Dmitriev and (Insert Name) Still the Best Pair in the World

What is the best pairs figure skating team in the world?

Smokin’ Artur Dmitriev and whichever partner he chooses.

Give him a Natalia, pair him with an Oksana, it makes no difference. Tuesday night at White Ring arena--in between stubbing out backstage cigarettes, presumably--Dmitriev became the first man in Olympic history to win gold medals in pairs figure skating with two different partners, this time with 22-year-old Oksana Kazakova.

Six years ago at Albertville, he won with Natalia Mishkutenok, his partner again in 1994 in Lillehammer en route to the silver medal behind Ekaterina Gordeeva and the late Sergei Grinkov.

Mishkutenok retired after Lillehammer, and at 26, Dmitriev was old enough to consider the same. Instead, Dmitriev smoked a few more cigarettes, mulled it over a while and then decided to make one Olympic run in early 1995, hand-picking a new partner, Kazakova, that February.

Three years later, the payoff came in Japan. Maintaining the first-place lead they had built in Sunday’s short program, Kazakova and Dmitriev skated unspectacularly but cleanly--the only pair among the top four to not fall or stumble once.

The Russian silver medal-winning team of Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze put together the most dynamic program of the evening, one deserving of the gold . . . at least through the first 4 minutes 28 seconds of a 4 1/2-minute routine.

They had just completed the last element of their performance, an overhead star lift, when Berezhnaya stumbled as Sikharulidze brought her down to the ice.

Berezhnaya abruptly backed into Sikharulidze and the collision sent both skaters sprawling--two seconds before the end of their program.

Sikharulidze blamed himself for the error, saying, “I relaxed too much. . . . I make it a problem. I didn’t [concentrate] because I have never had this problem before.”

Mandy Woetzel and Ingo Steuer of Germany, the 1997 world champions, slipped from second place after the short program to third and settled for the bronze. In their long program, Woetzel awkwardly stepped out of her landing on a side-by-side double axel.

For the fourth time in as many Winter Olympics, pairs from Russia or the former Soviet Union swept the gold and silver medals. The victory by Kazakova and Dmitriev also marked the ninth consecutive pairs gold medal won by Russian/Soviet skaters--a streak that began in 1964 in Innsbruck, Austria.

Another tradition of Olympic pairs competition rolled relentlessly onward as well.

Yes, the Americans, once again, picked a bad time to fall down.

Kyoko Ina and Jason Dungjen, entering the long program in fourth place, lost any hope of a medal in the first minute when Dungjen stepped out of a triple toeloop and put a hand on the ice.

Later, Ina faltered on a double axel and their fate was sealed: fourth place after the short program, fourth place after the long.

But their performance was a gleaming diamond compared to the slip-and-slide act turned in by Jenni Meno and Todd Sand. Sand put a hand down landing his first jump, Meno fell on a double axel and then, while skating backward to prepare for a lift, Meno tripped and fell once more.

“I’m so sorry,” she told Sand at the center of the rink after the music stopped.

“What can I do? What can I say?” Sand asked Meno as they awaited their scores in the kiss-and-cry area, trying to console his shaken wife.

The scores were no surprise--as low as 4.9 for technical merit and only two marks higher than 5.4 across the board.

Sixth after the short program, Meno and Sand finished the competition in eighth place.

“It was a little bit of a shock,” Sand said. “Even in training, we’re not used to making mistakes like that. . . . We were a little off, and that’s all it takes.”

It was hardly the way Meno and Sand wanted to end their Olympic skating career, coming at the end of a difficult 12-month period in which they lost twice to Ina and Dungjen at the 1997 and 1998 U.S. championships and failed to medal at the 1997 world championships.

“We’ve had a lot of ups and a lot of downs,” Sand said philosophically.

“But a lot more downs lately.”

Meanwhile, the Michael Jordan of pairs skating--put him with anybody and he wins championships--is a poster boy for how not to train for the Olympics. Dmitriev loves his smokes and he loves his vodka, but as the Nagano Games approached, he figured he had better dump one vice.

So down the drain the vodka went.

“I still smoke,” Dmitriev says. “My wife doesn’t like it. My son doesn’t, either. They tell me, ‘Quit smoking.’ ”

Maybe in retirement. But as a 30-year-old Olympic-eligible skater, Dmitriev is set in his bad habits, and Tuesday night, it was difficult to argue with the results.

A powerful skater who towers over the competition at 6 feet, 194 pounds--Goliath proportions in this sport--Dmitriev is a dominant presence on the ice, lifting and tossing Kazakova across the ice as if she were a stuffed doll.

Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze skate with more grace and finesse and might have overtaken their Russian compatriots, if not for the critical miscue at the end of their long program.

Did that tumble cost them the gold medal?

“Is very difficult to say now,” Sikharulidze said. “I don’t know. Is 50-50.”

Tamara Moskvina, who coaches both Russian pairs, was more definitive.

“No,” she said flatly. “Their skating was not of gold quality.”

For his part, Sikharulidze was doing his best to make light of the fall.

“It’s a new finish pose,” he quipped. “What, you don’t like it? We can change it.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

MEDALISTS

Figure Skating: PAIRS

Gold: Kazakova-Dmitriev, Russia

Silver: Berezhnaya-Sikharulidze, Russia

Bronze: Woetzel-Steuer, Germany