The wispy Ukrainian orphan who was near-perfection on ice skates at the 1994 Winter Olympics stumbled and crashed three years after winning the gold medal in Lillehammer, Norway.
Today, Oksana Baiul is a 26-year-old woman - wiser, happier, and in love - and back on the ice after a two-year absence. She returned to skating in November in Lake Placid, N.Y., at the opening of the 60-city Smucker's Stars on Ice tour. The show arrives in Toledo on Sunday.
Baiul and four-time world champion Kurt Browning will be the featured guest stars in a lineup that includes 2002 Olympic gold medalist Alexei Yagudin; 2002 Olympic pair champions Jamie Sale and David Pelletier of Canada and Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze of Russia; world champion and six-time U.S. national champion Todd Eldredge; world champion Yuka Sato; world silver medalists and three-time U.S. national pair champions Jenni Meno and Todd Sand; and world bronze medalists and three-time U.S. national pair champions Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman.
Scott Hamilton, Olympic champion and Bowling Green native, is the producer of the show and one of the special guest performers who appear in select cities. He is not scheduled to perform in Toledo.
"I wish I knew what I know [now] when I was 16," Baiul said this week in a telephone interview from her home in New Jersey, where she lives with her fiance, Gene Sunik.
After winning Olympic gold, Baiul moved to the United States and turned professional. Without family to guide or shield her from the pressures of being a celebrity, she floundered.
"My life became a circus," she said. "But you learn things about life and you make your own mistakes, and if you don't learn from your mistakes, then there's a problem."
In January, 1997, she ran her Mercedes-Benz at nearly 100 mph off a road in Connecticut and crashed. Her blood-alcohol content was well above the state's legal limit.
"I went to rehab and have cleaned up. I was there 3 1/2 months and I haven't had a drink since," she said.
Baiul stopped the figure skating tours and competitions at the end of 2000. "I have been skating since I was 3," she said. "Skating had become my life. I got burned out from it."
She took two years off, spending much of the time creating her Oksana Baiul Collection of figure-skating apparel. Then in March, 2002, she and Sunik took his family to see Stars on Ice. Afterward, his grandmother told Baiul she loved the show. "Too bad you weren't in it," she added.
"I looked at Gene and said, 'Go get me a contract with it,'●" Baiul said.
Two years is a long time for a figure skater to take off. "It took me a year to get back in shape," she admitted.
"To come back feels different than when I won my gold medal at 16 .●.●. This time around, when you're in control of your life and your career, it feels different. It's much better and you're responding to your ups and downs in a much, much, much cooler way," she said.
Baiul will perform two solo numbers Sunday, skating to Jennifer Lopez's "Ain't It Funny" and Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" - the crowd-pleasing program that she performed a decade ago at the Olympics.
"I think when I'm 60 years old I'll be doing that program because people love it," she said.
Smucker's Stars on Ice will be presented at 6 p.m. Sunday at the Toledo Sports Arena, 1 Main St. Tickets, starting at $25, are available from the box office, Ticketmaster outlets, and ticketmaster.com. Information: 419-698-4545.
Ann Weber can be reached at aweber@theblade.com or 419-724-6126.
First Published March 12, 2004, 12:58 p.m.
