Ukraine's ice dancers earn bronze (02/26/06)

Ukraine's ice dancers earn bronze

PARSIPPANY, N.J. - Ukrainian ice dancers Elena Grushina and Ruslan Goncharov won the bronze medal at the Winter Olympics on Monday, February 20, becoming the first ice dancers from Ukraine to win an Olympic medal.

They were bested by the Russian pair of Tatyana Navka, a native of Ukraine, and Roman Kostomarov, who won the gold medal; and Americans Tanith Belbin and Benjamin Agosto, who took silver.

The husband-and-wife duo of Ms. Grushina, 31, and Mr. Goncharov, 33, who hail from Odesa, were congratulated by President Viktor Yushchenko. The couple began ice dancing together in 1990. At the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City they placed ninth.

Earlier President Yushchenko had offered his congratulations to Ukraine's first medalist at the Games, Lilia Efremova, who earned a bronze in the women's 7.5-kilometer sprint of biathlon. A resident of Sumy, Ms. Efremova, 28, is Ukraine's 2005 champion in biathlon.

According to Ukrinform, in his message to Ms. Efremova Mr. Yushchenko expressed his hope that her medal-winning performance on February 16 would serve as a good beginning for further achievements by Team Ukraine in Torino.

Ms. Efremova also competed in the 10-kilometer pursuit of biathlon, placing eighth.

Other top-10 finishers for Ukraine during the second week of Olympic competition included: an eighth-place finish in the cross-country skiing's 4x5-kilometer relay earned by the women's team of Kateryna Grygorenko, Tatjana Zavalij, Vita Jakimchuk and Valentyna Shevchenko; and a seventh-place finish in biathlon's 4x7.5-kilometer relay earned by the men's foursome of Olexander Bilanenko, Andriy Deryzemlya, Alexei Korobeynikov and Ruslan Lysenko.

(For complete Olympic results, see page 9.)

Also of interest to Ukrainians around the globe is the performance of U.S. figure skater Sasha Cohen, 21, a native of California whose Odesa-born mother, Galina, emigrated to the United States with her parents in the 1970s.

After the short program on February 21, Ms. Cohen was in first place, leading by three-hundredths of a point over Irina Slutskaya of Russia. Ms. Cohen skated her short program to the music of the Russian folk song "Dark Eyes." The long program of the competition was scheduled for February 23.

Ms. Cohen is known in the Ukrainian community for her participation in a 2001 figure-skating show benefiting the Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund (today known as the Children of Chornobyl Relief and Development Fund) that was organized by Olympic and World figure skating champion Viktor Petrenko of Ukraine.

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