Competitive Career
For the Soviet Union, Petrenko was the 1984 World Junior Champion and won the bronze medal at the 1988 Olympic Games. He then went on to win his first two European Championships in 1990 and 1991. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, athletes from former Soviet states went to the Olympics together for the last time in 1992 on a Unified Team. Petrenko competed for this Unified Team and with a free skate that was ranked above American Paul Wylie's by seven of the nine judges, he won the gold medal, the first ever for a singles skater from the former Soviet Union. A month later he went to the 1992 World Championships and won the gold medal there, as well, earning two 6.0's for presentation in his free program and receiving first place ranking from all nine judges.
Petrenko turned professional following his Olympic win, moving to Las Vegas, Nevada, but when the International Skating Union ruled that professionals could return to competitive status in 1993, he moved back to Odessa, Ukraine and began training for another Olympics. He won his third European Championships in January 1994, competing for the first time for the independent nation of Ukraine, and went on to represent his homeland at the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics, where it was widely expected that he, 1988 Olympic gold medalist Brian Boitano and World Champion Kurt Browning would be the main challengers for medals. After the short program, Petrenko was in ninth place after stepping out of his triple axel and not completing the rotation on his triple lutz, and Boitano and Browning were in eighth and twelfth, respectively. His performance in the free skate pulled him up to a fourth place finish.
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