Pittsburgh Superstars: Elena Valova

PITTSBURGH — An Olympic gold medalist saw so much potential in a skating program in Pittsburgh, she moved here after only seeing a sketch of a building 20 years ago!

Elena Valova was recruited to come to the Steel City from Russia when the RMU Island Sports Center was being built. They wanted her to teach skating and coach.

They saw potential because of her expertise on the ice: she and her partner Oleg Vassiliev won the gold medal in skating pairs at the 1984 Olympic games in Sarajevo.

When we caught up with her recently, she was showing some children skating on the ice her Olympic, world, and national gold medals, inspiring the next generation of skaters in Pittsburgh.

“It is what I do the best, it is what I know the best, it is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life,” said Valova.

When asked what made her decide to take a job in Pittsburgh, a city she’d never been to:

“Generally, we didn’t know anything, but we fell in love with Pittsburgh,” she said. “People here are amazing!”

She says it reminds her a lot of her hometown, St. Petersburg, Russia. That’s who she was skating for when she won a gold medal in pairs skating in Sarajevo in 1984 and a silver in Calgary in 1988.

When she won the gold with Vassiliev, she said it was almost expected because everyone was putting their hopes in them.

Valova says her silver medal from pairs skating in Calgary actually brought her more joy because she was in the hospital leading up to the 1988 games.

“I was out of the hospital a month before the Olympics. And in that month, I had to start from walking to doing the triples on the ice,” she recalled. “It was unbelievably difficult.”

It was tough, physically, and mentally, being the top-rated pairs team for six years. That’s ultimately what lead Valova to step down from Olympic competition.

Since then, she’s kept her Olympic medals, plus her world and national ones, in a simple mesh bag. She takes a similar no-fuss approach to coaching her skating students.

“We always say to our students: it’s the same ice, the same program, the same you, same judges, just go and do it,” she said.

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