Turin – Kristin Fraser is a blond, brown-eyed girl born in Palo Alto, Calif., and raised in Southern California, who lives and trains in Hackensack, N.J. On Friday and Sunday night, she fulfilled a lifelong dream, skating in the Winter Olympics for her country.
Azerbaijan.
She not only has never lived in Azerbaijan, she has never visited. She doesn’t speak a word of Azerbaijani. Yet in the opening ceremony Feb. 10, she marched wearing the native winter garb of a Muslim country tucked in the Caucasus Mountains with a per capita income of $4,500 a year.
Her ice dancing partner, Igor Lukanin, carried the flag. Fraser and Lukanin make up the entire Azerbaijan Winter Olympics team.
As American champions Tanith Belbin, a Canadian native, and Ben Agosto climbed to second place after Sunday’s original dance competition, Belbin’s well-documented citizenship story isn’t the only one of these Games.
And certainly it isn’t the most dramatic.
“I think Tanith and Ben are very great skaters,” said Fraser, who joins Lukanin in a tie for 20th place out of 24 teams. “I think they deserve to be here 100 percent. I just know with (Lukanin) we’ve had to jump through more hoops than Tanith can even imagine.”
Nor can any of the many couples who used new citizenship to get into the Games.
Denis Petukhov emigrated from Russia to join Melissa Gregory on the U.S. team. Armenia’s Anastasia Grebenkina is from Russia, and Vazgen Azrojan is a native Ukrainian who didn’t skate for Armenia until 2003.
Even Belbin’s dash for citizenship, sealed on Dec. 31 after Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) inserted language into a labor bill that changed the citizenship requirements for “aliens of extraordinary ability” from five to three years, pales in comparison.
Lukanin was deported from the U.S. twice, and Fraser was forced to relocate to Russia, where she spent a week on her back after falling on an icy street.
“I’ve learned so much and I appreciate things much more,” Fraser said. “But everybody has to jump through hoops. Everybody.”
The couple began jumping through hoops in 2001 when they looked for new partners and were united by their respective coaches.
Lukanin, 30, could skate for Azerbaijan. He was born there in 1976 when it was part of the Soviet Union. He moved to Russia when he was 4, when the military transferred his father.
Fraser’s citizenship hoop was fairly easy to maneuver. Fraser, 25, applied in April and received citizenship in August. Lukanin’s previous partner, Jenny Dahlen, was an American who received quick citizenship for one reason only.
“We’re starting to attract attention to the sport,” Lukanin said.
Only one problem. Azerbaijan has no ice rinks. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, so did Azerbaijan’s ice skating program. Lukanin, in the U.S. training with Dahlen, stayed and trained with Fraser.
That’s when problems occurred. One day while flying into Washington’s Dulles Airport, Lukanin was handcuffed by federal officials and taken into an office for interrogation. His offense? He didn’t learn until recently that he shared the same name as a Chechen rebel on an international terrorist list.
“They searched through my bags and asked: ‘Where are the drugs? Where are the bombs and weapons?”‘ Lukanin said. “I said, ‘Guys. I’m a figure skater.”‘
They asked him to sign statements that he said he never made, which he refused to do. They didn’t tell him where he was going on a plane, but eight hours later he landed in Paris. After returning to Russia, it took him nine months to get another visa to the U.S.
Fraser was furious. The other Igor Lukanin was killed by Russian troops last Feb. 21.
“It would’ve upset me no matter what country,” she said. “If I wasn’t a citizen or if I was living in Slovakia, it would be upsetting because there was nothing that could be done.”
They aren’t token entries. They finished 13th at last year’s world championships and qualified for the Olympics by finishing second in a meet in Austria.
Fraser bristled at criticism she used a partner’s citizenship to get into the Olympics.
“Everybody does what they need to do,” she said. “Anybody who says something bad about someone who represents another country is very, very ignorant. We train six hours a day, a lot of times six days a week.”
The couple are expected to perform in Azerbaijan in May, when the capital of Baku finishes its first ice rink.
Staff writer John Henderson can be reached at 303-820-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
