Pasha GRISCHUK

Pasha Grishchuk was born in Odessa, Ukraine and took up skating at the age of four. Raised by a single mom, she and her mother moved to Moscow in 1980, where she began to skate with Aleksandr Chichkov. Together they won the World Junior ice dance title in 1988, while taking silver at the 1987 World Junior Championships. They also won the Soviet title in 1988 and that would have been a great start to a successful career, if Chichkov had not retired from sports in the summer of 1989 due to an injury. After Chichkov’s retirement, Grishchuk partnered with Yevgeny Platov and together they became the world’s best ice dancers during the 90s. The pair made their international début in 1990, placing fifth at both the World and European Championships and next year they were fourth at the Worlds and fifth at the Europeans. Their first podium success came in 1992, when they won bronzes at both the World and European Championships, which they bettered to silvers in next year. Grishchuk and Platov were the Olympic champions in 1994 and 1998, World Champions in 1994-97 and European champions in 1996-98, while taking silver at the 1994 European Championships. They also won the Soviet title in 1991 and Russian titles in 1993 and 1996.

Grishchuk and Platov retired from amateur competition after the 1998 Winter Olympics and later skated together in shows until summer of 1998, when Platov decided to skate with their former rival Maiya Usova and Grishchuk then skated with Sasha Zhulin, with whom she skated for a year. Grishchuk later worked as a figure skating coach at the KHS Arena in Anaheim, California. In 2006, Grishchuk was a celebrity judge on the WE TV series Skating's Next Star, that was hosted by Kristi Yamaguchi and the same year Grishchuk won the Russian version of Dancing on Ice after placing third in 2007.