Anton Sikharulidze

Anton Sikharulidze
Sikharulidze and Berezhnaya compete in 2001
Personal information
Full name	Anton Tarielyevich Sikharulidze
Country represented	Russia
Born	(1976-10-25) 25 October 1976 (age 35) St. Petersburg
Height	182 cm (5.97 ft)
Partner	Elena Berezhnaya
Former partner	Maria Petrova
Former coach	Tamara Moskvina Ludmila Velikova Nikolai Velikov
Former choreographer	Alexander Matveev Tamara Moskvina Igor Bobrin Alexander Zhulin
Skating club	Yubileiny Sport Club
Retired	2002
Medal record Competitor for  Russia Pairs' Figure skating Olympic Games Gold 2002 Salt Lake City Pairs Silver 1998 Nagano Pairs World Championships Silver 2001 Vancouver Pairs Gold 1999 Helsinki Pairs Gold 1998 Minneapolis Pairs European Championships Gold 2001 Bratislava Pairs Gold 1998 Milan Pairs Bronze 1997 Paris Pairs Grand Prix Final Silver 2001–2002 Kitchener Pairs Silver 2000–2001 Tokyo Pairs Bronze 1999–2000 Lyon Pairs Silver 1998–1999 St. Petersburg Pairs Gold 1997–1998 Tokyo Pairs World Junior Championships Gold 1995 Budapest Pairs Gold 1994 Colorado Springs Pairs Silver 1993 Seoul Pairs

Anton Tarielyevich Sikharulidze (Russian: Антон Тариэльевич Сихарулидзе, born 25 October 1976 in St. Petersburg) is a Russian pair skater. With Elena Berezhnaya, he is the 1998 and 1999 World champion, 1998 Olympic silver medalist and 2002 Olympic champion.

His first partner was Maria Petrova, with whom he became the 1994 and 1995 World Junior Champion. He began competing with Berezhnaya in 1996 after helping her recover from an accident with her previous partner. Within two years of the accident, Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze had established themselves as one of the best pair teams in the world. During their competitive career, they were coached by Tamara Moskvina at the Yubileyny Sports Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and the Ice House in Hackensack, New Jersey. Their Olympic gold medals are shared with Canadian pair Jamie Salé and David Pelletier.

Early career

Sikharulidze was born in Saint Petersburg. After seeing a neighbor's boy with skates, he asked his parents for skates as well.^[1] At the age of 15, with skating taking up a lot of his time and limiting his personal life, he considered leaving the sport but his father encouraged him to persevere.^[1]

Sikharulidze took up pair skating at age 15 when asked by a coach.^[2] With Maria Petrova, he became the 1994 and 1995 World Junior Champion and placed as high as sixth at the senior Worlds in 1995. They trained under Ludmila Velikova and Nikolai Velikov at the Yubileyny Sports Palace in Saint Peterburg, Russia, despite the deteriorating and crowded facilities of the 1990s.^[3][4][5] Their last competition together was the European Championships at the end of January 1996. Sikharulidze and Petrova then parted ways due to a coaching disagreement.^[6] He wanted to work with Moskvina while Petrova preferred to remain with their old coaches.

Partnership with Elena Berezhnaya

In late 1995, Elena Berezhnaya / Oleg Shliakhov of Latvia began training at the same rink, under coach Tamara Moskvina. Sikharulidze developed a friendship with Berezhnaya and Shliakhov began to perceive him as his rival.^[7][8] At the end of 1995, Shliakhov demanded that he and Berezhnaya train in Riga, Latvia for three weeks in preparation for the European Championships.^[7] Sikharulidze urged her to stay in Saint Petersburg but she believed she could manage a few weeks.^[7] Berezhnaya was seriously injured when Shliakhov's blade sliced into her skull while the pair were practicing a side-by-side camel spin in Riga on 9 January 1996.^[9] Two surgical operations operations were performed to remove bone fragments from her brain. The accident caused partial paralysis on her right side, and doctors were unsure if she would walk again.^[9] She also briefly lost the ability to speak.^[10]

