Galit Chait

Galit Chait was born on 29 January 1975 in Kfar Saba, Israel, to parents who had immigrated from Moldova.[3] Her family relocated to the United States before she turned one, and she grew up in Paramus, New Jersey.[3]

Chait began skating at age eight, inspired by a visit to Rockefeller Center in New York City.[3] She initially competed in individual events before switching to ice dance, and it was at another coach's suggestion that she and Sergei Sakhnovski became partners in the mid-1990s.[3] She represented the Israeli Skating Federation from 1994 to 2006.[2] Chait and Sakhnovski began competing together in 1996 and lived and trained in the United States, at a time when Israel had only one professional-size ice rink.[1]

Chait and Sakhnovski began competing together for Israel in 1996.[1] They won nine of ten Israeli Championships between 1996 and 2005 and placed among the top six at the European Championships from 2001 through 2005.[6] Chait participated in eleven European Championships over the course of her career.[7]

The pair competed at three Winter Olympics under the Israeli flag.[2] At the 1998 Nagano Games, they finished fourteenth, making Chait Israel's first female competitor in the Winter Olympics.[8] A fifth-place finish at the 2000 World Championships in France brought them close to the medal podium.[9] Their bronze at the 2002 World Championships in Japan made them the first Israeli ice-dance team to win a World Championships medal.[1]

Their 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic appearance produced a sixth-place finish, matching Israel's best-ever Winter Olympic ranking at the time.[4] Chait served as Israel's flag-bearer at both the 2002 and 2006 Winter Olympics.[2]

At the 2006 Turin Games, Chait fell during the compulsory dance — reportedly the only competitor to fall that day — leaving the pair thirteenth in that segment with a score of 31.07, more than nine points below their personal best and incurring a one-point deduction.[10][11] They recovered strongly, placing sixth in the original dance with sections of cha-cha, rumba, and salsa, and rising to ninth overall before the free dance.[12] Their final result was eighth place overall.[13] After the fall, Chait described their outlook for the final free dance: "Monday is probably going to be our last competitive skate, although we still don't know for sure, and we want to present ourselves well, not for the placing. We will skate our programs like in a show."[14]

At the 2006 World Championships in Calgary that followed, they stood sixth after the compulsory dance and remained sixth after the original dance, with 89.26 points heading into the free dance.[13][15] At 31 years and 18 days old, Chait was the oldest female Israeli Winter Olympic competitor.[8]

Chait transitioned into coaching in June 2007, joining the Ice House rink's Elite program in New Jersey alongside coach Nikolai Morozov, working with world-class skaters from Azerbaijan, Ukraine, and Japan.[2] Among her primary charges were Israeli ice dancers Roman and Alexandra Zaretsky.[2]

The Zaretskys achieved their first Grand Prix podium under Chait's guidance at the 2009 Skate America, finishing third in the original dance and second in the free dance — which was skated to music from Schindler's List — for a bronze medal overall with 171.77 points.[16] Chait praised their performance, saying, "They were exceptionally good, they skated excellently."[16] The result echoed her own competitive career: she and Sakhnovski had won silver at the same event seven years earlier.[2]

By 2014, Chait was coaching seven athletes who competed at the Sochi Olympics, including Evgeni Krasnapolsky and Andrea Davidovich.[17] She expressed her ambitions clearly: "I hope that we continue to grow and produce athletes who … are at the top of the world in international competitions."[17] A 2021 report identified her as head coach of Israel's figure skaters, overseeing training in northern New Jersey and preparing athletes for the 2022 Beijing Olympics, calling qualification "a lot of hard work and determination."[5]

Chait and Sakhnovski helped raise the international visibility of Israeli ice dance. Chait later recalled: "When we started skating, people weren't aware there was an ice-dancing team from Israel. People laughed at us. Now everyone knows."[3] Their bronze at the 2002 World Championships — the first World Championships medal won by an Israeli ice-dance team — and their repeated high finishes placed Israeli competitors among the leading international ice-dance teams of their era.[1][6]

As a coach, Chait continued that work by training Israeli skaters for subsequent Olympic competition, including athletes at the 2014 Sochi Games and candidates preparing for the 2022 Beijing Games.[17][5]

In 2008, Chait and the Zaretskys alleged that officials at the Ice House rink prevented them from participating in the Elite program because of their Israeli nationality, and that coach Morozov stated he did not wish to work under the Israeli flag.[2] The rink's attorney disputed the complaint's assertions and stated that the facility did not discriminate on the basis of national origin or religion.[2] The cited reporting presents these as allegations and denials, without establishing the claims as proven fact.