Martin Luther King trumped Donna Summer, Michael Jackson and a host of instrumentals.
Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat culminated their Olympic dream Monday night, employing a somewhat startling program at the Salt Lake Ice Center to win the 2002 Winter Games gold medal for France in ice dancing.
They worked King’s famous “I Have a Dream” civil rights speech into their routine, and if the 15,000-plus fans didn’t know what to make of it, the judges did.
Anissina, 26, originally from Russia, and Peizerat, 29, were leading entering the last night of competition and used the free dance to solidify their place, skating to two musical pieces, “Liberta” and “Canone Inverso.” Their theme was freedom.
Peizerat addressed the issue of whether it was appropriate to mix King’s words with entertainment.
“Every time when you take risks in art you can find people who think it’s inappropriate,” he said, “or who think differently from you. We take pride [in using the words] to express liberty.”
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Dressed in a yellow and gray outfit, with her long, red hair flowing, Anissina, and Peizerat, wearing similar colors, were fluid but slow-paced and did just enough to win in a competition that only rarely inspired the crowd.
No duo earned a 6.0 mark and no team really made a charge at the French skaters, who claimed France’s first figure-skating gold since 1932.
Of the nine judges, five placed the French skaters first and four placed silver-medal-winning Russians Irina Lobacheva and Ilia Averbukh first. The Russians seemed to have more challenging moves. It was close, but not controversial.
Barbara Fusar Poli and Maurizio Margaglio, the 2001 world champions, won bronze, Italy’s first medal in the sport. Their disco revival created a stir, but Margaglio fell hard, a costly mistake. Poli was crying even before the team’s marks were posted.
Canadians Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz, whose skate was accompanied by a Michael Jackson medley, took fourth among the 24 pairs. Their routine ended with a sprawl on the ice, however.
“I lost my concentration,” Kraatz said. “It was something stupid because it was really the last moment of the program.”
Americans Naomi Lang and Peter Tchernyshev placed 11th, but wowed the crowd and received the only standing ovation.
“We were a little tired at the end,” Lang said. “It’s been a long two weeks, but it’s been a great two weeks. We did the best performances that we could.”
The Salt Lake City Games’ ice-dancing competition played out against a strange backdrop, with judging under extraordinary scrutiny. That followed an outcry in pairs judging that led to the stunning elevation of Canadian couple Jamie Sale and David Pelletier into the status of co-gold medalists with Russians Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze.
A French judge said she was pressured to vote for the Russians. It was also said that her vote was supposed to be a tradeoff for a Russian judge’s vote Monday night. Russian judge Alla Shekhovtsova placed the Russians first.
Earlier Monday, International Skating Union President Ottavio Cinquanta proposed a total revamping of figure-skating judging that he said would prevent such scenarios in the future.