On Saturday it became known about the engagement of Alena Kostornaya and Georgy Kunitsa — figure skaters, who almost simultaneously united in couple both on and off the ice. It is difficult to say whether love will help them achieve serious results (now we leave out Kostornaya’s success in single skating), but history knows examples of skaters who were inspired by personal relationships to conquer sports heights, despite the skepticism of others. About one such case — in the material of the correspondent Sport.
Everyone knows the current Ilya Averbukh as a mega-successful producer. He came up with the TV project «Ice Age» and the ice shows that have become so familiar to us. Although Ilya himself insists on the wording «revived», it is quite possible to argue that the performances that we see now differ from the performances of the ice ballet of the 70s and 80s of the last century as a modern car from a «one and a half». In addition, Averbukh is in great demand as a guest choreographer — many top coaching groups resort to his services.
But once he was a talented figure skater. Together with Marina Anisina, Averbukh won two world junior championships in ice dancing — in 1990 and 1992. Of course, not always junior successes are transformed into medals in adult tournaments. For example, two-time Olympic champion Evgeny Platov, who won all his main victories in tandem with Oksana Grischuk, won junior competitions with Elena Krykanova, but then said that his partner «lost the light.» Anisina and Averbukh did not have a fire — a fire. However, in 1992, Ilya did not want to ride with Marina. The reason was Irina Lobacheva, a girl who trained in the same group of Natalia Linichuk, but performed with a different partner. Lobacheva and Averbukh were also on fire. Other character:
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“Usually for skaters it happens the other way around: they first skate together, and then decide to live together,” Averbukh said in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta. .
Averbukh's desire, in defiance of all sports prospects, to ride with his beloved Anisina was a blow. “I already made grandiose plans. In my dreams I saw myself on the most honorable pedestals. And I even held Olympic gold in my hands. — she wrote in her book «Dots over i».Left alone, Marina began to think with whom to continue her career. The choice fell on the Frenchman Gwendal Peyser, who performed with another Marina — Morel. Anisina passed through Linichuk, who went to the competition in France, a letter for a potential partner. As Peizera himself said in an interview, he would not have left his partner — all the more so with her he also achieved success at the junior level, including beating Anisina and Averbukh. But Morel, due to chronic injuries, decided to end her sports career. After a couple of months, Peizera agreed to try out in tandem with Anissina.
What this led to, we still remember. In the meantime, back to the lovers Lobacheva and Averbukh, who wanted to be together all 24 hours a day. Things on the ice were very difficult for them. At the first two world championships — in 1994 and 1995, Irina and Ilya did not even manage to get close to the top ten. Of course, they were only the third or fourth duet in Russia at that time, and in the unspoken rules of ice dancing, this means that at the largest international tournaments, let's put it mildly, the national federation does not fight for their marks. But all the same, progress was too slow, and Lobacheva and Averbukh lost too much to the leaders.
In the late 90s, they finally waited for the moment when the main Russian competitors left the stage. Grischuk and Platov went professional after the victorious Olympics in Nagano, Anzhelika Krylova and Oleg Ovsyannikov left the sport due to injuries. Lobacheva and Averbukh became the number one duo in Russia, which, given the long tradition, should automatically mean getting into the medals at the World and European Championships.
However, unexpectedly for many, this did not happen. In the 1999/2000 season — the first that Lobacheva and Averbukh held as leaders of Russian dances — they remained in fourth place in both the European and world championships. And they left the country without medals in these two dance tournaments for the first time in decades.
The couple was fiercely criticized in the media, with the main responsibility for the unsatisfactory results of the duet being placed on the partner. Experts called Lobacheva both less technical and less emotional on the ice. It was really noticeable — the bright and expressive Averbukh was the absolute leader in the duet. The wife reached out to him as best she could, but still clearly was number two.
