Anton Tarieljewitsch Sicharulidze

Anton Sicharulidze
Sicharulidze and Berezhnaya (2001)
Full name	Anton Tarieljewitsch Sicharulidze
nation	Russia
birthday	October 25, 1976
place of birth	Leningrad
size	182 cm
Weight	76 kg
Career
discipline	Pair skating
Partner	Maria Petrowa, Jelena Bereschnaja
Trainer	Tamara Moskwina, Lyudmila Velikova, Nikolai Velikow
status	resigned
Medal table
Olympic medals 1 × 1 × 0 × World Cup medals 2 × 1 × 0 × EM medals 2 × 0 × 1 ×
winter Olympics silver Nagano 1998 Couples gold Salt Lake City 2002 Couples  World figure skating championships gold Minneapolis 1998 Couples gold Helsinki 1999 Couples silver Vancouver 2001 Couples  European figure skating championships bronze Paris 1997 Couples gold Milan 1998 Couples gold Bratislava 2001 Couples
Placements in the figure skating Grand Prix
Podium placements 1. 2. 3.  Grand Prix Final 1 3 1  Grand Prix competitions 9 3 2

Anton Tarieljewitsch Sicharulidze ( Russian Антон Тариэльевич Сихарулидзе ; born October 25, 1976 in Leningrad ) is a former Russian figure skater who started in pair skating .

Career

Anton Sicharulidze's parents are Lyudmilla Posdnjakowa and Tariel Sicharulidze. He has an older sister named Marina and an older brother named Alexander. Sikharulidze started ice skating at the age of four when he saw a boy next door with ice skates. At the age of 15, he wanted to quit as figure skating training was taking a long time, but his father encouraged him to keep going.

Sicharulidses first partner in pair skating was Marija Petrowa . With her he became junior world champion in 1994 and 1995 . They trained with Lyudmila Velikova and Nikolai Velikow at the Jubileiny Sports Complex in Saint Petersburg . Together they contested two world championships and two European championships . Her best result was sixth place at the 1995 World Cup and fifth place at the 1996 European Championship . In 1995 they became Russian runners-up behind Marina Jelzowa and Andrei Buschkow . In 1996, Sicharulidze and Petrowa separated because he wanted to switch to coach Tamara Moskwina , but she wanted to stay with her coaches.

In 1995 Jelena Berezhnaya came with her figure skating partner Oleg Schljachow from Riga to the Jubileiny Sports Complex to train at Moskvina. A close friendship developed between Sicharulidze and Berezhnaya. Shlyachov saw a competitor in Sicharulidze and returned to Riga with Berezhnaya. In January 1996, Berezhnaya was seriously injured while training when Schljachows skate blades slit open her skull during a pirouette. When Sicharulidze heard about it, he immediately went to Riga to visit her in the hospital. At that time she could neither speak nor move. Sicharulidze stayed with her and helped her recover. Berezhnaya wanted to return to figure skating and the doctors agreed to move carefully on the ice two months later. With the help of Sicharulidze and under the supervision of Tamara Moskvina, she made her first attempts on the ice again. Moskwina was enthusiastic about the way the two of them dealt with each other and so they began to think about a possible career together as pair skaters. Berezhnaya had recovered, but her speech was still impaired, so she went to speech therapy. Already at the European Championships in 1997 Sicharulidze and Berezhnaya competed together and immediately won the bronze medal.

A year later, at the 1998 European Championships in Milan , they became European champions and thus went to the 1998 Olympic Games in Nagano as favorites . A few seconds before the end of the freestyle they failed a lift that might cost them the gold medal. They won the silver medal behind their compatriots Oxana Kazakowa and Artur Dmitrijew . At the world championships in Minneapolis , Sicharulidze and Berezhnaya became world champions. You defended this title in 1999 at the World Cup in Helsinki . In 1999 they became Russian champions for the first time, a title they defended until 2002. In 1999 the Jubileiny sports complex closed for renovation work. The couple then went to Hackensack , New Jersey , where they trained with the US couple Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman , who were also looked after by Tamara Moskwina. In 2000 they won the European Championship in Vienna . A little later, however, they were disqualified because Berezhnaya had tested positive for pseudoephedrine . As a result, the title was stripped of them and they were banned from the World Cup. Berezhnaya had taken a medicine for a cold that her doctor had approved. But she had failed to report it to the ISU .