During her hospitalization, Sikharulidze heard of the news, and traveled to Latvia to be with her, joining Moskvina.^[11][12] Berezhnaya was surprised and overjoyed to see him, but unable to speak or move.^[1] Shliakhov also arrived at the hospital with flowers but Berezhnaya did not wish to see him again.^[8] Her mother, Sikharulidze, and Moskvina took her back to Saint Petersburg, Russia where she could begin her rehabilitation. She was grateful for his support, saying she was "skinny, shaved, half-alive, almost a skeleton, and Anton so tenderly cared about me. Perhaps it was his belief in me that helped me recover so quickly.^[1]

Berezhnaya wished to return to the ice and doctors agreed that physical exercise would be therapeutic.^[10] On 15 March 1996, only two months after the accident, she began skating carefully with Sikharulidze's help and Moskvina observing.^[9][10] Berezhnaya said, "I didn't have any false dreams about the future. All I thought about was those first steps."^[9] Moskvina felt the pair looked promising, "They're a natural pair. They've got it – something magical."^[9]

With Berezhnaya's condition improving, the two began to consider the possibility of a competitive career together. She had made a nearly full recovery, although her speech remained slurred requiring speech therapy.^[10] In November 1996, Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze competed together for the first time at the Trophée Lalique where the pair immediately won their first medal, a bronze.^[13] In December, they placed fifth at Cup of Russia, and then captured the silver medal at the Russian Nationals, earning them a berth to the European Championships. In January 1997 in Paris,^[14] the pair made the podium at Europeans, a rare feat for a pair in their first season together, and even more stunning given her injury less than a year ago.^[10] At the 1997 World Figure Skating Championships in March, they had a strong short program which placed them provisionally in third, with two judges giving them first-place votes.^[10] However, the pair had a disastrous long program, placing 12th in the segment and dropping to 9th overall.

1998 Olympic season

The next season, they won the European Championship, defeating 1992 Olympic champion Artur Dmitriev with his new partner Oksana Kazakova, and the reigning World Champions Mandy Wötzel and Ingo Steuer. At only 20 and 21 years of age respectively, Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze had established themselves as gold-medal favorites going into the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.^[11] Observers were impressed by their rapid progress.^{[9][10][11][15][16]} Ekaterina Gordeeva selected Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze as her and Sergei Grinkov's skating doubles in a documentary on the legendary team after her husband's death.

In the short program, the pair had one fall but their other elements were of high quality. In the long, they put themselves back in contention for the gold medal with a strong performance, until five seconds from the end when they had a surprising fall as Sikharulidze set her down from a closing star lift.^[17] Although disappointed by suddenly giving away their chance at the gold so close to the end of the program, Sikharulidze recovered from his shock and joked, "It's a new finish. If you don't like it, we'll change it, no problem."^[17] The quality of the rest of their skating earned them the silver medal ahead of Wötzel and Steuer, while Kazakova and Dmitriev claimed the title. Former Japanese singles skater Yuko Kawaguchi became inspired to switch to pair skating after seeing Elena Berezhnaya at the Nagano Olympics.^[18]

Post-1998 Olympics

Following the Olympics, Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze competed at the 1998 World Championships where they won the gold medal.^[19] Later in the year, they spent some time training at the Stamford Twin Rinks in Stamford, Connecticut.^[20] They won 1998 Skate America and 1998 NHK Trophy. In January 1999, they had to withdraw from the European Championships after the short program due to Berezhnaya having the flu.^[21] They won their second world title at the 1999 World Championships in March 1999.

The Yubileyny Sports Palace ice rink then closed for renovations, forcing the pair and Moskvina to relocate to Hackensack, New Jersey's Ice House. Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze struggled at Skate America in October 1999, placing third, but regained their form to win Skate Canada in November. Moskvina would later admit Sikharulidze had become distracted by life in a new country and was not as focused on training. In February 2000, the pair won gold at the 2000 Europeans but were stripped of their medals after Berezhnaya tested positive for pseudoephedrine, a substance whose ban was lifted between 2004 and 2010. This resulted in a three-month disqualification from the date of the test, and the medal being stripped.^[22] She had taken cold medication approved by a doctor but had failed to inform the ISU as required.^[23] Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze missed the World Championships that year as a result of the disqualification.

