Ice Dancing, Mixed

Nataliya Linichuk and Gennady Karponosov (URS) won the 1978 and 1979 World Championships, and the 1979-80 Europeans, and were coached by Yelena Chaykovskaya, who had coached the 1976 ice dance gold medalists. They were expected to be challenged by the 1976 silver medalists, Irina Moiseyeva and Andrey Minenkov, and a Hungarian couple, Krisztina Regőczy and András Sallay. In the end, Moiseyeva and Minenkov were not a factor for gold, placing third. Linichuk and Karponosov won the compulsory dance and the optional set dance, leading over the Hungarians into the free dance. But the Hungarians, who became wildly popular with the Lake Placid audience, won the free dance. The battle for the gold was the closest in Olympic ice dance history. Four judges ranked the Soviets first, four ranked the Hungarians first, with the British judge having them tied. This brought it down to the tie-breaker of total ordinals, which the Soviets won, 13-14, giving them the gold medal. The actual deciding vote was cast by the Soviet judge, to nobody’s surprise, who ranked Regőczy and Sallay only third. Wallechinsky has noted, “The announcement of the results was greeted by catcalls and boos from the American audience, which preferred the lively, upbeat style of Regőczy and Sallay to the staid, traditional image of Linichuk and Karponosov.” Regőczy and Sallay would return in a few weeks to win the 1980 World Championships.