Five world-championship medalists crowned recently in Moscow headline the John Hancock Champions on Ice 2005 Tour that makes a stop tonight at the MCI Center in Washington.
A bevy of skating stars led by American Michelle Kwan are using the tour to gear up for the 2006 Winter Olympics next year in Turin, Italy.
Russian Irina Slutskaya won her second world title in Moscow, narrowly beating American challenges from Sasha Cohen, who finished second, and five-time world champion Kwan, who took fourth. All will compete tonight in D.C.
One of the more interesting stories in the group of skaters appearing at MCI Center tonight is that of the French ice dancing pair Marina Anissina and Gwendel Peizerat.
Anissina and Peizerat won the 2002 Olympic gold medal.
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WHAT: John Hancock Champions on Ice
2005 Tour WHERE: MCI Center in Washington WHEN: Tonight at 7:30 COST: $95, $65, $45, $30, $15 at ticketmaster.com or via Phonecharge at 202/397-SEAT, 703/573-SEAT or 410/547-SEAT. INFO: Visit mcicenter.com or championsonice.com.
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The pair got together when the Russian Anissina sent Frenchman Peizerat a desperate letter.
They had been members of junior dance teams in Russia and France. Anissina danced with Ilia Averbukh in Moscow and Peizerat with Marina Morel.
Averbukh fell in love with another ice dancer in his club and could not bear for her to dance with anyone else. He abandoned Anissina.
Anissina had met Peizerat at a juniors competition and felt some chemistry with him.
"I admired him as a skater, so I wrote to him asking if he would be interested in being my partner," she said during a phone interview last week.
She also wrote to Canada's Victor Kraatz, but as fate would have it, that letter never arrived.
Peizerat's collaboration with Morel was falling apart, so he wrote back to her in Moscow.
Anissina moved to Lyon, France, in 1993 to join Peizerat.
It was a major challenge, in part due to cultural reasons.
"I spoke no French," Anissina said.
She had to learn the language and adapt not only to a new culture, but to a new partner.
"We knew pretty quickly that there was chemistry on the ice, but it took a long time to develop--and you're never really certain about that sort of thing," Peizerat said in a phone interview.
A major point of pride for the pair is the fact that they won France's first gold medal in nine years at the World Championships last year before a home crowd in Nice, France. That made them the first couple to win on home ice since Czechoslovakia's Eva Romanova and Pavel Roman in 1962.
They did it with a program skated to "Carmina Burana" that garnered four perfect 6.0 artistic marks, the most at a world event since Russian pairs skaters Natalya Mishkutenok and Arthur Dmitriev in 1992.
Anissina's mother, Irina Chernieva, was a pairs skater who competed at the 1972 Olympics. Her father, Viatcheslav Anissina, was a hockey player who won a world championship with the Soviet team. Both are coaches now.
Peizerat's father, Eugene Peizerat, is an official with the French Figure Skating Federation and chairman of the National Ice Dance Commission.
Also to appear in Washington tonight are the Russian pair Tatiana Totmianina and Maxim Marinin, who captured their second straight world title in Moscow.
To reach MICHAEL ZITZ: 540/374-5408 mikez@freelancestar.com