During the 2001–2002 season, Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze developed a rivalry with Canadians Jamie Salé and David Pelletier. Throughout the season, both pairs had traded first and second place at most of the major competitions, and they were considered the main contenders for the Olympic gold medal. At the Grand Prix Final they debuted their new long program to Meditation de Thais and decided to persevere with it at the Olympics, while their rivals abandoned their new long program with which they had been struggling and decided to reuse their old Love Story program. The New York Times speculated that the judging might be influenced by the crowd response, with the familiar music of Love Story having more potential to draw louder applause in North America and the judges not being immune to human reactions.^[24]

2002 Olympics

At the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, both pairs skated strong short programs, after which Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze were in 1st and Sale and Pelletier, who had a fall at the end of their program, 2nd.^[25] In the long program, Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze skated a good program although Sikharulidze had a stumble on a jump element before quickly regaining unison with his partner. Sale and Pelletier, meanwhile, had no obvious mistakes. Four judges placed the Canadians first, while five had Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze as the winners. Sale and Pelletier received higher technical scores, but Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze had superior artistic marks. Some observers pointed out that Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze had performed a more challenging program with greater speed, more interweaving moves and transitions, and less distance between the partners.^{[22][26][27][28]} They were awarded the gold and the Canadians the silver. The result sparked a controversy although the commentators were criticized for failing to mention Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze's strengths.^[27] The president of the International Skating Union, Ottavio Cinquanta, under extreme pressure from the International Olympic Committee, immediately launched an investigation into a possible judging scandal. The focus immediately turned to French judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne, the only Western judge in favor of the Russian pair. Under intense pressure, she stated that she had been intimidated into voting for the Russian pair in exchange for an advantage for the French couple in the ice dancing competition, which was to follow a few days later. The scandal resulted in a second gold medal being awarded to the Canadian pair, and the IOC and ISU decided to declare both pairs as Olympic co-champions. When the media furore faded, Le Gougne rescinded her earlier statement and declared she had voted according to her honest assessment of the performances but had been pressured to say otherwise. Leading up to the pairs final, NBC had heavily promoted the chances of the Canadian pair possibly breaking the decades-long Russian/Soviet dominance of the pairs event. Although Sikharulidze's stepout on a jump was regularly highlighted by the media, judges evaluate the quality and degree of difficulty of the entire program; Canadian Patrick Chan won gold at the 2010 Skate Canada with four falls.

Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze meet Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting of Olympic athletes in March 2002

Later skating career

In May 2003, Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze confirmed they had retired from competitive skating.^[29] From 2002–2006, they toured with Stars on Ice, then returned to Russia.

Sikharulidze makes occasional appearances in Russian ice shows. In 2006, he competed in a Channel One (Russia) show Stars on Ice (Russian: Звёзды на льду), partnered with Natalia Ionova (later replaced by Yulia Barsukova due to injury). In 2007, he skated in the Channel One show Ice Age (Russian: Ледниковый период), partnered with Anastasia Volochkova. In 2010, he joined another edition of Ice Age, teaming up with Zara.^[30]

Political career

Sikharulidze at a meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and others

In 2006, he became a member of the political party United Russia. In 2007, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Saint Petersburg. On 2 December 2007, he was elected to the State Duma. He is the Chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee for Physical Culture and Sport.^[31]

In 2010 he registered as a candidate for the presidency of the Figure Skating Federation of Russia, but withdrew after the constitution was altered, stating that the changes left the president as nothing more than a figurehead.^[32][33]

Personal life

Sikharulidze's sister, Marina, is an economist, and his brother, Alexander, is a businessman.^[1] He and Berezhnaya had an on-and-off romantic relationship between 1996 and 2002; they remain close friends.^[1][34] In August 2010, Sikharulidze became the godfather to Berezhnaya's son.^[35] In August 2011, Sikharulidze and Yana Lebedeva, daughter of Leonid Lebedev, confirmed their engagement.^[36] They were married in October 2011 in Barcelona.^[37]

Programs

Eligible career

Professional career

Other

With Maria Petrova

Results

With Berezhnaya

With Petrova

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Anton Sikharulidze

• Elena Berezhnaya / Anton Sikharulidze at the International Skating Union
• Elena Berezhnaya / Anton Sikharulidze at pairsonice.net
• Maria Petrova / Anton Sikharulidze at pairsonice.net