
(Watch it with the music at Europeans)
1997 also had their very cool free dance set to Peter Gabriel's "The Feeling Begins."
You probably noticed Grishuk's new platinum 'do, which was inspired by her idol Sharon Stone. Unfortunately, it made people confuse her with the other Oksana (Oksana Baiul) even more than they already did, and Grishuk couldn't stand being mistaken for the "fat," "washed up" Baiul. So she changed her name to Pasha, which she felt better reflected the "passion" with which she attacked life.
There was some controversy over their Memorial Requiem program in 1998 because the footwork was so fast and difficult that they fell several times in competition - almost unheard of in ice dance - and yet continued to win every competition they entered. They topped it off with their second gold medal, beating Angelika Krylova and Oleg Ovsiannikov, their former training partners under Linichuk. Rumor has it Pasha had an affair with Ovsiannikov as well, although it doesn't seem to have caused the coaching switch this time around. It didn't win her a friend in Angelika, however. At the European Championships in '98, Angelika ended up slashing Pasha's arm with the blade of her skate as the two played what amounted to a high speed game of "chicken" during warm ups.
They turned professional after Nagano, but Evgeny left Pasha to go skate with her former rival, Maia Usova. Pasha responded by teaming up with Alexander Zhulin ("Pasha and Sasha") and there were some uncomfortable professional competitions that milked the scandal for ratings. At one of them, supposedly, Pasha wore Maia's old wedding ring around her neck and made sure Maia saw it right before she went out to skate.
Pasha and Evgeny have since reunited for a number of performances, including one on the 10th anniversary of their victory in Nagano.
More juicy stuff:
* Supposedly, Nicole Bobek once slapped Pasha in the face after Pasha slept with her boyfriend. (Nicole says she didn't.)
* In 1997, Pasha supposedly had her aunt pose as a journalist and stand up to tell Canadians Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz to their faces in the middle of a press conference that their original dance wasn't a real jive and they didn't deserve to be in second place. Afterward, Pasha claimed she hadn't spoken to her aunt for years and the aunt did it independently.
* In 2008, Pasha claimed she'd been roofied in LA, but it turned out she'd done it to herself.
I myself was firmly in the "hate" category for a long time. Ice dancing has always had a reputation as the most political discipline of a very political sport and the ice dance judging throughout much of the 90's was so blatantly biased that I actually stopped watching for several years in protest. It's only the last couple years that, thanks to the wonders of YouTube, I've gone back and filled in the gaps.
Oksana Grishuk (as she was then called) and her partner Evgeny Platov won the '94 Olympic gold medal, and proceeded to win the next 20 consecutive competitions, including a second gold medal in '98. They are the only ice dancers ever to win two Olympic gold medals.
The '94 Olympic gold remains controversial to this day. Grishuk and Platov beat both long-time rivals Maia Usova and Alexander Zhulin and ice dance legends Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean for the medal. Torvill and Dean skated two of their best performances (History of Love and Face the Music) in a long career of brilliant performances, but were screwed over by the judges, who claimed they did an illegal lift. Grishuk and Platov also broke the rules - skating too far apart for too long - but won the gold anyway.
Click to viewUsova and Zhulin were more than just professional rivals of Grishuk and Platov. In the early 90's, the four skaters shared a coach, Natalya Dubova. At that time, Usova and Zhulin were married, but their relationship was a difficult one and Zhulin has a reputation as one of the most notorious womanizers in the sport. He and Grishuk embarked on an affair, and Grishuk has claimed that he offered to leave Usova and marry her if she would give up the sport. Things turned into even more of a soap opera when Usova walked into a restaurant in Hollywood one day, saw Grishuk sitting at the bar, and proceeded to come up behind her and smash her head into the counter.
According to rumor, Dubova kicked Grishuk out of her training center because of the affair (Grishuk says she left voluntarily), and she and Platov switched coaches to Natalia Linichuk. They later switched again, to Tatiana Tarasova, claiming that Linichuk "could not guarantee that they'd be first place," which pretty much says everything you need to know about mid- and late 90's ice dance in eight words.
Their Tarasova years are my favorite, especially 1997.
Their original dance that year was the Libertango. Unfortunately, the sound is slightly off in this recording from the '97 world championships, but you can see the speed and incredible footwork.
(Watch it with the music at Europeans)
1997 also had their very cool free dance set to Peter Gabriel's "The Feeling Begins."
You probably noticed Grishuk's new platinum 'do, which was inspired by her idol Sharon Stone. Unfortunately, it made people confuse her with the other Oksana (Oksana Baiul) even more than they already did, and Grishuk couldn't stand being mistaken for the "fat," "washed up" Baiul. So she changed her name to Pasha, which she felt better reflected the "passion" with which she attacked life.
There was some controversy over their Memorial Requiem program in 1998 because the footwork was so fast and difficult that they fell several times in competition - almost unheard of in ice dance - and yet continued to win every competition they entered. They topped it off with their second gold medal, beating Angelika Krylova and Oleg Ovsiannikov, their former training partners under Linichuk. Rumor has it Pasha had an affair with Ovsiannikov as well, although it doesn't seem to have caused the coaching switch this time around. It didn't win her a friend in Angelika, however. At the European Championships in '98, Angelika ended up slashing Pasha's arm with the blade of her skate as the two played what amounted to a high speed game of "chicken" during warm ups.
They turned professional after Nagano, but Evgeny left Pasha to go skate with her former rival, Maia Usova. Pasha responded by teaming up with Alexander Zhulin ("Pasha and Sasha") and there were some uncomfortable professional competitions that milked the scandal for ratings. At one of them, supposedly, Pasha wore Maia's old wedding ring around her neck and made sure Maia saw it right before she went out to skate.
Pasha and Evgeny have since reunited for a number of performances, including one on the 10th anniversary of their victory in Nagano.
More juicy stuff:
* Supposedly, Nicole Bobek once slapped Pasha in the face after Pasha slept with her boyfriend. (Nicole says she didn't.)
* In 1997, Pasha supposedly had her aunt pose as a journalist and stand up to tell Canadians Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz to their faces in the middle of a press conference that their original dance wasn't a real jive and they didn't deserve to be in second place. Afterward, Pasha claimed she hadn't spoken to her aunt for years and the aunt did it independently.
* In 2008, Pasha claimed she'd been roofied in LA, but it turned out she'd done it to herself.