Sergei Ponomarenko

Sergei Vladilenovich Ponomarenko (Серге́й Владиленович Пономаренко; born October 6, 1960) is a Russian former competitive ice dancer who competed for the Soviet Union and the Unified team.

Early in his career, he competed with Tatiana Durasova, becoming the 1978 and 1979 World Junior champion.

Following their split, he teamed up with Marina Klimova.

Klimova and Ponomarenko were fourth in their European Championships debut in 1983.

Their breakthrough came the following season when they won the bronze medal at the 1984 Winter Olympics and 1984 European Championships.

They won the bronze medal in 1984 Sarajevo, the silver medal in 1988 Calgary for the Soviet Union and the gold medal in 1992 Albertville for the Unified Team.

Klimova and Ponomarenko married in September 1984.

They now reside in the United States in Morgan Hill, California.

In 1985, they won their first World medal, silver.

They were four-time consecutive World silver medalists from 1985 to 1988.

In 1988, they also won the Olympic silver medal, behind Natalia Bestemianova and Andrei Bukin.

In 1989, Klimova and Ponomarenko won the first of their four consecutive European titles.

They also won the 1989 World Championships and narrowly won another World gold in 1990 on the strength of their compulsories and their original dance, even though they lost the free dance to Isabelle Duchesnay and Paul Duchesnay from France.

In 1991, their free dance was choreographed to music from the film Lawrence of Arabia; figure skating writer Ellyn Kestnbaum states that the program "escapes gendering by representing different elements of nature", with Ponomarenko, who wore a brown unitard, representing the sands of the desert and Klimova representing the wind.

Kestnbaum states that their free dance "replicates classical gender positions".

Kestnbaum also states their the relationship Klimova and Ponomarenko present "is not gendered stereotypically, but it is figured as difference, as opposing elements".

Four months before the Olympics, they decided to leave coach Natalia Dubova.

With skating partner and wife Marina Klimova, he is the 1992 Olympic champion, 1988 Olympic silver medalist, 1984 Olympic bronze medalist, three-time World champion, and four-time European champion.

Ponomarenko trained at Spartak in Moscow.

They re-established themselves as the top ice dancers in the world by winning another 1992 European title and then capturing the 1992 Olympic title.

He became one of the oldest figure skating Olympic champions.

They ended their season with their third World title.

They retired from eligible skating after the World Championships and turned to professional and show skating.

Their free skate program at the 1992 Winter Olympics, entitled "A Man and a Woman: From the Mundane to the Sublime," "returned to the images of difference and woman as other".

Ponomarenko and Klimova's costumes were both black and gray: he wore a loose shirt and trousers, with a sash around his waist, while she wore a black unitard with gray chiffon-like webbings or wings between her arms and legs and a spiderweb across her chest, and wore her red curly hair loose over her shoulders.

Kestnbaum called their program "a highly eroticized duet to music by J.S. Bach".

Kestnbaum also reported that the program displayed Ponomarenko's strength and Kimova's beauty and flexibility, stating that their movements, spider imagery, and costumes depicted that "the man is normative and the woman an exotic danger".

In addition to winning three World championships and four European Championships, Klimova and Ponomarenko are the first figure skaters in any discipline to have won Olympic medals in three different colors.

Klimova and Ponomarenko were inducted into the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2000.

Ponomarenko is an ISU technical specialist for Russia.

He and his wife coach young figure skaters at Sharks Ice at San Jose, California.

They were known as "traditionalists with a light elegant touch" and for excelling both technically and artistically.

They have two sons, Tim Ponomarenko, born in 1998, and Anthony Ponomarenko, born on January 5, 2001, in San Jose, California.

Anthony is a competitive ice dancer for the United States.

(With Klimova)

Professional career