Article L'Equipe 12 Feb 23:
Here is an article I only found today. It was actually published a few days ago, just before St Valentine's.
Article written by Thomas Héteau. L'Equipe is the main sports newspaper in France.
Always good to see that the majority of pair skaters and dancers manage to remain in good terms after their career... Although it seems it wasn't the case for Savchenko/Massot....
Any thoughts ?
Here is the translation :
Stories of couples in figure skating.
Despite their different characters and lifestyles, Fabian Bourzat and Nathalie Péchalat have managed to overcome their differences to form a united ice dancing couple.
Real or embodied love, sincere complicity or mutual dislike... In figure skating, the notion of couple is multiple. As Valentine's Day approaches, it is an opportunity to question this very special status.
"A tyrant." The word is radical. Used by the French skater Bruno Massot to evoke his former partner Aljona Savchenko. These two have yet dazzled the world skating under the colors of Germany, crowned Olympic champions in pairs in Pyeongchang in 2018 before seizing the world title a few weeks later. But nothing does, the Norman turned coach retains especially the shadowy part of this collaboration. "Technically, we were in perfect harmony. Psychologically, not at all", he summarizes. For nearly five years, Massot had to deal with the fiery temperament and intransigence of Savchenko, a German-Ukrainian star of the discipline trained "the hard way".
It could start from something very simple but it was almost like hitting each other," he says. She knew exactly where to poke to make it hurt. I was insulted on the ice, I was a piece of shit to her. So many things happened..." Like that day when, "sick as a dog", Bruno asked to go home. For his partner, he is only "lazy". "The same evening, I was in intensive care for a bronchopulmonary infection."
But the Massot-Savchenko pair is not an exception. Examples of couples with tumultuous relationships are even plentiful in the history of skating, in figure skating as well as in ice dancing. How can we not think of Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat, Olympic champions in 2002 in dance, at least as well known for their extraordinary talent as for their legendary fights. So much so that those who attended their training sessions sometimes thought it was their last. "They were flabbergasted, and the next day we were back at work," Peizerat almost jokes.
There are couples who tear each other apart and then there are the others. Lovers in life as well as on the ice, like the Italian dancers Charlène Guignard and Marco Fabbri, recent European champions, whose looks betray the degree of intimacy, or the French Camille and Pavel Kovalev, husband and wife, sixth in the last Euro in artistic couple. Easier to sublimate the relationship? Not necessarily. At the end of the 2022 World Championships, some people criticized the Kovalev couple for their lack of... connection.
For Line Haddad, choreographer of many French including the former artistic couple Vanessa James and Morgan Ciprès, European champion 2019, an intimate relationship can strengthen the duo: "It creates an emotion, a complicity that others do not have. We can use this to go even further in the romantic side ... " So, for example, the French Sarah Abitbol and Stephane Bernadis, lived together when they became vice-champions of Europe in couple in 2002 and 2003. "But sometimes this relationship can trigger deeper crises on the ice," continues Line Haddad.
Another form of love: the brotherly bond. The unforgettable Paul and Isabelle Duchesnay, 1991 world champions, have made this status of brother and sister their great strength, putting aside the traditional game of seduction to play another score.
Others, friends without being a couple, seem to be one and the same on the ice, like the reigning Olympic champions and five-time world champions in ice dancing Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron, who have been partners since childhood. For the latter, the notion of mutual "commitment" to a goal is essential in the "partnership": "Even if there are tensions or more difficult periods, we want and must make it work.
Double world bronze medalist in 2012 and 2014 in ice dancing with Fabian Bourzat, Nathalie Péchalat also emphasizes the self-sacrifice needed to make the "team" work. After a two-year romance between the ages of 17 and 19, Péchalat and Bourzat broke up but continued, not without difficulty at first, as a couple on the ice. He was no longer my lover, brother or friend," she says. Basically there's not an innate thing that happens. So there is a real work to do. And when we are completely opposite in lifestyle, in character, which was the case for Fabian and me, it is not easy.
While she needed to "vent her emotions", to release her anger in moments of deep disagreement, Fabian tended to withdraw. It took the skater several years to understand that what she interpreted as distance was in fact his way of protecting himself. "Strangely, it could be very conflicting, but when one of us was going through a difficult time, we were real partners, we supported each other," she adds. She still remembers Fabian's little attentions when, ten days before the 2012 Worlds at home, she broke her nose and accumulated personal problems. "He took it upon himself to make sure the training sessions went well, he cooked me little dishes... he was adorable."
