Sergei Ponomarenko

Klimova and Ponomarenko in 1989
Personal information
Full name	Sergei Vladilenovich Ponomarenko
Born	(1960-10-06)October 6, 1960 (age 65) Balkhash,Kazakh SSR, Soviet Union
Height	1.73 m (5 ft 8 in)
Figure skating career
Country	Unified Team  Soviet Union
Medal record Figure skating Ice dancing Representing CIS ( Unified Team) Olympic Games 1992 Albertville Ice dancing World Championships 1992 Oakland Ice dancing European Championships 1992 Lausanne Ice dancing Representing Soviet Union Olympic Games 1988 Calgary Ice dancing 1984 Sarajevo Ice dancing World Championships 1989 Birmingham Ice dancing 1990 Halifax Ice dancing 1985 Tokyo Ice dancing 1986 Geneva Ice dancing 1987 Cincinnati Ice dancing 1988 Budapest Ice dancing 1991 Munich Ice dancing European Championships 1989 Birmingham Ice dancing 1990 Leningrad Ice dancing 1991 Sofia Ice dancing 1985 Gothenburg Ice dancing 1986 Sarajevo Ice dancing 1987 Sarajevo Ice dancing 1984 Budapest Ice dancing World Junior Championships 1978 Megève Ice dancing 1979 Augsburg Ice dancing

Sergei Ponomarenko

Medal record
Figure skating
Representingthe Soviet Union
	1988 Calgary	Ice dancing
	1984 Sarajevo	Ice dancing
Representingthe Unified Team
	1992 Albertville	Ice dancing

Sergei Vladilenovich Ponomarenko (Russian:Серге́й Владиленович Пономаренко; born October 6, 1960) is a Russian former competitiveice dancer who competed for theSoviet Union and theUnified team. With skating partner and wifeMarina 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 atSpartak inMoscow. Early in his career, he competed withTatiana Durasova, becoming the 1978 and 1979World Junior champion.^[1] Following their split, he teamed up withMarina Klimova.

Klimova and Ponomarenko were fourth in theirEuropean Championships debut in 1983. Their breakthrough came the following season when they won the bronze medal at the1984 Winter Olympics and1984 European Championships. In 1985, they won their firstWorld medal, silver. They were four-time consecutive World silver medalists from 1985 to 1988. In 1988, they also won theOlympic silver medal, behindNatalia Bestemianova andAndrei Bukin.

In1989, Klimova and Ponomarenko won the first of their four consecutive European titles. They also won the1989 World Championships and narrowly won another World gold in1990 on the strength of their compulsories and theiroriginal dance, even though they lost thefree dance toIsabelle Duchesnay andPaul Duchesnay from France. In1991, their free dance was choreographed to music from the filmLawrence of Arabia; figure skating writer Ellyn Kestnbaum states that the program "escapes gendering by representing different elements of nature",^[2] 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".^[2] Kestnbaum also states their the relationship Klimova and Ponomarenko present "is not gendered stereotypically, but it is figured as difference, as opposing elements".^[3]

Four months before the Olympics, they decided to leave coach Natalia Dubova.^[4] They re-established themselves as the top ice dancers in the world by winning another1992 European title and then capturing the1992 Olympic title. He became one of the oldest figure skating Olympic champions. They ended their season with theirthird 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".^[5] 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.^[5] Kestnbaum called their program "a highly eroticized duet to music byJ.S. Bach".^[5] 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".^[5]

In addition to winning threeWorld championships and fourEuropean Championships, Klimova and Ponomarenko are the first figure skaters in any discipline to have won Olympic medals in three different colors. They won the bronze medal in1984 Sarajevo, the silver medal in1988 Calgary for theSoviet Union and the gold medal in1992 Albertville for theUnified Team.

Klimova and Ponomarenko were inducted into theWorld Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2000.^[6] Ponomarenko is an ISU technical specialist for Russia.^[7] He and his wife coach young figure skaters at Sharks Ice atSan Jose,California. They were known as "traditionalists with a light elegant touch"^[2] and for excelling both technically and artistically.

Klimova and Ponomarenko married in September 1984. They now reside in the United States inMorgan Hill, California. They have two sons, Tim Ponomarenko, born in 1998, andAnthony Ponomarenko, born on January 5, 2001, inSan Jose, California.^[8] Anthony is a competitive ice dancer for the United States.^[8][9]

(With Klimova)

Professional career

• 1991 Worlds free dance (YouTube clip)
• 1992 Olympics free dance (YouTube clip)

Media related toSergei Ponomarenko at Wikimedia Commons

• 1960 births
• Living people
• Russian male ice dancers
• Soviet male ice dancers
• International Skating Union technical specialists
• Figure skaters at the 1984 Winter Olympics
• Figure skaters at the 1988 Winter Olympics
• Figure skaters at the 1992 Winter Olympics
• Olympic figure skaters for the Soviet Union
• Olympic figure skaters for the Unified Team
• Olympic gold medalists for the Unified Team
• Olympic silver medalists for the Soviet Union
• Olympic bronze medalists for the Soviet Union
• Spartak (sports society) sportspeople
• Sportspeople from Karaganda Region
• Figure skaters from Moscow
• Figure skaters from San Jose, California
• Olympic medalists in figure skating
• World Figure Skating Championships medalists
• European Figure Skating Championships medalists
• World Junior Figure Skating Championships medalists
• Medalists at the 1984 Winter Olympics
• Medalists at the 1988 Winter Olympics
• Medalists at the 1992 Winter Olympics
• Goodwill Games medalists in figure skating
• Competitors at the 1990 Goodwill Games
• 20th-century Russian sportsmen

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