An Evening with Champions
An Evening with Champions is an annual benefit figure skating show hosted by Eliot House of Harvard University. The event is a two-day skating show in October, which regularly attracts world-class skaters, thousands of spectators, hundreds of Harvard students, special guests, donors, and of course the children for whom the event is for. The show is entirely student-run and is managed completely by volunteer work.
Although the show has been in October in the past, the 40th Anniversary of An Evening With Champions was held in the spring, on April 16th and 17th, 2010. The 2011 show will return to the October date, but will have a new Saturday evening and Sunday matinee format, to be held on October 15th and 16th, 2011.
The show was originally conceived in 1970 by John Misha Petkevich, the two-time Olympic competitor who was at that time a junior at Harvard living in Eliot House.
Many current and former U.S. and international champions and Olympic competitors have appeared in the show over the years. The show usually features a mix of up-and-coming elite competitors and established champions. Past years' skaters have included Michelle Kwan, Brian Boitano, Scott Hamilton, Kristi Yamaguchi, Ekaterina Gordeeva, and the Haydenettes synchronized skating team who have made "EWC" their opening appearance for many years. Paul Wylie, himself a former resident of Eliot House, has usually hosted the show in recent years. Ludmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov have also had a particularly long association with the show, and continue to make annual appearances.
All profits go to the Jimmy Fund, one of New England's most cherished charities. The Jimmy Fund is dedicated to pediatric cancer research and treatment, and the affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has similar important goals. Since 1970, An Evening with Champions has raised over $2.5 million for the Jimmy Fund.
The show was formerly televised each year on PBS, but the broadcast ended in 2001. More recently, it had been televised on the Comcast Network cable channel CN8.
[edit] 41st An Evening with Champions
The 41st An Evening with Champions will take place on October 15th at 7:00 PM and October 16th at 2:00 PM at Harvard's Bright Hockey Center. Tickets went on sale and the cast list was announced on August 15, 2011. The cast includes reigning Olympic Champion Yuna Kim, 2010 US National Champions Rachael Flatt, 2011 US National Bronze Medalist Ross Miner, 2011 World Bronze Medalists Maia Shibutani and Alex Shibutani, legendary Ludmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov, and many other phenomenal skaters. The full cast list is updated on the An Evening with Champions website.
[edit] Embezzlement scandal
Chas Lee pleaded guilty to charges of embezzling over $100,000 from the show in 1991 and 1992, when he was co-chairman of the event as an Eliot House undergraduate. David Sword, another Harvard undergraduate who served as the event's treasurer around the same time, was also convicted of embezzling a lesser amount of money. The scandal received a considerable amount of press coverage in the Boston area at the time the theft was uncovered in 1994.
[edit] External links
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