Most often, it is not affinity that guides the partnership but technical and artistic compatibility. The fact that they like each other is not a necessity to form a successful pair. The difference can even be appreciable according to Nathalie Péchalat: "It is also what enriches the adventure. At least it doesn't get boring! Whatever happens, even after crises or criticism, the main thing is to keep working, and above all, never break the trust. "I could tell him 'screw you' and get on the ice to do lifts, I never thought Fabian would drop me to get revenge. There was always that bond of trust. That's paramount."
Not getting along but having to work nine hours a day together. Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat have practiced the exercise so much that they are now lecturing about it! Both have been associated with a single goal, to be the number 1, after the former partner of the young woman, Ilia Averboukh, preferred to leave to skate with ... his girlfriend at the time. And that she had to go into exile to find a new high-level ice companion. In ten years of career, the Franco-Russian couple went through many crises with very often the exacerbated requirement of Marina for detonator.
"I came with my Russian mentality, even when it was good, it was not good. I was hard on him," she admits. A delay in training, shoelaces that do not fit ... so many details that she took for dilettantism and that could drive her crazy. Sometimes it passed. Often it clashed. Gwendal remembers that session in 2001 when, unable to contain his anger, he threw his skates into the fence. "I broke every screw head on my blade. When I saw myself doing that, even though I'm pretty zen, I said stop, she's taking me too far! I grabbed my stuff and left."
With hindsight, he would have liked to live a more peaceful relationship, but he also admits that their association, although explosive, was ideal to succeed. "We were so different that we were ultra-complementary. Beyond the good understanding, the most important thing is that the physical, technical, artistic skills allow you to win."
An opinion shared by her former teammate: "I always wanted more, it was not easy for Gwendal. But if I hadn't been like that, we wouldn't have won gold at the Games and I think he knows it", she explains, while qualifying the picture: "In France, we like to say that our relationship was terrible, but we add a lot to it. We weren't crazy people either, we had limits and we were able to manage our emotions.
Physical engagement, body contact, emotional closeness... skating together is never easy. When the chemistry is not there, it can quickly turn into a nightmare. To perform in these conditions, coach and choreographer play an essential role, that of mediator. A role that Muriel Boucher-Zazoui, coach of the duo Anissina-Peizerat, has very often taken on. "To express their uneasiness, their anger, I was used as a thread, a buffer", she remembers. Her protégés could then go up on the track without even speaking one to the other.
"I prefer a couple that fights, that expresses its emotions, than a couple that doesn't say anything to each other, because when it explodes, it's more complicated", assures the coach. It is also necessary to remain concentrated on the objectives to be reached. "Ambitions must be stronger than aversion", summarizes Line Haddad.
Bruno Massot knows this posture well. Think of all the sacrifices made to hold on, whatever the cost. Swallowing one's ego so as not to constantly start a conflict, until one "can't stand" one's partner. Until the gesture of too much...
"One day, that was really not going well. She insulted me, she was close to me and I pushed her away. It was like raising my hand on her, which I have always forbidden myself to do. Sometimes you can't take it anymore, you end up saying completely crazy things to yourself, the opposite of what you believe in." Five years have passed since the end of their career and the former skater remains deeply marked. Traumatized almost. At the end of 2022, now a coach, he had to go to a competition in Poland, where Aljona was to be present. "A week before the departure, I began to stress. In the end, she didn't come. It freed me completely", remembers Bruno Massot, who goes so far as to say that if he had to do it all over again, he would not start the adventure again.
On the ice, however, the couple did not let anything show. Because beyond being meticulously prepared athletes, skaters are also great performers. Whether they are together or not, feigning seduction is not a problem. "In film, do two actors have to be in love in life to convey emotion? No. It's the same thing on the ice," observes Gwendal Peizerat.
When in the spring of 2020 Guillaume Cizeron evoked his homosexuality for the first time publicly, it did not change anything about what he could radiate on the ice with Gabriella. Both continued to embody to perfection this sometimes platonic, sometimes romantic and passionate couple. Notwithstanding the Russian judge Alexander Vedenin who had said that the French were not able to transcribe "true love", a question of culture perhaps in a country where for a long time to make skate together the couples in love was a true tendency, even a strategy.
These are roles, yes and no," continues Papadakis. We have known each other for so long that there is a real complicity between us. There's something real about everything we do on the ice, the relationship our bodies have together."" The sensuality between a man and a woman exists, outside of sexual orientation", completes his partner.
Beyond the acting, the emotion is often real at the end of the program. The complicit glances and the sincere embraces. Anissina and Peizerat feel today a mutual recognition for what each one brought to the couple, self-sacrifice on one side and determination on the other.
Just like them, Péchalat and Bourzat each continue on their own path, where the bridges have never been cut. The former skater displays at home a single photo of her ex-partner but on which her eyes rest every time she enters her office, "so very often".
