Oksana Baiul (1994 Gold Medalist)

Biography
Oksana Baiul was born in Dnipropetrovsk, Soviet Union, in what is present-day Ukraine. She was only 13 when her mother, Marina, died of ovarian cancer. She had already lost her loving maternal grandparents as well. Her father had departed from her life after her parents' divorce when she was a baby, and her stepfather had no interest in raising her. After living with friends and sleeping on a cot at her hometown ice rink, she was eventually taken in by the top-ranked figure-skating coach in Odessa, Galina Zmievskaya, with whom Baiul subsequently lived while training. Zmievskaya's pupil and son-in-law, Olympic figure-skating champion Victor Petrenko, helped cover Baiul's expenses.....more Wikipedia data

---