Editing Elena Berezhnaya (section)

== 1998 Olympic season ==
The next season, Berezhnaya/Sikharulidze won the European Championship, defeating 1992 Olympic champion [[Artur Dmitriev]] with his new partner [[Oksana Kazakova]], and the reigning World Champions [[Mandy Wötzel]]/[[Ingo Steuer]]. At only 20 and 21 years of age respectively, Berezhnaya/Sikharulidze had established themselves as gold-medal favorites going into the [[1998 Winter Olympics]] in [[Nagano, Nagano|Nagano]], [[Japan]].<ref name=perfectcouple/> They also won the [[1997–98 Champions Series Final|Grand Prix Finals]] that year.<ref name="hines-36" /> Observers were impressed by their rapid progress.<ref name=miracle/><ref name=comeback/><ref name=perfectcouple/><ref name=favored/><ref name=ovation/> [[Ekaterina Gordeeva]] selected the pair as her and [[Sergei Grinkov]]'s skating doubles in a documentary on the legendary team after her husband's death.

At the Olympics, the pair had one fall in the short program but their other elements were of high quality. In the long, they put themselves back in contention for the gold medal with a strong performance, until five seconds from the end when they had a surprising fall as Sikharulidze set her down from a closing star lift.<ref name=98nagano/> Although disappointed by suddenly giving away their chance at the gold so close to the end of the program, Sikharulidze recovered from his shock and joked, "It's a new finish. If you don't like it, we'll change it, no problem."<ref name=98nagano/> The quality of the rest of their skating earned them the silver medal ahead of Wötzel/Steuer, while Kazakova/Dmitriev claimed the title. Former Japanese singles skater [[Yuko Kawaguchi]] became inspired to switch to pair skating after seeing Elena Berezhnaya at the Nagano Olympics.<ref name=reuters091020/>