Olympic champions lead 2019 World Hall of Fame

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado, USA (April 22, 2019) – Olympic champions Natalya Bestemyanova & Andrey Bukin and the late Ondrej Nepela lead the World Hall of Fame Class of 2019, nominating chair Lawrence Mondschein announced today. They are joined by two-time World champion Gabriele Seyfert and renowned coach Yelena Tchaikovskaya.

“This year's class includes Olympic and World champions and a highly decorated coach,” Mondschein said. “Each has been recognized and honored within their respective countries and admired by figure skating enthusiasts around the world for their significant contributions to our sport."

The Soviet team of Natalya Bestemyanova & Andrey Bukin dominated from 1985 to 1988. In the run-up to their 1988 Olympic gold medal, they won four-consecutive World titles and earned four- consecutive European Championships. In total, Bestemyanova & Bukin earned two Olympic medals, eight World medals and seven European medals. Dramatic, innovative and theatrical, their avant-garde programs introduced a new and technically sound style of ice dance.

Ondrej Nepela of the former was the 1972 Olympic champion, a three-time World champion (1971-73) and five-time European champion (1969-73). He died in Mannheim, , in 1989 at the age of 38. In 1993, the Slovak Figure Skating Association established the Ondrej (now Trophy) to honor the nine-time winner of the Czechoslovak Championships. Nepela was named the Slovak Athlete of the 20th Century by the Slovak Republic in 2000.

Two-time World champion (1969-70) and 1968 Olympic silver medalist Gabriele Seyfert is the first woman to land a clean triple loop jump in competition. A three-time European champion (1967, ’69, ’70), Seyfert dominated ladies skating in her home country, winning 10 consecutive East German titles (1961-70). In 1966 she was voted East Germany’s Athlete of the Year. Seyfert joins her mother and coach, Jutta Müller, as a member of the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame.

As a coach and choreographer, Russia’s Yelena Tchaikovskaya helped develop the emotional storytelling common in today’s ice dance programs. Tchaikovskaya’s Soviet teams won the first two Olympic ice dance gold medals (1976, Lyudmila Pakhomova & Aleksandr Gorshkov; 1980, Natalia Linichuk & Gennadi Karponosov) and helped launch an era of Soviet/Russian dominance. Her students have qualified for the World Championships in all four disciplines, winning 11 World titles.

The hall's Legends Subcommittee, which considers contributions from over 50 years ago, selected Eva Romanova and Pavel Roman of the former Czechoslovakia. The siblings won four consecutive World ice dance championships (1962-65). Roman is inducted posthumously.