Marina Anissina

Marina Vyacheslavovna Anissina (; born 30 August 1975) is a Franco-Russian ice dancer. Competing with Gwendal Peizerat for France, she is the 2002 Olympic champion, the 1998 Olympic bronze medalist, the 2000 World champion, and a six-time French national champion.

Earlier in her career, Anissina competed with Ilia Averbukh for Russia and the Soviet Union. They won gold at two World Junior Championships.

Personal life Born to Irina Cherniaeva, a former pair skater who placed sixth at the 1972 Winter Olympics, Her brother is Mikhail Anisin, also a hockey player.

Anissina acquired French nationality by naturalization on 1 February 1996.

For their free dance program in the 1997—1998 season, Anissina and Peizerat used music from the Prokofiev ballet Romeo and Juliet. At one point in the free dance, Anissina carried Peizerat completely off the ice and supported him on her hip, "as if to represent Juliet's emotional strength within the relationship". ABC correspondent Lesley Visser reported that this move had become their trademark and saw it as "a way of celebrating the opposite yet equal strengths of male and female". Anissina and Peizerat continued to use the move in all of their free dances after 1998; figure skating writer and historian Ellyn Kestnbaum speculates that since they finished first or second in every competition during that period, they were not penalized for it, even though other dance teams might have used it as a gimmick rather than as an expression of their skating skills or an interpretation of their music.

Programs With Peizerat Season Original dance Free dance Exhibition 1993–1994