Elena Berezhnaya - 1998 Olympic Season

1998 Olympic Season

The next season, they won the European Championship, defeating 1992 Olympic champion Artur Dmitriev with his new partner Oksana Kazakova, and the reigning World Champions Mandy Wötzel and Ingo Steuer. At only 20 and 21 years of age respectively, Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze had established themselves as gold-medal favorites going into the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. Observers were impressed by their rapid progress. Ekaterina Gordeeva selected Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze as her and Sergei Grinkov's skating doubles in a documentary on the legendary team after her husband's death.

In the short program, the pair had one fall but their other elements were of high quality. In the long, they put themselves back in contention for the gold medal with a strong performance, until five seconds from the end when they had a surprising fall as Sikharulidze set her down from a closing star lift. Although disappointed by suddenly giving away their chance at the gold so close to the end of the program, Sikharulidze recovered from his shock and joked, "It's a new finish. If you don't like it, we'll change it, no problem." The quality of the rest of their skating earned them the silver medal ahead of Wötzel and Steuer, while Kazakova and Dmitriev claimed the title. Former Japanese singles skater Yuko Kawaguchi became inspired to switch to pair skating after seeing Elena Berezhnaya at the Nagano Olympics.