The honorary Lithuanian Olympian

Ever since she was a child, Isabella Tobias has dreamed of competing at the Olympics, said Reeves Wiedeman in The New Yorker. But for years the American ice dancer couldn’t find a partner. “What American boy wants to be an ice dancer?” says the 22-year-old. “Finally my coaches sat me down and said, ‘Look, we have this Lithuanian. He’s a good skater, he’s the right size, and he’s already here.’” She started dancing with Deividas Stagniunas in 2010. But since he is a Lithuanian citizen, the only way for the pair to qualify for the Sochi Games was for Tobias to become a Lithuanian citizen and compete under that country’s flag. She ruled out a wedding of convenience to Stagniunas—“I’m a hopeless romantic, so I could never just marry for a passport”—and instead appeared before Lithuania’s citizenship commission. “It was basically an interrogation. Me in a chair facing questions in Lithuanian: ‘Who was the first king of Lithuania? Who was the first president?’” She scored 97 percent, but was rejected. She got a lawyer and appealed, and the government reversed its decision, allowing her to dance in Sochi. She hopes other Americans will understand her decision to compete under a foreign flag. “I don’t want to be perceived as a turncoat. But it was my only option.”

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