page_title: Anton Sikharulidze
section_title: 2002 Olympics
hierarchical_section_title: Anton Sikharulidze / 2002 Olympics
caption_attribution_description: English: NOVO-OGARYOVO. President Vladimir Putin meeting with Russian Olympic team athletes and trainers. Mr Putin with Olympic champion figure skaters Anton Sikharulidze and Yelena Berezhnaya.Русский: НОВО-ОГАРЕВО. Встреча со спортсменами и тренерами олимпийской сборной России. С олимпийскими чемпионами, фигуристами Антоном Сихарулидзе и Еленой Бережной.
context_page_description: Anton Tarielyevich Sikharulidze is a Russian former pair skater. With Elena Berezhnaya, he is the 1998 and 1999 World champion, 1998 Olympic silver medalist and 2002 Olympic champion.
  His first partner was Maria Petrova, with whom he became the 1994 and 1995 World Junior Champion. He began competing with Berezhnaya in 1996 after helping her recover from an accident with her previous partner. Within two years of the accident, Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze had established themselves as one of the best pair teams in the world. During their competitive career, they were coached by Tamara Moskvina at the Yubileyny Sports Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and the Ice House in Hackensack, New Jersey. Their Olympic gold medals are shared with Canadian pair Jamie Salé and David Pelletier.
context_section_description: At the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, both pairs skated strong short programs, after which Berezhnaya/Sikharulidze were in first and Salé/Pelletier, who had a fall at the end of their program, second. In the long program, Berezhnaya/Sikharulidze skated a good program although Sikharulidze had a stumble on a jump element before quickly regaining unison with his partner. Salé/Pelletier, meanwhile, had no obvious mistakes. Four judges placed the Canadians first, while five had Berezhnaya/Sikharulidze as the winners, with the Canadians receiving higher technical scores and the Russians higher presentation scores. They were awarded the gold and the Canadians the silver. The result sparked a controversy with the media emphasizing Sikharulidze's stepout, although there was no media criticism a year earlier when Salé/Pelletier were awarded gold at the 2001 World Championships. The commentators received criticism for failing to mention Berezhnaya/Sikharulidze's strengths, with some observers stating that the pair had performed a more challenging program with greater speed, more interweaving moves and transitions, and less distance between the partners.
  The International Skating Union's Technical Committee decided to look into the matter, first approaching French judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne, the only Western judge in favor of the Russian pair. She allegedly said that she had been intimidated by the head of the French skating organization into voting for the Russian pair in exchange for an advantage for the French couple in the ice dancing competition, which was to follow a few days later. A second gold medal was awarded to the Canadian pair, and the IOC and ISU decided to declare both pairs as Olympic co-champions. Later, Le Gougne rescinded her earlier statement and declared she had voted according to her honest assessment of the performances but had been pressured to say otherwise.
caption: Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze meet Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting of Olympic athletes in March 2002
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