Here is an article I only found today. It was actually published a few days ago, just before St Valentine's.
Article written by Thomas Héteau. L'Equipe is the main sports newspaper in France.
Always good to see that the majority of pair skaters and dancers manage to remain in good terms after their career... Although it seems it wasn't the case for Savchenko/Massot....
Any thoughts ?
Here is the translation :
Stories of couples in figure skating.
Despite their different characters and lifestyles, Fabian Bourzat and Nathalie Péchalat have managed to overcome their differences to form a united ice dancing couple.
Real or embodied love, sincere complicity or mutual dislike... In figure skating, the notion of couple is multiple. As Valentine's Day approaches, it is an opportunity to question this very special status.
"A tyrant." The word is radical. Used by the French skater Bruno Massot to evoke his former partner Aljona Savchenko. These two have yet dazzled the world skating under the colors of Germany, crowned Olympic champions in pairs in Pyeongchang in 2018 before seizing the world title a few weeks later. But nothing does, the Norman turned coach retains especially the shadowy part of this collaboration. "Technically, we were in perfect harmony. Psychologically, not at all", he summarizes. For nearly five years, Massot had to deal with the fiery temperament and intransigence of Savchenko, a German-Ukrainian star of the discipline trained "the hard way".
It could start from something very simple but it was almost like hitting each other," he says. She knew exactly where to poke to make it hurt. I was insulted on the ice, I was a piece of shit to her. So many things happened..." Like that day when, "sick as a dog", Bruno asked to go home. For his partner, he is only "lazy". "The same evening, I was in intensive care for a bronchopulmonary infection."
But the Massot-Savchenko pair is not an exception. Examples of couples with tumultuous relationships are even plentiful in the history of skating, in figure skating as well as in ice dancing. How can we not think of Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat, Olympic champions in 2002 in dance, at least as well known for their extraordinary talent as for their legendary fights. So much so that those who attended their training sessions sometimes thought it was their last. "They were flabbergasted, and the next day we were back at work," Peizerat almost jokes.
There are couples who tear each other apart and then there are the others. Lovers in life as well as on the ice, like the Italian dancers Charlène Guignard and Marco Fabbri, recent European champions, whose looks betray the degree of intimacy, or the French Camille and Pavel Kovalev, husband and wife, sixth in the last Euro in artistic couple. Easier to sublimate the relationship? Not necessarily. At the end of the 2022 World Championships, some people criticized the Kovalev couple for their lack of... connection.
For Line Haddad, choreographer of many French including the former artistic couple Vanessa James and Morgan Ciprès, European champion 2019, an intimate relationship can strengthen the duo: "It creates an emotion, a complicity that others do not have. We can use this to go even further in the romantic side ... " So, for example, the French Sarah Abitbol and Stephane Bernadis, lived together when they became vice-champions of Europe in couple in 2002 and 2003. "But sometimes this relationship can trigger deeper crises on the ice," continues Line Haddad.
Another form of love: the brotherly bond. The unforgettable Paul and Isabelle Duchesnay, 1991 world champions, have made this status of brother and sister their great strength, putting aside the traditional game of seduction to play another score.
Others, friends without being a couple, seem to be one and the same on the ice, like the reigning Olympic champions and five-time world champions in ice dancing Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron, who have been partners since childhood. For the latter, the notion of mutual "commitment" to a goal is essential in the "partnership": "Even if there are tensions or more difficult periods, we want and must make it work.
Double world bronze medalist in 2012 and 2014 in ice dancing with Fabian Bourzat, Nathalie Péchalat also emphasizes the self-sacrifice needed to make the "team" work. After a two-year romance between the ages of 17 and 19, Péchalat and Bourzat broke up but continued, not without difficulty at first, as a couple on the ice. He was no longer my lover, brother or friend," she says. Basically there's not an innate thing that happens. So there is a real work to do. And when we are completely opposite in lifestyle, in character, which was the case for Fabian and me, it is not easy.
While she needed to "vent her emotions", to release her anger in moments of deep disagreement, Fabian tended to withdraw. It took the skater several years to understand that what she interpreted as distance was in fact his way of protecting himself. "Strangely, it could be very conflicting, but when one of us was going through a difficult time, we were real partners, we supported each other," she adds. She still remembers Fabian's little attentions when, ten days before the 2012 Worlds at home, she broke her nose and accumulated personal problems. "He took it upon himself to make sure the training sessions went well, he cooked me little dishes... he was adorable."
Most often, it is not affinity that guides the partnership but technical and artistic compatibility. The fact that they like each other is not a necessity to form a successful pair. The difference can even be appreciable according to Nathalie Péchalat: "It is also what enriches the adventure. At least it doesn't get boring! Whatever happens, even after crises or criticism, the main thing is to keep working, and above all, never break the trust. "I could tell him 'screw you' and get on the ice to do lifts, I never thought Fabian would drop me to get revenge. There was always that bond of trust. That's paramount."
