Viktor Petrenko

For the Soviet Union, Petrenko was the 1984 World Junior Champion.[2] He won the bronze medal at the 1988 Olympic Games,[5] became one of the youngest male figure skating Olympic medalists. He also won the bronze medal at the 1988 World Figure Skating Championships. The podium finish came as a surprise, because the 3 former World Champions Brian Orser, Brian Boitano, and Alexander Fadeev were expected to land on the podium, but capatilizing on disastrous short and long program by Fadeev, Petrenko skated well enough at the championships to earn the bronze.

Expected to take over as top skater with the retirement of the Brians, Petrenko first lost the Soviet Nationals to a resurgent Fadeev. At Worlds, a fall in the short program combined with a subpar long program left him off the podium, while upstart and his eventual career rival Kurt Browning won a surprising victory.

He then went on to win his first two European Championships in 1990 and 1991.[6] He was frustrated in his attempts at a World title though. He won the short program at both the 1990 and 1991 World Figure Skating Championships but mistakes in the long program dropped him to silver both times. The 1991 decision was particularly close as Petrenko skated a strong program, only stepping out of a triple loop, and omitting a planned triple axel-triple toe which he turned into a triple-double, but lost in a controversial 6-3 split when Browning unleashed a historic skate with 3 triple-triples, edging Petrenko based on the superior technical difficulty of the program.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991,[7] athletes from former Soviet states went to the Olympics together for the last time in 1992 on a Unified Team.[8] Petrenko competed for this Unified Team and with a free skate that was ranked above American Paul Wylie's by seven of the nine judges, he won the gold medal, the first ever for a singles skater from the former Soviet Union.[9] His skate was not his best, and some contested his win, but the triple axel-triple toe in both programs kept him over both Wylie and European Champion Petr Barna, in spite of the mistakes. A month later he went to the 1992 World Championships and won the gold medal there, as well, earning two 6.0's for presentation in his free program and receiving first-place ranking from all nine judges.[10] In doing so he finally defeated his arch nemesis Kurt Browning who took silver (after being a disappointing 6th in Albertville). He used the same free program for the 3rd straight year, the polish and familiarity showing in the artistic strength of the program.

Petrenko turned professional following his Olympic win, moving to Las Vegas, Nevada, but when the International Skating Union ruled that professionals could return to competitive status in 1993, he moved back to Odessa, Ukraine and began training for another Olympics.[11] He defeated another returning great Brian Boitano to win Skate America with a commanding 8 triple long program. He won his third European Championships in January 1994, competing for the first time for the independent nation of Ukraine,[12] and went on to represent his homeland at the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics, where it was widely expected that he, 1988 Olympic gold medalist Brian Boitano and World Champion Kurt Browning would be the main challengers for medals. After the short program, Petrenko was in ninth place after stepping out of his triple axel and not completing the rotation on his triple lutz, and Boitano and Browning were in eighth and twelfth, respectively. His strong performance in the free skate pulled him up to a fourth-place finish, and might well have been enough to defend his title had he delivered a clean short program.

He had many successes as a professional including winning the prestigious Challenge of Champions event which is considered the top professional event 3 times, but failed to win the other major professional event, the Landover World Professional Skating Championships, in fact never placing higher than 3rd.