A few week in the past, Olympic gold medalist Oksana Baiul took to Fb with an emotional replace. Over a number of posts, she revealed that she was promoting her beloved Shreveport mansion — a sprawling Nineteen Twenties property she known as “essentially the most stunning residence in all of Shreveport.”
The itemizing, priced at just below $1.2 million, comes as Baiul faces divorce, dwindling earnings, and what she described because the painful realization that “I am unable to make a dwelling in Louisiana.“
In a sequence of heartfelt posts, she gave followers a digital tour of the property, pausing by a big stone fountain she joked “might be was an ice skating rink when it freezes within the winter.” She described the house as a “nice location for a Mattress and Breakfast for somebody available in the market to start a enterprise,” and even introduced a weekend yard sale — money solely, no early birds — at her tackle on Fairfield Avenue. Among the many gadgets she listed: a classic stitching machine for $100, a sequin romper for $20, and a measurement 2 Bergdorf gown for $50.
It was a unusually intimate window into the lifetime of a onetime teenage prodigy who conquered the world stage, made hundreds of thousands from endorsements and tv specials, then spent years battling lawsuits, unhealthy contracts, and damaged guarantees. Three many years after changing into Ukraine’s first Winter Olympic champion, Oksana Baiul has lived via each the dizzying heights and the humbling lows of fame — a girl who, by her personal account, “made all the cash on the earth and misplaced all the cash on the earth.”
Nancy Kerrigan, Oksana and Lu Chen in 1994 (Mike Powell/ALLSPORT)
Early Life and Meteoric Rise
Oksana Baiul was born in 1977 in Dnipro, Ukraine, then a part of the Soviet Union. Her early childhood was marked by each hardship and uncooked expertise. She started skating at age 4, guided by her mom and grandparents after her father deserted the household. When her mom died of ovarian most cancers in 1991, Oksana was simply 13 years outdated and instantly alone. Her coach, Galina Zmievskaya, took her in, successfully changing into her guardian and pushing her towards elite worldwide competitors.
By the age of 15, Baiul’s artistry and precision had made her a rising star on the world stage. In 1993, she captured the World Championship title, signaling that she might problem even essentially the most established skaters. Then got here Lillehammer.
Lillehammer
In case you had been alive in 1994, there is a good probability you bear in mind the drama main as much as the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, prefer it occurred yesterday. This was the Olympics that happened barely one month after Nancy Kerrigan was attacked on the U.S. Determine Skating Championships in Detroit — a stunning occasion later traced to the ex-husband and associates of Kerrigan’s rival, Tonya Harding. By the point the Video games started, the world knew Harding’s inside circle was concerned, and the stress between the 2 skaters created a media frenzy not like something determine skating had ever seen.
On February 23, 1994, 118 million folks tuned in to look at the ladies’s brief program. That set an Olympic viewership document that lasted precisely two days. On February 25, 126 million U.S. viewers watched the free skate finale, making it the fourth most-watched tv broadcast in American historical past at the moment, behind solely two Tremendous Bowls and the finale of M*A*S*H.
With out wanting it up, do you bear in mind who took residence gold? Was it Nancy or Tanya?
.
.
.
.
.
Trick query! The gold medal went to a 16-year-old phenom from Ukraine named Oksana Baiul. Nancy Kerrigan took silver, and China’s Chen Lu gained bronze. Tonya Harding, competing below a storm cloud of scandal, completed a distant eighth after a disastrous skate that included stopping mid-performance to plead with judges for a do-over when her skate lace broke. It was an unforgettable, chaotic second — the fruits of one of the vital sensational sports activities tales of the last decade. Baiul’s victory, delivered with poise and beauty in the midst of that circus, made her an instantaneous world movie star.
Here’s a video of Oksana’s Gold Medal efficiency:
Fame, Fortune, and Monetary Missteps
Within the days and weeks after Lillehammer, Oksana Baiul turned one of the vital well-known athletes on the earth. The orphaned teenager with the fragile artistry and emotional story was irresistible to each sponsors and the media. Endorsement provides poured in from across the globe.
Inside months, Baiul had signed an estimated $1.5 million skilled contract and turned professional, becoming a member of profitable skating excursions like “Champions on Ice” and starring in made-for-TV ice reveals together with “The Nutcracker on Ice” and “Sleeping Magnificence on Ice.” She appeared on speak reveals, carried out in enviornment spectacles, and was marketed because the “subsequent Katarina Witt” — a swish, glamorous skater who might draw mainstream audiences.