Not getting along but having to work nine hours a day together. Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat have practiced the exercise so much that they are now lecturing about it! Both have been associated with a single goal, to be the number 1, after the former partner of the young woman, Ilia Averboukh, preferred to leave to skate with ... his girlfriend at the time. And that she had to go into exile to find a new high-level ice companion. In ten years of career, the Franco-Russian couple went through many crises with very often the exacerbated requirement of Marina for detonator.
"I came with my Russian mentality, even when it was good, it was not good. I was hard on him," she admits. A delay in training, shoelaces that do not fit ... so many details that she took for dilettantism and that could drive her crazy. Sometimes it passed. Often it clashed. Gwendal remembers that session in 2001 when, unable to contain his anger, he threw his skates into the fence. "I broke every screw head on my blade. When I saw myself doing that, even though I'm pretty zen, I said stop, she's taking me too far! I grabbed my stuff and left."
With hindsight, he would have liked to live a more peaceful relationship, but he also admits that their association, although explosive, was ideal to succeed. "We were so different that we were ultra-complementary. Beyond the good understanding, the most important thing is that the physical, technical, artistic skills allow you to win."
An opinion shared by her former teammate: "I always wanted more, it was not easy for Gwendal. But if I hadn't been like that, we wouldn't have won gold at the Games and I think he knows it", she explains, while qualifying the picture: "In France, we like to say that our relationship was terrible, but we add a lot to it. We weren't crazy people either, we had limits and we were able to manage our emotions.
Physical engagement, body contact, emotional closeness... skating together is never easy. When the chemistry is not there, it can quickly turn into a nightmare. To perform in these conditions, coach and choreographer play an essential role, that of mediator. A role that Muriel Boucher-Zazoui, coach of the duo Anissina-Peizerat, has very often taken on. "To express their uneasiness, their anger, I was used as a thread, a buffer", she remembers. Her protégés could then go up on the track without even speaking one to the other.
"I prefer a couple that fights, that expresses its emotions, than a couple that doesn't say anything to each other, because when it explodes, it's more complicated", assures the coach. It is also necessary to remain concentrated on the objectives to be reached. "Ambitions must be stronger than aversion", summarizes Line Haddad.
Bruno Massot knows this posture well. Think of all the sacrifices made to hold on, whatever the cost. Swallowing one's ego so as not to constantly start a conflict, until one "can't stand" one's partner. Until the gesture of too much...
"One day, that was really not going well. She insulted me, she was close to me and I pushed her away. It was like raising my hand on her, which I have always forbidden myself to do. Sometimes you can't take it anymore, you end up saying completely crazy things to yourself, the opposite of what you believe in." Five years have passed since the end of their career and the former skater remains deeply marked. Traumatized almost. At the end of 2022, now a coach, he had to go to a competition in Poland, where Aljona was to be present. "A week before the departure, I began to stress. In the end, she didn't come. It freed me completely", remembers Bruno Massot, who goes so far as to say that if he had to do it all over again, he would not start the adventure again.
On the ice, however, the couple did not let anything show. Because beyond being meticulously prepared athletes, skaters are also great performers. Whether they are together or not, feigning seduction is not a problem. "In film, do two actors have to be in love in life to convey emotion? No. It's the same thing on the ice," observes Gwendal Peizerat.
When in the spring of 2020 Guillaume Cizeron evoked his homosexuality for the first time publicly, it did not change anything about what he could radiate on the ice with Gabriella. Both continued to embody to perfection this sometimes platonic, sometimes romantic and passionate couple. Notwithstanding the Russian judge Alexander Vedenin who had said that the French were not able to transcribe "true love", a question of culture perhaps in a country where for a long time to make skate together the couples in love was a true tendency, even a strategy.
These are roles, yes and no," continues Papadakis. We have known each other for so long that there is a real complicity between us. There's something real about everything we do on the ice, the relationship our bodies have together."" The sensuality between a man and a woman exists, outside of sexual orientation", completes his partner.
Beyond the acting, the emotion is often real at the end of the program. The complicit glances and the sincere embraces. Anissina and Peizerat feel today a mutual recognition for what each one brought to the couple, self-sacrifice on one side and determination on the other.
Just like them, Péchalat and Bourzat each continue on their own path, where the bridges have never been cut. The former skater displays at home a single photo of her ex-partner but on which her eyes rest every time she enters her office, "so very often".
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Bruno is an extremely strong individual, to have been able to express the care and tenderness that he did throughout their Olympic year free skate.
