Marina Anissina

Marina Anissina (Marina Vyacheslavovna Anissina, born 30 August 1975) is a Franco-Russian ice dancer who, skating for France with Gwendal Peizerat, won the 2002 Olympic title, the 1998 Olympic bronze medal and the 2000 World championship, and was a six-time French national champion. She is the daughter of the pair skater Irina Cherniaeva and the ice hockey world champion Vyacheslav Anisin. Early in her career she skated for the Soviet Union and Russia, first with Sergei Sakhnovski and then with Ilia Averbukh, with whom she won the 1990 and 1992 World Junior titles. After that partnership ended she wrote to prospective partners, was joined by Peizerat in Lyon in 1993 and became a naturalised French citizen on 1 February 1996, too late for the 1994 Olympics. The pair took World silver in 1998 and 1999 behind Anjelika Krylova and Oleg Ovsyannikov, and their free dances were noted for a move in which she carried Peizerat off the ice. She now lives in Moscow and works with young ice dancers.