At her peak within the mid-Nineties, Baiul was incomes hundreds of thousands of {dollars} a yr from efficiency charges, sponsorships, and product offers. She even launched her personal strains of jewellery, clothes, and greeting playing cards, and revealed an autobiography titled “Oksana: My Personal Story.”
To prime all of it off, she purchased herself a $450,000 residence in Simbury, Connecticut.
In response to a lawsuit filed in 2014, Oksana earned roughly $57 million on this interval. That is the identical as incomes a bit greater than $100 million in as we speak’s {dollars} after adjusting for inflation.
Baiul’s sudden wealth collided with inexperience and mismanagement. She was nonetheless an adolescent when she moved to the USA, spoke restricted English, and relied closely on brokers and legal professionals to deal with her enterprise affairs.
In 1997, she made headlines for a unique motive — a drunk driving arrest in Connecticut after crashing her automobile right into a tree. Although she averted jail time, the incident marked the beginning of a protracted, public unraveling. Her skating profession misplaced momentum, her endorsement offers dried up, and he or she started to conflict with former managers and promoters over lacking cash and unpaid royalties.
In a 2012 lawsuit, Baiul claimed that the William Morris Company had taken advantage of her when she was a minor and could not read English. She alleged that the company didn’t account for greater than $250,000 in earnings from jewellery, greeting playing cards, and tv specials, and that hundreds of thousands extra had been mishandled over time. The next yr, she expanded her claims in a separate federal case, accusing an online of former representatives of stealing or concealing the previously-mentioned $57 million she stated she had earned from skating excursions, tv tasks, and merchandise. Her lawsuits sought $170 million in damages. Courts finally dismissed these circumstances, calling them “frivolous” and time-barred, however they painted a vivid image of an athlete who by no means actually understood the place her fortune had gone.
Amazingly, sooner or later after these lawsuits had been filed and dismissed, William Morris did conform to pay Oksana a $9.5 million settlement.
Latest Years
In 2015, Oksana married her enterprise supervisor, Carlo Farina. They welcomed a daughter that very same yr. In 2016, the household paid $340,000 for a house in Las Vegas. In 2022, they offered this residence for $900,000 and concurrently paid round $700,000 for an ornate 6,000-square-foot mansion in Shreveport, Louisiana, that dates again a century and sits on over an acre. The transfer to Shreveport was apparently motivated by the need to launch a skating academy.
They spent three years painstakingly restoring the five-bedroom property, which featured seven marble fireplaces, copper gutters, a spiral staircase, and even two custom-built treehouses with a drawbridge. Baiul described the property as “essentially the most stunning mansion in all of Shreveport” and stated she hoped to open a skating college within the metropolis.
However the dream rapidly unraveled. In a sequence of candid Fb posts in 2025, Baiul revealed she was divorcing Farina and will not afford to remain in Louisiana. “I am unable to make a dwelling in Shreveport. Sadly, I am unable to,” she wrote. “I got here right here to create some issues, however they didn’t come to fruition. I’ve to go the place the ice exists.” She listed the home for $1.2 million, describing it as a “nice location for a Mattress and Breakfast for somebody available in the market to start a enterprise.”
In movies shared on-line, Baiul gave followers a tour of the property, pausing by a yard fountain she joked “might be was an ice skating rink when it freezes within the winter.” She even introduced a weekend yard sale — “money solely, no early birds” — with gadgets starting from a $5 lamp shade to a $50 Bergdorf Goodman gown. Although the sale was ultimately canceled, the posts drew consideration for his or her rawness and vulnerability.
Chatting with native reporters, Baiul admitted her “coronary heart is damaged” on the considered leaving Shreveport however stated she was grateful for her time there. Now 47, she splits her time between Louisiana and Las Vegas, the place she works inside the Vegas Golden Knights group, serving to develop youth skating applications.
“I’ve made the entire cash on the earth, misplaced the entire cash on the earth,” she advised KSLA. “I have been married, now I am divorced. However if you happen to fall down on the ice, are you able to think about what number of instances I needed to fall down and rise up?”
After thirty years within the public eye, Oksana Baiul’s life has come full circle — from a lonely youngster in Ukraine to a teenage champion, a multimillionaire star, and now a girl rebuilding her life from scratch. Her story stays one of the vital dramatic monetary and private arcs in sports activities historical past: a reminder that Olympic glory can open each door, however fame and fortune hardly ever keep frozen ceaselessly.
