Evgeni Krasnopolski

Krasnopolski was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, and moved to Israel with his family at the age of three.[1] He discovered figure skating as a young child through the Canada Centre in Metula, a small town in northern Israel that housed one of the country's few ice facilities.[1] He began skating at seven and started representing Israel in international competition as a preteen.[2]

Training conditions in Metula were difficult. Krasnopolski later recalled that skaters competed for only two hours of ice time per day, the quality of the ice was poor, and the federation was charged high prices for rink access.[3] He trained in Metula until age 19.[3] He later described himself as essentially the last in his cohort to leave before the Holon center opened and a new generation of Israeli skaters began to emerge.[4]

When Krasnopolski was drafted into the Israeli military at 18, his designation as an Outstanding Athlete allowed him to continue training and competing.[2] He relocated to northern New Jersey, where Israeli skaters trained under coach Galit Chait Moracci — a practical necessity given the chronic shortage of ice rinks in Israel.[2] Over the five years of his service, he returned to Israel every three months to fulfill his required time on base, and he ultimately lived in northern New Jersey for 13 years.[2]

Krasnopolski made history at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics as the first athlete ever to represent Israel in pairs figure skating.[5] He competed alongside Andrea Davidovich, with whom he had been skating for less than a year at the time.[6] The pair trained at the Ice House in Hackensack, New Jersey, under coaches Galit Chait and Gennadi Krasnitski.[6] In January 2014, they placed seventh at the European Championships in Budapest, having won the Golden Spin of Zagreb in Croatia the previous December.[6] At Sochi, they reached the free skate and finished 15th overall.[7]

At the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics, Krasnopolski competed with Paige Conners. They finished 19th overall and did not advance to the free skate.[3] Between Olympic cycles, Krasnopolski also competed at four World Championships, achieving a best result of 17th place, and won the Israeli national championship four times, each time with a different partner.[1]

For the 2022 Beijing Games, Krasnopolski partnered with Hailey Kops, a Jewish-American skater with Israeli citizenship who was born in New York and living in New Jersey.[1] Their partnership began in June 2021, after Kops had spent two years away from competitive skating.[2] The Israeli federation's approach to forming the pair was direct: Boris Chait contacted Kops's father with a two-word proposal — "I have two words: Hailey Evgeni."[2] With just over three months to prepare, Krasnopolski said Kops "was just crazy enough to believe that if we focused and put a year's worth of work into three months, we could do it."[2]

The pair secured one of the 19 available spots for pairs at Beijing by qualifying at a competition in Germany in September 2021.[2] At the Games themselves, Krasnopolski and Kops scored 55.99 in the short program — just below their personal best of 56.54 — and ranked 15th, narrowly advancing to the free skate as one of the top 16 pairs.[5] They finished 15th overall, matching Krasnopolski's result from Sochi eight years earlier.[5]

The Olympic Committee of Israel selected Krasnopolski and alpine skier Noa Szollos as Israel's flag bearers for the Beijing opening ceremony.[7] The six-member Israeli delegation also included alpine skiers Barnabas and Noa Szollos, figure skater Alexei Bichenko, and short-track speed skater Vladislav Bykanov.[8] Krasnopolski said that seeing the Israeli flag wave gave him "a huge sense of pride."[9]

Following the 2022 Beijing Olympics, Krasnopolski announced he would retire from competitive skating after more than 15 years of competitive skating.[10] He had already anticipated that Beijing would likely be his final Games, though he had left the door open by noting that circumstances could change.[3]

In the period after his retirement, Krasnopolski moved into coaching.[4] He works with Galit Chait, the Israeli national team's chief choreographer; Chait guides his work, while Krasnopolski handles the practical coaching.[4] He stated that his reason for remaining in the sport was the opportunity to help develop the next generation of Israeli skaters, and he pointed to the longstanding shortage of rinks in Israel as a persistent obstacle to recruiting talent — an obstacle he had personally navigated throughout his own career.[4]