Oksana Bajul

Oksana Bajul
Full name	Oksana Serhijivna Bajul
nation	Ukraine
birthday	November 16, 1977
place of birth	Dnipropetrovsk ,  Ukrainian SSR
size	160 cm
Weight	43 kg
Career
Trainer	Halyna Smijewska
status	resigned
Medal table
Olympic medals 1 × 0 × 0 × World Cup medals 1 × 0 × 0 × EM medals 0 × 2 × 0 ×
winter Olympics gold Lillehammer 1994 Ladies  World figure skating championships gold Prague 1993 Ladies  European figure skating championships silver Helsinki 1993 Ladies silver Copenhagen 1994 Ladies

Oksana Serhijivna Bajul ( Ukrainian Оксана Сергіївна Баюл ; born November 16, 1977 in Dnipropetrovsk , Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic , Soviet Union ) is a former Ukrainian figure skater who started in a single race . She is the Olympic champion of 1994 and the world champion of 1993 .

Career

Bajul's parents divorced when she was two years old. Then she was raised by her mother Marina. When Oksana was 13 years old, her mother died of ovarian cancer. At this point Oksana had already lost her maternal grandparents and no other relatives. Her coach took care of her for a while, but he later emigrated to Canada. Halyna Smijewska , the most prominent trainer in Ukraine at the time, brought Bajul to Odessa , took her into her family, acted as a surrogate mother and continued to train her. This happened on the advice of Smiyevska's son-in-law, the later Olympic champion in figure skating , Viktor Petrenko , who also paid for the costs.

In 1993 Oksana Bajul became the first Ukrainian female champion after the collapse of the Soviet Union . At her first European Championship she was runner- up in Helsinki behind the French Surya Bonaly . She beat this at the World Championships in Prague and became world champion straight away. Only Madge Syers , Herma Szabó and Barbara Ann Scott had achieved this in the history of women's competition at World Championships . In 2006 Kimmie Meissner managed this feat again.

In 1994 Bajul defended her national championship title and was again vice European champion behind Surya Bonaly in Copenhagen . The Olympic Games in Lillehammer followed . In an extremely close decision, Bajul won Olympic gold ahead of Nancy Kerrigan from the USA. Bajul almost missed the freestyle because she had collided with Tanja Szewczenko during a previous run-in and was injured. She then received two officially approved syringes to numb her pain.

Despite their status as Olympic champions, Bajul and Petrenko faced problems after returning to Ukraine. After the collapse of the Soviet Union , the ice rink in Odessa was dilapidated due to a lack of financial support. There were no ice resurfacing machines and the trainers and students had to clear the ice by hand. It was therefore not surprising that after these Olympic Games, at the age of 16, Bajul ended her competitive career and switched to the professionals to earn money. Halyna Smijewska negotiated a good contract for her that enabled her to tour the USA profitably. However, she struggled with health problems. In the summer of 1994, she had to undergo knee surgery. The doctors ordered her to rest, but Bajul ignored the order in order to fulfill her contract. That year, Bajul and Petrenko were invited to train at the newly built ice rink in Connecticut . Smijewska should be a coach there. So the whole family, including Smijewska's daughter Nina, Petrenko's wife, moved to Simsbury , Connecticut.

After some personal and health difficulties, Bajul had drinking problems and was arrested in 1997 after being in a car accident while under the influence of alcohol. Then she underwent an addiction treatment, which was successful.

She currently lives in New Jersey . She continues to appear at shows and sells her own fashion and jewelry collection. She also published a book on figure skating and an autobiography in 1997 . Her life was filmed in A Promise Kept: The Oksana Baiul Story in 1994 .

Results

Competition / year	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994
winter Olympics					1.
World championships				1.
European championships				2.	2.
Soviet championships	12.	10.
Ukrainian championships				1.	1.

Works

• Oksana: My Own Story . Random House Books. ISBN 0-679-88382-7
• Secrets of Skating . Universe / Rizzoli. ISBN 0-7893-0104-0

Web links

• Oksana Bajul in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Official website (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Jere Longman: FIGURES ON ICE; Oksana Baiul: A Little Bit of Heaven on Ice . In: The New York Times , February 6, 1994. 
2. ^ ^{A b c} Philip Hersh: Golden feeling returns , Chicago Tribune . March 17, 2004. Retrieved October 21, 2009. 
3. ↑ Filip Bondy: Oksana Baiul: Orphan at 13 and Champion at 15 . In: The New York Times , April 23, 1993. 
4. ↑ Jere Longman: Baiul Is Injured In Skating Collision . In: The New York Times , February 25, 1994. 
5. ↑ Eriq Gardner: WME South By Ice Skating Great Oksana Baiul . In: The Hollywood Reporter , November 20, 2012. 
6. ↑ Jonathan Rabinovitz: When Olympic Champions Moved In, They Put Simsbury on the World Map . In: The New York Times , February 2, 1997. Retrieved January 4, 2011.