An Olympic gold medalist is selling her $1.2 million mansion after her dreams of finding success in Louisiana faltered and she is forced to move back to Las Vegas amid a divorce from her longtime husband.
Oksana Baiul, who represented Ukraine at the 1994 Winter Olympics in figure skating, said her “heart is broken” as she listed her Shreveport estate for sale last week.
“Thank you, Shreveport !!! House is for sale, moving back to Las Vegas … I love u all. I am sorry it didn’t work out,” Baiul wrote on Facebook.
The 47-year-old Ukrainian-native reluctantly shared that her goal of opening a skating school in the Pelican State “did not come to come to fruition.”
“I can’t make a living in Shreveport. Unfortunately, I can’t,” Baiul said on Facebook. “I do love all the people here. I came for a reason, and it did not happen. I came here to create some things, but they did not come to fruition. I have to go where the ice exists.”
After striking gold at the 1994 Winter Games, Baiul moved to Simsbury, Conn., and trained at the International Skating Center of Connecticut, according to the New York Times.
She bounced around different cities across the US until she settled down in Pennsylvania, where she met her husband, Carlo Farina.
The couple moved to Louisiana in 2022, purchasing the property for $600,000.
On Sept. 20, Baiul revealed she listed her five-bed, five-bath home for $1,195,000 and declared she was heading back to Sin City.
The Georgian Italianate mansion was built in 1925 by architect Edward F. Neild for an oil baron before the “current owners painstakingly restored most of the mansion” over the last three years, according to the home’s listing.
The Fairfield Avenue estate sits on a 1.3-acre plot and comes with a grand front entrance, 7 fireplaces, a gated driveway, six garages around the property and an outdoor fountain.
Baiul described the home as “the most beautiful mansion in all of Shreveport” and offered an inside look at her property.
“I’ve made all of the money in the world, lost all of the money in the world,” she told KSLA. “I’ve been married, now I’m divorced. But, if you fall down on the ice, can you imagine how many times I had to fall down and get up?”
In August, Baiul, who marked being two years sober on Friday, announced that she was separating from her husband after 10 years of marriage.
“Dear extended fam and friends, I’m expressing myself to you this morning regarding my personal circumstances. My husband and I are divorcing,” Baiul posted to Facebook on Aug. 5.
The couple shares a 10-year-old daughter, who is already back in Sin City.
“I came here from Las Vegas,” Baiul told KSLA. “My daughter was born in Las Vegas. She is already there. When I was in Vegas, and I just came back. We skated together.
Baiul was ordered to pay $45 million in 2014 after she unsuccessfully sued NBC and a TV promoter, alleging that the two had used her image to promote two shows in 2011 and 2012 despite declining to perform.
That same year, a judge had tossed a $400 million suit filed by Baiul claiming her former agents stole more than $57 million from her in a “criminal enterprise” after signing her as a 16-year-old in 1994.
Baiul hit international fame as a teenager competing in the Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway in 1994. She won gold in the Women’s Figure Skating on Feb. 25, beating out American Nancy Kerrigan and China’s Chen Lu.
Baiul is set to work within the Vegas Golden Knights organization, working with the skating programs staff, developing and growing the skating community in the Nevada desert.
“I enjoy, sometimes, taking risks,” says Baiul. “I personally never learn anything from success. I learn everything from tougher situations. I’m blessed and I’m grateful for everything. I will miss Shreveport a lot. Thank you.”
