Vegreville rolls out the red carpet for Ukrainian skaters (03/31/96)

Vegreville rolls out the red carpet for Ukrainian skaters

by Andrij Wynnyckyj
Toronto Press Bureau

TORONTO - For over a week prior to the Figure Skating World Championships held in nearby Edmonton on March 17-24, Vegreville, Alberta, was an attraction for just the world's biggest pysanka. Team Ukraine was in town.

As Cam Cole of the Edmonton Journal put it, "no one had landed a triple axel on the ice of the Vegreville Recreation Center until Viacheslav Zahorodniuk and Dmytro Dmytrenko reeled them off regularly in practices."

They arrived on March 5, after a grueling itinerary of flights from Kyiv to Zurich, Zurich to Montreal, Montreal to Toronto and Toronto to Edmonton, topped off by a 90-minute bus ride to Vegreville.

On March 9, together with women's competitors Olena Liashenko and Yulia Lavrenchuk, pairs skaters Olena Belousovska and Serhiy Potalov, and the ice dance couple Olena Grushina and Ruslan Honcharov, they put on an ice show that the hamlet of 5,200 would long remember.

As reported in the Ukrainian News in its March 13-26 issue, Mr. Dmytrenko, Mr. Liashenko and Mr. Lavrenchuk led off the program dressed in traditional Poltavan costumes brought from home, skating to a medley of "Dyvlius ya na Nebo" and "Oy Chorna ya sy Chorna." Mr. Zahorodniuk performed a stirring "Hopak" during the show. All eight competitors came onto the ice for a group skate marked by Ukrainian dance choreography.

"We wanted to show how we respect the traditions of the Ukrainian people," Mr. Honcharov told the Ukrainian News in halting Ukrainian.

Some 1,000 people had lined up two and a half hours before packing the 800-seat Rec Center, and on March 10 about 400 paid $10 a plate for a civic banquet and all-out Ukrainian folk-fest to help the habitually cash-strapped athletes, and to buy their own arena a much-needed Zamboni .

For practices, the rink manager had to add a full inch to the ice's thickness (you need more for figure skating than hockey because of all the high-impact jumping). Scheduling the ice time was no problem because the training regimen skaters endure puts them into action during off-hours - from mid-morning to early afternoon.

The 16-member Ukrainian delegation also included Ludmila Mikhailovska, president of Ukraine's Figure Skating Federation, who told Mr. Cole: "It is like home. It is very helpful for the skaters to live with families, surrounded by so much care and affection."

It's the least one could expect, when billeting in a town where about 35 percent of the population is of Ukrainian background. Organizers had to turn away volunteers and enough food to feed the contingent for a month.

Because of the volunteering and donations, according to an earlier Edmonton Journal article by Joan Ireland, costs for the stay of the Ukrainian delegation wouldn't clear $1,000.

The Vegreville venture was the result of a meeting of three minds. Ms. Mikhailovska had been looking for a place where her athletes could practice and acclimatize while not paying for the more expensive hotels and ice time in Edmonton .

Bohdan Smycniuk, head of the western branch of the Canadian Friends of the Ukrainian National Olympic Committee, had hoped to replicate the visit of the Soviet team to Caroline, Alberta, home-town of four-time world champion Kurt Browning, during the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. The trio was complete when Orest Olineck, head of the annual Vegreville Cultural Festival, came aboard to oversee the 10 committees mobilized to make it all happen.

The mayor of Vegreville, David Kucherawy, got to be "gazda" (host) of the proceedings.

On March 22 the story hit the front page of Canada's "national newspaper," The Globe and Mail, under a photo of the beaming Elvis Stojko of Canada, who'd just won the free skate to salvage a fourth place finish over all.

"Elvis may be king in the rest of this skating-mad province," Brian Laghi wrote, "but in the home of the world's biggest Ukrainian Easter egg, the locals are crazy for Dmitry and Viacheslav."

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