Winter Olympics Athlets Bios

Irina Slutskaya

Sport Figure Skating
Event(S) Ladies'
Birthdate February 9, 1979
Birthplace Moscow, Soviet Union
Residence Moscow, Russia
Olympics 1998, 2002. 2006

On 2005, Irina Slutskaya returned from a career-threatening illness to win her second world title and establish herself as the Olympic gold-medal favorite in ladies' figure skating. She began her undefeated season with a stellar Grand Prix circuit campaign, winning the Cup of China, Cup of Russia and the Grand Prix Final. She then won her fourth Russian national title and her sixth European title before capping her 2004-05 season by winning a world title, her second, at home in Moscow. There, she established a significant lead after the first two phases of competition and needed only a respectable free skate to clinch the gold. Instead, she delivered an inspired performance, landing her difficult triple Lutz-triple loop combination and winning the free skate -- and the competition.

Slutkskaya's successful 2004-05 campaign was even more impressive considering that at times in 2004, she was having trouble moving her legs. Her health problems began in the summer of 2003, when she was in and out of several hospitals in Moscow, struggling with pain in her legs and fatigue. Initially, doctors diagnosed her with pneumonia, chronic asthmatic bronchitis and pericarditis, an inflammation of the sac surrounding the heart. But after she started training again in November 2004, her condition worsened, and she returned to the hospital. Eventually, she was diagnosed with vasculitis, a general term for a group of diseases involving inflammation in the blood vessels. Doctors recommended that she take a year off from skating, but Slutskaya was back on the ice within a few months, and even took part in the 2004 World Championships. She returned to a full competitive schedule in the fall of 2004.

The 2005 world championship victory bodes well for Slutskaya's chances in Torino: At four of the last five Winter Olympics, the reigning world champion has won the gold medal. (Michelle Kwan, who finished third at the Salt Lake Games after having won the world title in 2001, is the one who lost.) No skater from Russia or the Soviet Union has ever won the ladies' gold medal. So if she does win, Slutskaya would be the first Russian Olympic gold medalist in ladies' figure skating.

A victory in Torino would make Slutskaya the oldest ladies' champion since at least 1908, and possibly the oldest ever. British skater Florence "Madge" Syers won the first ladies' Olympic figure skating gold medal at the London Summer Games in October 1908. So it's unclear if Slutskaya, 27 years and 14 days old on the day of the ladies' free skate, would earn the distinction of oldest ladies' champion ever with a gold medal in 2006.

Slutskaya entered the 2002 Games as a top medal contender, having won the silver medal (behind Michelle Kwan) at three of the previous four World Championships. In Salt Lake, she finished second to longtime rival Kwan in the short program by a 5-4 split of the judges.

She went to Nagano for the World Championships the month after the Salt Lake Games and with clean, conservative programs, won her first world title, ahead of second-place Kwan.

Slutskaya's victory at the 2005 Europeans, held at the Olympic venue in Torino, was somewhat controversial, however. She fell once and landed only three triple jumps in the free skate, and yet managed to win the title on the basis of her program component marks, which some suggested were undeservedly high. In January, at the 2006 European Championships in Lyon, France, Slutskaya won both the short program and the free skate to take her seventh career European title. With that victory, Slutskaya surpassed Henie and Witt and set the record for the most European ladies' golds in history.

Slutskaya has selected "Totentanz" by Franz Liszt as her short program music this year. For her free skate she is skating to a flamenco medley. The programs were well-received at Slutskaya's Grand Prix events this season. She won both the short program and the free skate at both Cup of China and Cup of Russia, and at the latter event she earned the highest ladies' total score (198.06) in the history of the new judging system. Slutskaya's total was the highest since Sasha Cohen won Skate Canada nearly two years earlier.

Slutskaya's skating does not have any major deficiencies. She has a couple of different difficult triple-triple jump combinations in her arsenal, including a triple Lutz-triple loop (which she did at the 2005 World Championships) and a triple Salchow-triple loop-double toe (which she did at this fall's Cup of Russia). Slutskaya also invented the double Biellmann spin with foot change, a move that requires considerable flexibility.