Sonja Springs : Ice-skating
They haven’t hired a hit man in the Nancy- Tonya fashion as yet, but if looks could kill the two Olympic skating champions Oksana Grishuk and Oksana Baiul would have buried each other by now – at least 10 feet under.
Their mutual animosity has reached the stage where Grishuk says she is applying to the International Skating Union to change her name because she has been so traumatised by harassment from Baiul that she can no longer stand to hear the name Oksana.
Grishuk and her partner, Evgeny Platov, are the rock ‘n roll Russians who thwarted British hopes that Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean would claim a second Olympic ice dancing gold medal in 1994.
They are the favourites to take the gold next February and, if successful, they will make history as the first ice dance couple to win gold medals in two Olympic Games.
Baiul is the Ukrainian waif who delighted TV viewers the world over when as a 16- year-old she narrowly beat Nancy Kerrigan for Olympic gold. Her heart-rending story of being abandoned by her father as an infant, losing her mother to cancer when she was 13, and being deserted by her coach shortly afterwards, added to Baiul’s appeal.
A television movie was made of her life and she moved on to become a millionairess. However, in what was seen as the action of a troubled, defiant teenager, Baiul split with the coach who took her in when she had nothing and guided her to Olympic success. And her image was substantially tarnished earlier this year when she crashed her Mercedes Benz driving at nearly 160km/h with way over the legal limit of alcohol in her blood. She has publicly feuded with Grishuk for some time and her great rival, who is 26, is fuming at Baiul’s outbursts.
Both have flamboyant personalities but while Grishuk’s star is still ascending, Baiul’s life appears sadly adrift – as she demonstrated when she purchased a nine-room house, one room of which was devoted solely to her make-up, but put it on the market not long afterwards. “I don’t know why I bought it. I was lonely in it,” she says plaintively
Plagued by growth problems and injury, Baiul, who will turn 21 at the end of February, gives exhibitions but no longer competes, and her skating standard has declined precipitously. Grishuk, in contrast, looks unbeatable. She and Platov were planning to interpret music from Bizet’s opera Carmen in Nagano, but after hearing that some of the opposition had also chosen that music, they are putting together a piece with a less well known accompaniment.
“You will see. You will enjoy it, I’m sure,” says Grishuk. They will present it to the public for the first time in a competition in November in Paris. Grishuk is also confident that by then she will be recognised by her new name: “In future I want to be known as Pasha. Just Pasha. No other name. It means passion. I will change my name but never my hair.”
The antagonism between the two ice divas erupted when Grishuk copied Baiul’s short, platinum hairstyle, and mushroomed after Grishuk and Platov took over Baiul’s Harem Girl music to make up the routine which helped them win their fourth consecutive world championship last March.
The two spat snide remarks at each other throughout the four-month Tour of Champions which played 70 cities around the United States earlier this year. When the tour finished in July, Baiul wandered from rink to rink looking for a suitable training site. The final straw for Grishuk came when Baiul turned up at the plush four-rink complex in the tiny town of Marlboro, Massachusetts, where Grishuk and Platov train, and rented ice. When Baiul’s allocated time was up, Grishuk says she refused to leave the surface.
Baiul now says she intends to make Marlboro her base but denies she has been hounding Grishuk. She claims she chose this facility because her friend Maia Usova teaches there.
For Grishuk this is tantamount to pouring salt into a wound. Usova became another of her perceived enemies when Grishuk had an affair with her husband which culminated in the two women having a hair-pulling all-out catfight at Spago, one of Los Angeles’ top celebrity restaurants.
The affair, which lasted several months, led to a temporary break-up of Grishuk and Platov’s partnership and eventually to Usova’s divorce.
Grishuk maintains that the only thing that keeps her from exploding each time she encounters Baiul is the light at the end of the tunnel. “After we win in February, we will turn profesional, and I will become an actress. I have already an offer to star in a movie but I cannot because I must train. But you will see. You will soon hear a lot about Pasha and nothing about Baiul. People will soon forget her. She is an overweight has-been.”
ENDS