Ice Dancing Champ Sentenced to Prison

Ice Dancing Champ Sentenced to Prison
AP

BURGAS, Bulgaria (Jan. 5) - A court in Bulgaria has sentenced world ice-dancing champion Maxim Staviski to 2 1/2 years in prison for a fatal drunk driving accident.

The court on Monday overturned an earlier suspended sentence for the same term.
Staviski was found guilty of crashing his car into an oncoming vehicle in August 2007. A 23-year-old man died and an 18-year-old woman was severely injured in the accident.

Police records showed Staviski's blood-alcohol level was more than double the legal limit.
The 31-year-old Staviski was released pending his appeal. He was also ordered to pay $187,200 in compensation.

Staviski and Albena Denkova captured their second consecutive ice-dancing title at the World Figure Skating Championships in March 2007.

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What are Bulgarian laws on impaired driving? Are they in line with America's? More strict? More lenient? Frankly, I don't know. It's difficult enough to keep up with the various laws in each state, much less in eastern European countries.

Maybe it's just me, but athletes drinking to the point of impairment seems, well, counteractive. Someone has had to physically train so hard to reach their level of accomplishment, yet drinks to such excess as to reduce the quality of that training. Big football players are one thing, but ice dancing? Any type of figure skating takes such precision that to think of that precision being "off" due to intoxication just seems out of line with what his life has been dedicated to. Interesting...but overall, whether it's Bulgaria or Boston or Buenos Aires or Bangladesh, a death from driving under the influence still results in loss. Death is the great equalizer, as it's said, but such a senseless way to die; not to mention preventable.