He's as strong as Stolichnaya. She's as lithe as a Bolshoi ballerina. And together they may be the best pairs skaters of all time.
Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov, the 1988 Olympic champions, positioned themselves as the favorites for another gold medal by winning the technical program Sunday night at the Olympic Amphitheater.The striking Russian pair, husband and wife, placed first on the cards of six of the nine judges.
The 1992 Olympic champions, Natalia Mishkutenok and Artur Dmitriev, took first on two of the judges' cards and they ended up second overall.
The reigning world champions, Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler of Canada, were in third place.
The 2-minute, 40-second technical program, in which skaters must perform eight required elements, counts for one-third of the final score.
Jenni Meno and Todd Sand, the U.S. champions, ended up sixth. They performed a rollicking program that had the Americans in the crowd yelling as if they were at the France-U.S. hockey game up in Gjovik.
Americans Karen Courtland and Todd Reynolds were in 13th place.
"Most world champions and Olympic gold medalists were 10th or 13th when they started out," said a nevertheless-buoyant Reynolds, who learned his craft at the Houston Figure Skating Club. "If we skate clean in the long program we can pull up two places."
The third American team, Kyoko Ina and Jason Dungjen, were in 15th place among the 18 pairs.
Gordeeva was just 16 and Grinkov 21 when they won the gold medal in Calgary. Then they turned pro, skated in Brian Boitano's ice shows, bought a place in Tampa, Fla., and had a baby girl.
They returned to Olympic-syle skating last year, as did Mishkutenok and Dmitriev. The free program could well be something of a skate-off between the two Russian couples.
Mishkutenok and Dmitriev came out Sunday night with enough brocade on their costumes to decorate the entire Soviet officer corps.
They had a brisk opening minute with a pair of beautiful double axels, then Mishkutenok came out of a blazing death spiral with ice chips in her hair. And their carthweel exit out of an overhead lift would have wowed the Wallendas.
Their big finish - after a trademark corkscrew spin - was nearly a disaster: Dmitriev fell backward onto the ice just as the music ended, but he covered it up with a smile and a wonderful bit of acting that Stanislavski himself would have loved.
When their scores came up, coach Tamara Moskvina looked as if she'd just bitten into some bad caviar. But the judges responded nicely, setting the stage for Tuesday night's freestyle finale.