Word: zmievskaya
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Dates: during 1994-1994
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...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 and boasted, "It's mine...
...Dnepropetrovsk when she was two; her mother died at 36 of cancer when Oksana was 13, leaving the child without blood relations to turn to. Her coach was the next to vanish -- emigrating to Canada to seek a better future than struggling Ukraine could offer. It was then that Zmievskaya took over...
...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...
That phase of an already crowded life is definitively over. Crowds love Baiul, and she loves them. Anyone with something to sell will be just as smitten. In the past, Zmievskaya has turned aside suggestions that her extended family move to the comforts of the West because they lacked the money for training and living expenses. Now they will probably spend at least part of the year outside Ukraine...
Friends help make her costumes, and Petrenko chips in on skates. Even Zmievskaya gets to the rink early, shovel in hand, to clean the ice. So why do they stay here rather than seek out prestigious shelter in the West? Zmievskaya explains, "We want to be in Odessa. We would never have the money to pay for everything in America. Here our choreographers are free, the best and poorest in the world...