Karademir, Tuğba
(1985–)

Tuğba Karademir is a Turkish figure skater, the first Turk and first Muslim woman to figure skate at the Olympic Games.

PERSONAL HISTORY

Karademir was born in Ankara, Turkey, on 17 March 1985. She first began ice skating in 1990 at the age of five, when an ice rink—the first and only one in Turkey—opened in her hometown. Her kindergarten class went to weekly lessons at the rink. Karademir, however, soon took skating seriously, began practicing, and eventually began competing. She won the gold medal at the Turkish Championships in 1994–1995, and the silver at the two subsequent championships. Karademir's first international competition took place in the Netherlands when she was eight years old. She won the gold medal. In 1995, she won the gold at the Balkan Games, and took the silver at the following year's games.

Karademir's family eventually made the difficult decision to move to Canada in 1996 so she could devote herself more seriously to skating. She began training at the Mariposa School of Skating in Barrie, Ontario, one of Canada's two main figure skating training schools. Her coaches, Robert Tebby and Doug Leigh, still work with her today. In 2000, Karademir was selected for the Canadian Junior National Team, although she resigned a few months thereafter in order to be able to compete internationally for her native Turkey. Her home club remains Kocaeli Belediyesi Kagitspor in Turkey.

Some of her first big international competitions after moving to Canada were marred by bad luck. She was scheduled to skate at the Junior Grand Prix competition in Phoenix, Arizona, in mid-September 2001, but the event was cancelled in the wake of the 11 September attacks on the United States and the subsequent shutdown of air travel into and within the country. A broken ankle she sustained in her last practice round prior to the Junior Grand Prix in Poland in 2002 kept her out of that competition, and sidelined her from the qualifying rounds for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games as well. After her return to active competition, Karademir placed thirteenth in the European Figure Skating Championships in 2006, and eighteenth at the World Championships, which were held in her adopted country of Canada.

Karademir's big moment of fame came during the February 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, where she became the first Turk ever to compete as an Olympic figure skater. She entered with several disadvantages. She was both young and relatively inexperienced compared to other skaters at the games. Karademir also drew the first position in the short program, meaning that she had to skate first (something figure skaters prefer not to do). She ended up scoring 123.64 points, which put her twenty-first in the competition.

The month after her Olympic performance, Karademir placed eighteenth at the 2006 World Figure Skating Championships, her highest showing in that event. In 2007 competition, she dropped to twenty-seventh place at the World Championships, but placed tenth in the European Figure Skating Championships.

BIOGRAPHICAL HIGHLIGHTS

Name: Tuğba Karademir

Birth: 1985, Ankara, Turkey

Family: Single

Nationality: Turkish (dual Canadian citizenship)

Education: York University, Toronto, B.A. studies in progress (as of 2007), biotechnology

PERSONAL CHRONOLOGY:

• 1990: First skates, Ankara
• 1994: Wins gold medal, Turkish Championships
• 1995: Wins gold, Balkan Games
• 1996: Moves with family to Canada
• 2000: Selected for Canadian Junior National Team
• 2002: Breaks ankle, sidelined from competition
• 2006: Places 13th, European Figure Skating Championships; 8th, World Championships; 21st, Winter Olympics; 18th, World Figure Skating Championships
• 2007: Places 27th, World Figure Skating Championships; 10th, European Figure Skating Championships

INFLUENCES AND CONTRIBUTIONS

Karademir was inspired to skate from watching the performance of the German skating great, Katarina Witt. Her background as a skater from a country not traditionally known for producing figure skaters, combined with the sacrifices she and her family made for her career, also clearly continue to motivate her.

Karademir has yet to break through to superstar status. Her main contribution to skating to date stems from her unusual background. Internationally, she has demonstrated that "nontraditional" countries can produce skaters who can compete in world-class events with the countries in Europe, North America, and East Asia that traditionally have dominated figure skating. In Turkey and elsewhere in the Middle East and Islamic world, she has served as an example to female athletes who sometimes must fight conservative social conventions that frown upon women competing in sports while wearing form-fitting uniforms and outfits and performing in front of mixed-gender audiences.

THE WORLD'S PERSPECTIVE

From the moment she carried the Turkish flag for the Turkish delegation at the opening ceremonies of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Karademir garnered considerable international media coverage. Television broadcasters made much of her personal story: She was the first Turkish figure skater in Olympic history (and the first Muslim woman skater in Olympic history); her native country possesses only one ice rink; her family sacrificed much for her in moving to a different country; she battled against the odds and secured an Olympic berth. Beyond this, Karademir candidly and emotionally told the press about her family's financial and cultural difficulties in Canada. Despite their middle-class status in Turkey (her father owned several restaurants), her parents, who did not speak English well, were able to secure only menial jobs in Canada. Eventually, her father returned to Turkey. Additionally, neither parent was able to travel to Turin to watch her performance at the Olympics. In the end, she garnered so much international attention that her Web site had to be shut down for exceeding its allowed traffic limit.

LEGACY

Tuğba Karademir's career is not over, but undoubtedly her legacy will be that she was Turkey's first international figure skater.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hardy, Ryan. "Turkish Delight: The Figure Skating Odyssey of Tuğba Karademir." Strand, 15 February 2007. Available from http://media.www.thestrand.ca.

Tuğba Karademir's Official Web site. Available from http://www.tugbakarademir.org.

                                                 Michael R. Fischbach

CONTEMPORARIES

Ice dancers Galit Chait and Sergei Sakhnovski have been competing together for Israel since 1996. Chait was born on 29 January 1975, in Kfar Saba, Israel. Her parents moved to the United States before she turned one year old, and she began skating in 1983. Sakhnovski was born on 15 May 1975, in Moscow. He began skating early, in 1979. He moved from Russia to Israel when he was nineteen, and then to the United States. Today, Chait and Sakhnovski still live and practice in the United States (Israel has only one professional-size ice rink).

At the 1996 Winter Olympics, they placed fourteenth, advancing to sixth at the 2002 Olympics. At the 2002 World Championships, Chait and Sakhnovski were the first Israelis to win a medal in ice dancing, the bronze. At the 2006 Olympics, the pair placed eighth.