Lithuania's Drobiazko and Vanagas Return for Fifth Olympics

Margarita Drobiazko and Povilas Vanagas

November 15, 2005
Article & Photo © J. Barry Mittan 

One of the big stories of the skating season is the return of Lithuanian ice dancers Margarita Drobiazko and Povilas Vanagas after more than three years away from competition. Although they have done over 200 top-level professional shows in the past three years, the popular couple had not competed since the 2002 World Championships in Nagano, Japan, where they finished fourth in a bitterly-contested decision. Earlier in that season, the couple had placed fifth at the Olympic Games, fourth at the European Championships and third at the ISU Grand Prix Final.

The dancers started strongly in 2005-06, placing second to 2005 World silver medallists Tanith Belbin and Benjamin Agosto at the Nebelhorn Trophy in Germany, even winning the free dance. Two weeks later, they easily won the 2006 Olympic qualifying competition at the Karl Schaefer Memorial in Vienna, showing that they are still in contention for the podium.

This will be the fifth Olympic Games for the talented and durable couple, who have been married for several years. And it was for love of their country that they returned for another grueling season of competition. "Lithuania is a small country with a small Olympic team," Vanagas stated. "We don't win many high places. When we finished fifth in Salt Lake City, it moved our country up about 40 places in the team standings."

"We have been really satisfied with our professional careers," he continued, "but when the Olympics started coming near, we felt strange not to be a part of it. All the years after we quit competing when we were busy doing shows, we were comparing ourselves physically with the other top-ranked skaters and we felt we could compete with them. About a year ago, we started seriously considering it. Margarita's mother thought it was a joke and told us not to do it. But last summer, there was a recall of the president in Lithuania and our favorite candidate ran for election. We said that if he won that it was time for us to come back. He won so there was no way back."

"Then we had to explore the possibilities of coaches," Vanagas related. "We went to Rostislav Sinitsyn for help with mainly compulsory dances and to Elena Maslennikova, our chief coach in Moscow for the original, free dances and choreography. In the United States, we work with Igor Shpilband and Marina Zoueva. In Lithuania, we worked with Gintaras Svistunavicius, a professional ballroom dancer. And David Liu helped us with the choreography in Sun Valley. We only train about three hours a day, five days a week, and sometimes a half-day on Saturday if we feel like it. We did most of our training in Sun Valley. They helped us with a lot of ice time and everything else, but we also trained in Michigan, Oberstdorf and Dortmund in Germany, Moscow and of course in Lithuania."

For their original dance, the skaters are doing a samba, rhumba and cha cha and for the free dance, "Phantom of the Opera". "We got a lot of help from Gintaras Svistunavicius, champion ballroom dancer from Lithuania," Vanagas said. "We adapted the dances from the ballroom to the ice ourselves. Elena did most of our free dance. We saw the movie and liked the movie and the music a lot." For their exhibition program, the dancers are using "Pirates of the Caribbean", where they fight with real swords.

"We saw the movie and loved Johnny Depp," Drobiazko said. "We followed the story as much as we could. I even copied the costumes from the movie." "Learning to fight with the swords happened by occasion," Vanagas added. "We thought about finding some fencers to teach us, but when we talked to Elena, we found that her daughter was dating a stuntman who had done sword fighting working on movies like 'The Phantom' about the man who never dies. We took lessons from him on theatrical sword fighting."

The dancers had no problems with physical conditioning on their return to competitive skating. "There were no real difficulties," Drobiazko stated. "We were in really good shape and we've been training at high altitude in Sun Valley. We were doing two dances and three group numbers in an hour and a half at the shows there and our dances were much longer than a free dance."
Learning the new judging system was the hardest part of the couple's return. "It's a never-ending process," Vanagas said. "No one knows it 100 percent. What's legal and illegal seems to change every month. You get lost in the sea of information. It's a real revolution, but we haven't yet seen its fruit."

"The system has good and bad parts," Drobiazko noted. "It's improving the technical level of the skaters but now all the dances are starting to look the same. The people don't want to see the same thing twice. Some of the required elements are not possible for all the skaters. I have always had gymnastics and ballet since I was very small so I'm flexible. The splits and the Biellmanns are no problem for me, but some girls are not flexible enough to do all those things. There should be some options for them."

"There's no time for nice entrances and exits from the lifts because you have too much time required in the lifts," she continued. "It looks rushed and untidy. And because of the technical points, the skaters have to concentrate on the elements, counting seconds and revolutions. They don't have time to feel what they're doing and show any passion. There are so many technical requirements that the original and free dances look too much the same. Now dance looks more like pairs. Maybe there needs to be a technical program with all the requirements and an artistic program where you could do whatever you want."

"The other problem is that the same couples get different levels for the same elements at different competitions, sometimes it's a 2, sometimes it's a 4," she continued. "We were happy that all of our levels were 3s and 4s, mostly 4s, but if someone makes a mistake in the levels, it could cost a lot." Vanagas added, "It would be better to have paid professional judges, maybe 30 or so, who did all the competitions. That way you would not have 150 different opinions."

The couple plans to continue producing and skating in shows throughout the year. Indeed, they have shows scheduled for Lithuania in December and Sun Valley, Idaho for next summer. They plan to compete at Europeans, but have decided to wait until after the Olympics to decide whether to compete at Worlds. "We are done competing after this season," Drobiazko said, "but we love doing shows so we'll do that for a few more years." They already have careers in coaching and choreography, having done programs for other highly ranked skaters such as Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder. "We also work with some smaller skaters," Drobiazko said. "That's fun for us."