H o w   i t   a l l   b e g a n

Pasha was born on March 17th, 1972 in Odessa, Ukraine  (former USSR). At age 2, she was already an artist, copying some ice dance moves from ballets she watched on TV.

Two years later, as she was walking with her mum, she heard some music coming from an ice rink, and managed to take a look inside, through a hole in the wall. She immediately felt in love with ice skating: she wanted to do like these young skaters who seemed to fly in the air, wearing beautiful white skates with sparkling blades.

At first, the teacher refused to take Pasha in the club: the  season had already began, Pasha was too young, the club didn't have skates small enough for her feet... but Pasha was so determined that the teacher had to give in and finally let her go on the ice. She discovered that the little girl was very talented and accepted her to take lessons in the club with the other children. Very soon, Pasha was shown as an example to the other young skaters of the club.

At that time, Pasha was skating as a single. When she reached age 10, she was asked to skate at Dnieprodzerjinsvk (a town located about 400km far from Odessa) ice rink for Brejnev's jubilee. Pasha made such a great impression upon the president of USSR that he asked her to skate again and she improvised a routine that was even nicer than the first one.

Then, Pasha moved to Moscow with her mum and began skating under Elena Alexandrova's guidance (still in single), but when Natalia Linichuk and Gennadi Karponosov (Olympic champions in 1980) began coaching in 1982, Natalia proposed Pasha to turn to ice dancing... It was the begining of an exceptional career : Pasha became an ice-dancer and was paired with Alexandr Chichkov.

A few years later, in 1986, the 2 young skaters won their first gold medal in an international event