2001 Sicharulidze and Berezhnaya won their second European championship title in Bratislava . At the World Cup they were defeated by Canadians Jamie Salé and David Pelletier , with whom a rivalry had formed over the entire season.

Sicharulidze and Berezhnaya with President Putin after the 2002 Olympic Games

Both pairs went to the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City as favorites . The Russians won the short program while the Canadians suffered a fall. In the freestyle, Sicharulidze and Berezhnaya made minor mistakes while the Canadians made no mistakes. Four judges saw the Canadians in front and five judges saw the Russians. Thus, Sicharulidze and Berezhnaya were awarded the gold medal. The result sparked controversy. The President of the ISU Ottavio Cinquanta opened an investigation into a possible judge scandal under pressure from the IOC . The focus fell on the French judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne, the only western judge who had scored for the Russian couple. Under pressure from the media, she testified that she was intimidated to vote for the Russian couple in exchange for an advantage the French couple had in the ice dance competition that took place a few days later. The scandal ended with the Canadian couple Salé and Pelletier being awarded a gold medal. Le Gougne later said she had assessed honestly and only admitted the opposite because of the high pressure from the media. The media, especially NBC , had a chance to break Russian dominance in this contest after 42 years. The Salt Lake City judging scandal prompted the ISU to completely reform the scoring system.

After the Olympic Games, Sicharulidze and Berezhnaya toured the USA with the ice revue Stars on Ice until 2006, after which they returned to Russia, where they appeared in some ice shows on television.

In 2007, Sicharulidze was elected to the Russian parliament . From 2008 to 2012 he was chairman of the Committee for Physical Culture and Sport. In 2010 he registered as a possible candidate for the post of President of the Russian Figure Skating Federation, but withdrew when the statutes were changed and the authority of the association president was curtailed.

Sicharulidze and Berezhnaya had a relationship between 1996 and 2002. After that, they remained close friends. In 2010, Sicharulisdze became the godfather of Berezhnaya's son.

Results

Pair skating

(up to and including 1996 with Marija Petrowa , from 1997 with Jelena Bereschnaja )

Competition / year	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002
winter Olympics						2.				1.
World championships		8th.	6th		9.	1.	1.	G	2.
European championships			6th	5.	3.	1.	Z	D.	1.
Junior World Championships	2.	1.	1.
Russian championships		6th	2.	4th	2.	2.	1.	1.	1.	1.

• Z = withdrawn
• D = Disqualified (because of a positive doping result from Jelena Bereschnaja)
• G = blocked by ISU

Web links

Commons : Anton Tarieljewitsch Sicharulidze  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Berezhnaya and Sicharulidze in the database of the International Skating Union (English)
• Anton Tarieljewitsch Sicharulidze in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://ptichkafs.livejournal.com/43514.html#cutid1
2. ↑ http://ptichkafs.livejournal.com/44587.html
3. ↑ http://ptichkafs.livejournal.com/43514.html#cutid1
4. ↑ http://www.time.com/time/magazine/1998/int/980209/nagano_1998.figure_skati31.html ( Memento from June 16, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
5. ↑ https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/longterm/olympics1998/sport/figskate/articles/russian10.htm
6. ↑ http://www.iceskatingintnl.com/archive/results_worlds/world00p.htm
7. ↑ http://7days.ru/stars/anton-sikharulidze
8. ↑ http://www.nvspb.ru/tops/anton-siharulidze-aleksandr-gorshkov-nichego-ne-smojet-izmenit-42782
9. ↑ http://www.mk.ru/editions/daily/article/2008/04/22/44010-syigraem-svadbu-kogda-rodim-vtorogo.html
10. ↑ http://lifenews.ru/news/35431