Aleksandr Gorshkov

Lyudmila Pakhomova and Aleksandr Gorshkov were the leading ice dancing pair at the start of 1970s. They began skating competitively in 1967 and married in 1970. Pakhomova and Gorshkov won their first international medals in 1969 – a silver at the World Championships and a bronze at the Europeans. They were World champions from 1970-74 and won their sixth world title in 1976, also winning six European titles (1970, 1971, 1973-76), while placing second in 1972, and also won six Soviet titles (1969-71, 1973-75).

At the 1976 Olympics they won the first Olympic gold medal awarded for ice dancing. After his sporting career Gorshkov worked as a figure skating coach. Since 1984 he has also worked with the International Skating Union’s ice dance technical committee, serving as the chairman of that committee since 1998. He has also been a member of the Russian Olympic Committee since 1992, serving as the head of their public communications department. Gorshkov was inducted into the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 1988, along with Pakhomova, who was inducted posthumously after dying of cancer in 1986.