Natalya MISHKUTYONOK

Nataliya Mishkutyonok and Artur Dmitriyev rose to prominence at the 1988 European Championships, where they were fourth. They won a bronze at the 1989 European Championships, their first international championships medal, repeated that feat at the 1990 European Championships, and won their first medal at the 1990 World Championships, also a bronze. In 1991, after the World’s top pair, Katya Gordeyeva and Sergey Grinkov turned professional, Mishkutyonok and Dmitriyev rose to be the world’s top pair, winning gold at both the World and European Championships, which they also repeated in 1992, also adding a gold at the 1992 Winter Olympics. After the 1992 Winter Olympics, Mishkutyonok and Dmitriyev turned professional and won a bronze at the 1993 World Professional Championships, but when a new ISU rule allowed professional skaters to regain their Olympic eligibility, the pair returned to amateur competition for the 1993-94 season and skated at the Winter Olympics, where they won silver behind Gordeyeva and Grinkov, who had also returned to amateur competition. Mishkutyonok and Dmitriyev also won a bronze at the 1994 European Championships. They never won a Soviet or Russian title, but were runners-up at the 1990 and 1991 Soviet and 1994 Russian Championships. After the 1994 Winter Olympics, Mishkutenok retired from competition and moved to the United States, where she married hockey player Craig Shephard, with whom she skated professionally on occasion during the late 1990s. Mishkutyonok later coached pairs and singles skaters in Hurst, Texas.