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Stars of international ice-skating, winners of Olympic games and world and European champions sat next to the President on the tribune of the ice-skating rink at the Luzhniki sports complex. Among them were Irina Rodnina, Oleg Protopolov and Lyudmila Belousova, Natal’ya Bestem’yanova and Andrei Bukin, Aleksandr Gorshkov, Irina Lobacheva and Il’ya Averbukh, Yevgeny Plyushchenko and Irina Slutskaya.

Also present at the opening ceremony were Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, Head of the Federal agency for physical culture and sport Vyacheslav Fetisov, President of the International ice-skaters’ union Ottavio Cinquante, and heads of the Russian Federation of figure skating.

Before the opening ceremony began, there was a minute of silence to honour the memory of head of the Azerbaijan Federation of figure-skating Gusein Aliev.