Dancing in Place

When the last twizzle had been twizzled, the last “Carmen” had met her untimely end and the final rendition of “Bolero” had desecrated the memory of Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean’s glorious 1984 gold-medal performance to that music, little had changed in the illogical world of ice dance.

Although the standings shifted after each phase of the first Olympic competition under figure skating’s new scoring system, the top five couples ranked in the same order as they’d finished at last year’s world championships in Moscow.

Tatiana Navka and Roman Kostomarov won the gold medal with 200.64 points, despite an uninspiring “Carmen” free dance, giving Russian skaters Olympic titles in all three of the disciplines that have been contested.

Newly minted U.S. citizen Tanith Belbin and partner Ben Agosto earned 196.06 points and won the silver medal -- the first medal for a U.S. ice dance duo since Colleen O’Connor and Jim Millns won a bronze in 1976 -- even though Belbin stumbled and put her second foot down on a twizzle, a spinning move that’s supposed to be done on one foot.

It was the first U.S. figure skating medal of the Games, following shutouts for the pairs and men. The women’s competition begins today.

“It’s our first Olympics, and a lot of the teams that are competing with us here are second- or third-time Olympians,” said Belbin, who was born in Canada and became a U.S. citizen Dec. 31, after an act of Congress had expedited the process.

“It’s great to be able to come here and get a medal our first time out, when we didn’t even know we would be here. You can’t ask for more.”

Belbin and Agosto finished .21 of a point ahead of Ukraine’s Elena Grushina and Ruslan Goncharov, whose claim to fame will be Grushina’s spangled, tassled, stripper-like outfit. Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder of France were fourth, with 194.28 points, and Albena Denkova and Maxim Staviski of Bulgaria were fifth, with 189.53 points.

There were no fireworks, as there had been Sunday, when Barbara Fusar Poli and Maurizio Margaglio of Italy fell during their original dance and stared daggers at each other after they’d finished. They got through their “Prince of Egypt” routine without mishap Monday and celebrated with embraces and kisses on the cheek at center ice. They finished sixth, but were the favorites of the partisan crowd at the Palavela arena.

Fusar Poli said she and her partner had been mad at themselves Sunday, not at each other.

“No. Absolutely no. No, no, no,” she said. “Never. We are like brother and sister.... We were speaking with our eyes. ‘What did we did? We did a mistake.’ ”

Navka, 30, and Kostomarov, 29, train in New Jersey with two-time Olympic ice dance medalist Alexander Zhulin, Navka’s husband and father of the couple’s 5-year-old daughter. Navka and Kostomarov, who’d finished 10th at the Salt Lake City Games, ranked second here after the compulsory dance and first after the original dance before recording the top technical and program component scores in the free dance of 51.73 and 49.64, respectively.

“I can’t believe it yet,” Navka said. “It’s my dream from when I was a little girl.”

Said Kostomarov: “I’m the happiest human in the world right now.”

Belbin and Agosto were slightly less enthusiastic, saying they could have skated better. They got 98.17 points for their free dance, the fourth-best score of the night.

“This is the most challenging performance I’ve ever given, because of the pressure of the Olympic Games,” Belbin said. “The moment I saw the [U.S.] flag rising was one we didn’t allow ourselves to imagine because we didn’t want to create a dream we couldn’t attain.”

If Belbin, 21, and Agosto, 24, are the future of the sport, Navka said, it’s in good hands.

“Like a woman, like a mother, I was so happy for Tanith because for years, she didn’t know what was going to happen” regarding her U.S. citizenship, Navka said. “They have made very fast progress, and I am very sure in [the] future they will be on top.”

The second U.S. duo, Melissa Gregory and Denis Petukhov of Newington, Conn., finished 14th. Jamie Silverstein and Ryan O’Meara, training mates of Belbin and Agosto in Canton, Mich., finished 16th.

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MEDAL WINNERS

FIGURE SKATING, ICE DANCING

GOLD

* Navka and Kostomarov, Russia

SILVER

* Belbin and Agosto, United States

BRONZE

* Grushina and Goncharov, Ukraine