Their Story
Page 2
1997 Elvis Tour
photo © Charles E. Covell
Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze began the 1997/98 season ranked ninth in the world with little experience as a team and, after the poor performance at the World Championships, a reputation for crumbling under pressure. Few could have imagined the impact they would have on their sport by the end of this Olympic season.
Their first appearances of the new season were in Elvis Stojko's Canadian tour in September. This was the pair's first skating tour since their poor showing at the Worlds failed to earn them an invitation to skate in the prestigious Tom Collins Tour of Champions (now Champions On Ice) the previous spring and summer.
Elena and Anton delighted audiences in Canada with their new short program to music from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake and a new high-energy exhibition program to John Tesh's Barcelona. Skating on the tour proved to be a great experience for the pair. "It was really, really important for us because after the Elvis tour, when we go home, we were skating on a different level," Anton told International Figure Skating. "It was very important for us skating with big crowds, skating every day our programs, two times in one show. We enjoyed skating for the fans on the tour."
With more experience performing in front of an audience, Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze were ready to compete again and erase the bad memories from Lausanne. The pair now skated stronger and faster, and they were more determined than the pair that seemed so fragile at the World Championships. "We changed after this," Anton said. "I think we are at a different level now."
For their competitive routines, they performed Swan Lake in the short program and kept the same music for their long program from the previous season, Dark Eyes. Although the music was the same, the elements and choreography were quite different. "We changed many, many elements and many, many steps," Anton explained. "We left this program because it is very different from other pairs."
Their first competition of the season was the Nations Cup in late October in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. Elena and Anton turned in two very strong performances to place second behind the reigning World Champions and German home favorites, Mandy Wötzel and Ingo Steuer. Elena and Anton competed against Mandy and Ingo in competition again just two weeks later with a different outcome. Skating two flawless and brilliant performances, they won both the short and long programs at Trophée Lalique, earning their first gold medal together.
Their placements in Paris and Gelsenkirchen earned Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze a spot in the Champions Series Final held in Munich in December. Again, they would face the reigning World Champions in their home country, but this field was much more competitive. The World bronze medalists and 1996 European Champions, Oksana Kazakova and Artur Dmitriev, were there fresh off a win at Skate Canada and the field also included former World Champions Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov.
After a near-flawless short program in Munich, Elena and Anton were in second place. They would need to skate perfectly in the long program to win the gold medal and perfection is exactly what they delivered. Elena and Anton's free skate was the finest of the season and would even be voted by the readers of Blades On Ice magazine as the best eligible pairs performance of the year. "Final of the Champions Series, it was very important competition for us because it was our first big win," Anton told International Figure Skating. "After this competition I'm understanding I can do something good and I can take good marks and I can win. I think it was the most important moment in the season."
Elena and Anton arrived at the 1998 European Championships in Milan, Italy in early January suddenly as the heavy favorites for gold. They performed a very solid short program and earned their first perfect mark of 6.0 for presentation. While their long program was not quite as flawless, it was still more than enough to win the gold medal. The Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan were only one month away, and nearly everyone was predicting Elena and Anton to win the gold medal.
Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze had been performing so well all season as the underdogs and this relatively inexperienced team was now favored to win the greatest prize in all of sports. The lack of experience showed in Nagano when Anton fell on his triple toe loop in the short program. High presentation marks kept them solidly in third place with the chance for the gold. However, they had even more trouble in the long program when they made an error on the triple twist lift and fell after landing their last overhead lift in the closing seconds of the routine. The silver medal would ultimately be theirs. The fairy tale ending that everyone was hoping for would not happen at this Olympics, but Elena and Anton confirmed that they would continue until 2002.
After skating at a post-Olympic gala in Tokyo, Elena and Anton returned home to practice for the World Championships, which were held only one month after the Olympics in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Many of the top pairs pulled out of this event and Elena and Anton were the only medalists in Nagano competing. Ingo Steuer's shoulder injury forced him out of the event while Kazakova and Dmitriev, who won the gold in Nagano, withdrew only one day before the short program when Artur became sick from food poisoning.
Following the short program, it really seemed that Minneapolis was jinxed for the pairs. Elena fell on her triple toe loop and Anton tumbled on the landing of his as well. At the conclusion of the routine, all they could do was console each other. However, one day later, Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze exhibited the power and attack that made them competition favorites earlier in the season by turning in another near-flawless long program that likely would have triumphed even if the field had been more competitive. Elena and Anton earned first place ordinals from all nine judges, the first time that had happened at the Worlds in the pairs event since 1993, and they easily won their first World Championship title.
It wouldn't be a question that Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze would appear in the Champions On Ice tour at the conclusion of the 1997/98 season. They thrilled audiences around the United States with their Barcelona program and capped a championship season by winning the 1998 Goodwill Games in July. It was Elena and Anton's sixth gold medal of the season, an astonishing improvement over their winless debut season.
Elena and Anton were quickly becoming known not only for their gold medals, but also for their speed, style, and elegance. Many began to acknowledge the potential that Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze by predicting they could become one of the legendary teams of the sport. As the two gains more experience, Anton determined what he would like his pair to exhibit. "I want, I think, classical and really really clean and very good lines and very good elements. Big amplitude and very clean. Not too much elements. Not many different elements in one second," he stated in International Figure Skating. "I want to skate more for people who watch us, not just for judges. Because you know the crowd is the tenth judge. I want to make something new, and I want when we stop skating people to remember us and say, 'It's their element,' or 'They're skating like Anton.' For next year we want to make new programs, new elements, change something and win competitions."
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