And, of course, everyone complained about the very fateful decision of Ilya to part with the no less bright and expressive Anisina. She, in a duet with Peizera, took the lead in Europe and the world. Unfortunately for Russian fans — under the French flag. Marina and Gwendal were competed by the Italians Barbara Fusar-Poli and Maurizio Margallo — as they said, thanks to the patronage of the then president of the International Skating Union (ISU) Ottavio Cinquante, because everyone saw the partner’s weak technique with the naked eye.
In the fight for the bronze of the main tournaments in that 1999/2000 season, Lobacheva and Averbukh were overtaken at the turn by Margarita Drobyazko and Povilas Vanagas. The same magnificent Lithuanian dancers that their country stripped of state awards last year for performing in Russian shows. Also, by the way, a married couple.However, Lobacheva and Averbukh did not lay down their hands and continued to fight when few believed in them. Some unexpected move was needed — and it was the program of the 2001/2002 Olympic season, strange for many, which the skaters dedicated to the tragedy of the Twin Towers in New York. It is noteworthy that it was just before this season that the ISU issued a recommendation to dancers to give preference to positive themes and not to put on dramatic programs that, as one of the commentators of that time noted, end with the theatrical death of one or both skaters.
However, only Fusar-Poli and Margallo followed the advice (and that is rather relative), putting a free dance to the song I Will Survive. The rest of the contenders for the medals of the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City had dramas. And the fact that the most successful of them was the production of Lobacheva and Averbukh became clear a few weeks before the Olympics — at the European Championships in Lausanne. There, the Russians became third, losing to Anisina/Peyser and Fusar-Poli/Margallo – but everyone who saw that tournament agreed that Lobacheva and Averbukh would go to America to fight for victory.
The 2002 Olympics was probably the most scandalous in the history of figure skating. The judging incident in pair skating, which ended with the presentation of two sets of gold medals to Russians Elena Berezhnaya/Anton Sikharulidze and Canadians Jamie Sale/David Pelletier, is more than an outrageous decision to leave our Irina Slutskaya without gold … Against this background, the statistics of the dance tournament look peaceful — Anisina and Peizera became the best in two obligatory — original and free dances, having won gold, and Lobacheva and Averbukh won silver, having taken the second place in all segments of competitions. Fusar-Poli and Margallo were left with bronze.
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However, those who watched the performances in Utah, of course, remember that the final performances of the dancers Lobacheva and Averbukh almost did the impossible. The free dance of Irina and Ilya was unrealistically impressive. If they managed to win over at least one more referee to their side, they would be Olympic champions. However, Anisina and Peizera resisted, winning by five judges' votes to four. Despite the fact that it was on that evening that they definitely skated no better than the Russians.Many then said that a scandal in pair skating played against Lobacheva and Averbukh, in which the French federation and an arbitrator from this country were involved. Perhaps this is how it is, and in any case, dancing on ice has its own laws, which are beyond the understanding of even many of those who cook in this cauldron … But one thing is for sure: Irina and Ilya did everything they could at that moment and even more.
Ilya failed to defeat Anisina at least once — Marina, having achieved Olympic gold, ended her career after Salt Lake City. In the same season, Averbukh and his wife won the first gold of the World Championship. But a year later they left the big sport — ISU began to carry out large-scale reforms related to changing the refereeing system. The judges' scores became anonymous, and on the sly, the gold of the world championship was given to Canadians Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz, while Lobacheva and Averbukh were left with silver. There was no point in speaking further for Irina and Ilya. A sports career does not last forever, and Tatyana Navka and Roman Kostomarov were rapidly advancing on their heels in Russia. In 2007, Irina and Ilya divorced. Why — they have said many times in the media, we will not retell the program «The Secret to a Million». The result of their love in life was the son of Martin, and in sports — all those medals that, when feelings made them pair up, not everyone believed. Perhaps now — returning to the heroes of the headlines of recent days — few people see the prospects of Kostornaya and Marten in pair skating. But «love is to blame for everything,» as it was sung in a famous song. If Alena and Georgy succeed in everything they aspire to, then she will also be to blame for this.