Oksana Baiul - Early and Personal Life

Early and Personal Life

Baiul was born in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union. Her parents divorced when she was two years old, her father disappeared from her life, and she was raised by her mother, Marina – a French teacher – and her maternal grandparents. Her grandfather died in 1987, her grandmother in 1988, and in 1991 her mother, who had previously been very healthy, died suddenly as a result of ovarian cancer. Her father, Sergey, appeared in 1991 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. In August 1992, Koritek's father phoned Galina Zmievskaya who coached in Odessa in southwestern Ukraine. She was taken in by Zmievskaya and shared a small bedroom with Zmievskaya's younger daughter, also named Galina, in the family's tiny apartment. Zmievskaya's son-in-law, the 1992 Olympic champion Viktor Petrenko, helped cover Baiul's expenses.

In 1994, Baiul moved to Simsbury, 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.

In January 1997, Baiul was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol after crashing her car into a tree in Connecticut. The charges were dropped after she met the terms of probation and completed an alcohol education program, however, her drinking continued and in May 1997 she entered an alcohol rehabilitation program for two and a half months. In a 2004 interview, Baiul said she had been sober for six years, saying "This is more important than Olympic gold."

Although Baiul was raised as a Russian Orthodox Christian, since childhood she was aware of rumors about Jewish ancestry, with other children sometimes calling her grandmother a Jew. In 2003, she phoned her old rink in Dnipropetrovsk to ask for assistance in locating her father – assuming it was a joke, they hung up twice but eventually Baiul managed to convince them of her identity and the rink manager helped her reunite with her father in September 2003. Her father confirmed that the rumor was true – her Romanian maternal grandmother was Jewish. Baiul considers herself Jewish due to matrilineality in Judaism. In 2005, Baiul said, "Being Jewish, that feels good. It feels natural, like a second skin". She is of Russian descent through her maternal grandfather. Her father died in 2006.