Sadly, Russian figure skater, 23 year old Petr Gummenik / Пётр Гуменник, will be unable to skate to his chosen short program music, Perfume, at the Winter Olympics. The Russian National Champion qualified with this very music at the qualifying event in Beijing several months ago. Surely, any music issues should have been flagged by the IOC and the ISU ClicknClear copyright systems back then, in order to allow the athlete fair time to resolve any issues…?
But the level of controversy surrounding music choices and copyright issues at the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics in Italy has now hit a crescendo with one of the best skaters in the world, Gumennik, being prevented from using the music he qualified for the Olympics with.
It’s honestly a bad look all round for the IOC and ISU after several other popular skaters also ran into copyright issues, including Tomas-Llorenc Guarino Sabate and his very popular Minions program and top Belgian skater, Loena Hendrickx, also having to make last minute changes to her program music. All of this puts athletes under extremely unfair pressure, especially after the ISU promised at their most recent Congress that they would have an efficient system in place to prevent these kinds of problems.
Thankfully, Petr Gumennik and his coach Veronika Daineko have found a solution and Petr will now skate to 2 tracks from the Onegin movie soundtrack by talented composers Edgar Hakobyan and Georgy Zheryakov.
Short Program Music: Waltz 1805 by Edgar Hakobyan.
Free Skate Music: Onegin’s Letter to Tatiana by Georgy Zheryakov
Gumennik’s form has been fantastic recently with his programs proving hugely popular throughout the Russian skating season. His performances were also loved by audiences at the Beijing Olympic Qualifier.
We can’t wait to see himself and Adeliia Petrosian in action in Milano-Cortina.
Удачи!
