Samvel Gezalian
figure skater
Samvel (or Samuel) Gezalian (Armenian: Սամվել Գյոզալյան, Russian: Самвел Гезалян; born 12 September 1970) is an Armenian former competitive ice dancer who represented the Soviet Union, Belarus, and Armenia in international competition. With Tatiana Navka, he is the 1991 Skate America and Nations Cup champion and placed 11th at the 1994 Winter Olympics for Belarus. With Ksenia Smetanenko, he is the 1997 Golden Spin of Zagreb champion and competed at the 1998 Winter Olympics for Armenia.
Career
Early years in skating
Gezalian began learning ice dancing at age ten in Odessa, where he was coached by Svetlana Rubleva and Boris Rublev. He later moved to Moscow. By 1985, he was skating with Maria Anikanova, coached by Tatiana Tarasova. In 1988, the duo joined Natalia Dubova's group following Tarasova's decision to stop coaching.
Partnership with Navka
After Anikanova ended her competitive career, Gezalian teamed up with Tatiana Navka. Representing the Soviet Union, Navka/Gezalian won gold at the 1991 Skate America and 1991 Nations Cup. Following the Soviet Union's dissolution, Navka/Gezalian chose to skate for Belarus.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4134761. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1970, 1991, 1994 and 1997.
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This entry incorporates text from “Samvel Gezalian” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.