Ukrainian-born pair skater Aliona Savchenko and her skating partner French-born Bruno Massot won an Olympic gold medal for Germany on Feb. 15 in Pyeongchang, setting a new free program world record by scoring a total of 235.90 points. The pair burst into tears on the ice after the performance. They have earned Germany’s first pairs gold since 1952.
It is the fifth Olympic Games for Savchenko who used to compete for Ukraine but then moved to Germany in 2003 because she couldn’t find a partner in Ukraine with whom she would take part in a competition. Savchenko, 34, who was born in Obukhiv, a town located some 45 kilometers west from Kyiv, began skating in 1989. It was her father who took her skating on a local frozen lake. Later she commuted to Kyiv by bus every day in order to keep training. There’s still no skating rink in Obukhiv.
“I saw skating on television and was fascinated by it. I didn’t do any other sports but I wanted to try figure skating. I started pairs when I was 13 years old. I saw the other skaters doing it and I wanted to do it myself. I liked all the acrobatic things like lifts and twists and throws,” Savchenko was quoted as saying in one of her interviews.
Later she was inspired by watching German Ingo Steuer skating on TV. Steuer became her coach and after relocating to Germany in 2003 she won the German national title with her new partner Robin Szolkowy. They made their international debut as a team at the start of the 2004–2005 season and placed fourth at 2005 European Championships and sixth at the 2005 World Championships. With Szolkowy, they won two bronze medals – in 2010 in Vancouver, Canada and in 2014 Russia’s Sochi.
After Szolkowy decided to retire from the professional sport in 2014, Savchenko wanted to continue competing and in March it was reported that she would team up with France’s skater Bruno Massot. Since the International Skating Union doesn’t allow any pair to compete under two flags, one partner was obliged to change the country and could not compete internationally until the previous country granted a release.
It took a year and a half for Massot to get released from the French Figure Skating Federation. He started to skate for Germany with Savchenko in October 2015 with their new coach Alexander König.
