Aljona Savchenko is a retired Ukrainian-born German pair skater. One of the most decorated pair skaters, she is the 2018 Olympic Champion and a two-time Olympic bronze medalist, a six-time World Champion, a four-time European Champion, and a five-time Grand Prix Final champion.
Savchenko in 2018
Savchenko and Szolkowy at the 2007 German Championships.
Savchenko and Szolkowy with their coach Ingo Steuer in 2007
Savchenko and Szolkowy at the 2010 World Championships.
Pair skating is a figure skating discipline defined by the International Skating Union (ISU) as "the skating of two persons in unison who perform their movements in such harmony with each other as to give the impression of genuine Pair Skating as compared with independent Single Skating". The ISU also states that a pairs team consists of "one Woman and one Man". Pair skating, along with men's and women's single skating, has been an Olympic discipline since figure skating, the oldest Winter Olympic sport, was introduced at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London. The ISU World Figure Skating Championships introduced pair skating in 1908.
German pair skaters Anna Hübler and Heinrich Burger, 1908 Olympics
German pair team Madge Syers and Edgar Syers at the 1908 Olympics
Liudmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov (the "Protopopovs"), in 1968
Irina Rodnina and Alexei Ulanov, in 1972