Galina Zmievskaya

Who is Galina Zmievskaya?

Galina Yakovlevna Zmievskaya is a figure skating coach, formerly based in Odessa, Ukraine. Her students have included Olympic champions Viktor Petrenko and Oksana Baiul, World Junior champion Vladimir Petrenko, U.S. national champion Scott Davis, and Italian champion Silvia Fontana. She also worked with Viacheslav Zagorodniuk and Takeshi Honda early in their careers, and briefly coached Georgian skater Elene Gedevanishvili in 2007 and Swiss skater Stéphane Lambiel in 2008. She began coaching American skater and three-time U.S. national champion Johnny Weir in the summer of 2007.

Zmievskaya's older daughter, Nina, is married to Viktor Petrenko and has choreographed for many of Zmievskaya's students. She has a second daughter, also named Galina and known as Galya. Zmievskaya's husband, Nikolai, was a building contractor in Odessa. In addition to coaching Oksana Baiul, Zmievskaya acted as her guardian following the death of her mother.

Following Baiul's win at the 1994 Winter Olympics, Zmievskaya moved to Simsbury, Connecticut, where she coached for a decade at the International Skating Center of Connecticut before relocating to Wayne, New Jersey in 2005 along with her daughter Nina and son-in-law Viktor Petrenko to coach at The Ice Vault Arena.