Word: baiul
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...bitter Kerrigan entourage and many skating observers, that's just what the judges did. Baiul's performance was not nearly as clean as her rival's; she two-footed a triple flip (a major gaffe) and simplified another jump. Critics were quick to point out that her first-place rankings each came from four East bloc countries and a German judge from the defunct Democratic Republic. Since the early 1980s, the majority of the nine judges' rankings has carried the day rather than the old system of totaling all points; if Kerrigan had been competing in 1976, when Dorothy Hamill...
...mind and my heart I won. I've learned a lot about myself these last couple of months. There are always some doubts, but I didn't let them enter this year." Others were not so restrained. Her coaches, Evy and Mary Scotvold, refused to utter Baiul's name at a postcontest press conference -- she was instead "the first-place girl." Claire Ferguson, president of the U.S. Figure Skating Association (U.S.F.S.A.), snapped, "Nancy doesn't have that sassy look that Oksana has." It didn't help matters that Baiul's coach, Galina Zmievskaya, marched around wearing the gold medal...
...skated performance. She had energy to burn and was perhaps hampered by statelier-than-thou choreography. If they awarded prizes for costumes, she would have prevailed. Her dress, designed as always by Vera Wang, had the kind of unobtrusive elegance that enhances rather than jars a performance. By contrast, Baiul wore a fussy pink concoction trimmed with fake fur that broke her line. Most of the other dresses were nightclub glitz...
Aside from numerous falls -- almost a precondition of competition now that triple jumps are mandatory -- it was in general a well-skated event. And, if the public does not take its resentment of inscrutable scoring out on her, the sport may have a new idol in Baiul. Ballet fans who cross over to watch skating already adore her. They love her enormously expressive arms and the unusual flexibility of her back and hips. She is that rare athlete who is also an artist, without doubt the most musical skater to appear in a long time. Like the very best dancers...
...Odessa Baiul skates at a rink where the ice is often like spring mush. She shares a little room with her coach's younger daughter, her best friend. Her idol is Rudolf Nureyev, whose pictures adorn the walls. Zmievskaya says her prize pupil "doesn't know what a million dollars is. All she knows is that she needs 10 fantiki ((candy wrappers)) to buy an ice cream...