Oksana Baiul

Oksana Baiul
Baiul on a commemorative stamp
Personal information
Full name	Ukrainian: Оксана Сергіївна Баюл; Oksana Serhiyivna Baiul Russian: Оксана Сергеевна Баюл; Oksana Sergeyevna Baiul
Alternative names	Oksana Baiul-Farina
Country represented	Ukraine
Born	(1977-11-16) November 16, 1977 (age 39) Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union
Height	1.60 m (5 ft 3 in)
Former coach	Galina Zmievskaya Valentin Nikolayev Stanislav Koritek
Former choreographer	Sarah Kawahara
Former training locations	Simsbury, Connecticut Odessa Dnipropetrovsk
Retired	1994
Medal record Figure skating: Ladies' singles Representing  Ukraine Olympic Games 1994 Lillehammer Ladies' singles World Championships 1993 Prague Ladies' singles European Championships 1993 Helsinki Ladies' singles 1994 Copenhagen Ladies' singles

Oksana Baiul (born November 16, 1977) is a Ukrainian former competitive figure skater. She is the 1993 World champion and the 1994 Olympic champion in ladies' singles.

Baiul is the first skater to win gold at the Winter Olympics representing Ukraine. She is also the first Olympic champion of independent Ukraine in any sport.

Baiul was born on November 16, 1977 in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union, an industrial city famous for manufacturing Soviet missiles. Her parents divorced when she was two years old. One day when she was two, her father disappeared. No one is certain whether Sergei Baiul deserted his family or was pressured to leave town when he and his wife divorced. She was raised by her mother, Marina—a French teacher—and her maternal grandparents. She is of Russian descent through her maternal grandfather. Her father died in 2006.

Her grandfather died in 1987, her grandmother in 1988, and in 1991 her mother, who had previously been very healthy, died suddenly of ovarian cancer. Her father, Sergei, appeared at her mother's funeral but Oksana wanted nothing to do with him. Baiul lived with the wife of her coach, Stanislav Koritek, who had moved to Canada, and then with friends.

After moving to Odessa in mid-1992, she lived mainly in a dormitory with her expenses covered by the state. In 1993, she lived a month with coach Galina Zmievskaya between the European and World Championships. After the 1994 Winter Olympics, Baiul moved to Simsbury, Connecticut, which is the location of the International Skating Center of Connecticut. In the late 1990s, she lived in Richmond, Virginia for several years before moving to Cliffside Park, New Jersey. After residing for 14 years in Cliffside Park, Baiul moved to Pennsylvania in March 2012, settling in Upper Makefield Township, Bucks County.