Feb. 8, 2004
Israelis capture two of top 10 spots at European Figure Skating Championships
By LIONEL GAFFEN

Israel’s Galit Chait and Sergei Sakhnovski took fifth place in ice dancing at the European Figure Skating Championships in Budapest on Friday.
Photo: AP

Without a doubt, Galit Chait and Sergei Sakhnovsky Free Dance performance at the European Championships in Budapest, Hungary deserved the top honors. Their riveting showing, skating to Fellini's soundtrack "Clowns" before a near sell out 20,000 crowd had the enthralled audience clapping and chanting along throughout every second of their technically difficult performance, which ended with a standing ovation.

Unfortunately, however, the same group of judges who consistently have lowered their scores, and those of Israel's second dynamic dance couple, Natalia Gudina and Alexei Beletsky, saw to it that they would remain in fifth place overall, while Gudina and Beletsky had to settle for ninth, after a delightfully fantastic performance to Rossini's "The Barber of Seville," where they broke new ground by skating to an operatic aria. For Gudina and Beletsky, it was the first top ten finish after placing 11th last year and 14th the year before.

Last year's bronze medal winners Tatiana Navka and Roman Kostomarov of Russia took top honors, while Albena Denkova and Maxim Staviski retained their runner-up status. Ukrainians Elena Grushina and Ruslan Goncharov moved up to third from last year's fourth and the French pair of Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder came up three places to fourth.

According to Israel Ice Skating Federation secretary Judith Javor, who spoke to The Jerusalem Post from Budapest, "[Chait and Sakhnovsky] skated their hearts out and gave a terrific performance. We are just so proud of them."

With regard to the judging, she added, "it's about time that the anti-Israel judging be brought out in the open. All the people here who are involved with figure skating can't look us in the eye, as they know that we're being deliberately and systematically cheated by a group of the judges."

Boris Chait, chairman of the IISF had much harsher words for the judges and the judging system. "The referee and assistant referee, who supervise the group of judges, but whose marks don't count, had Galit and Sergei in third place overall. There is a group of judges, a clique, who is deliberately giving the Israelis lower marks on average, and a few in particular, who gave both our dance couples consistently, ridiculously low marks.

"Their purpose is to wear down the skaters desire to continue skating, and in the past, when they have gone after certain skaters with these tactics, a number of skaters have simply given up and stopped skating in competitions. With this system of anonymity, there is no accountability for the judges, except for a review at the end of the season, and then it's much too late to do anything. This group of judges is doing a great disservice to the sport, and to all the athletes involved."

He concluded, "It becomes very difficult to continue explaining to our athletes that they are deliberately being screwed over by a number of the judges, and that in spite of that, they have to keep their spirits up and continue working hard to get even better."

Sergei Kotov, who skating in great pain with an injured foot that almost caused him to default prior to the start of the competition,came in 24th place overall of 33 skaters in the Men's event.

An upset of dramatic proportions took place as Brian Joubert of France unseated Evgeni Plushenko of Russia to take the gold medal. Plushenko's two uncharacteristic pratfalls during his performance were what did the defending champ in. Russian Ilia Klimkin managed to just nudge out Fredric Dambier of France for the bronze. Up-and-coming Russian youngster Andrei Griazev, who took fourth place at the latest Skate Israel Competition, came in eighth.

Team Israel returns home this week in order to prepare for the National Figure Skating Championships at the Canada Center in Metulla on February 13-15.