The Sad Story of Katya and Sergei

Hi colleages!

A few years ago, I promised to tell you about a pair of Figure Ice Skating. So, here is their terrible story:

In a skating rink they were known and on the ice good-bye was said forever. It was a November, twenty, 1995, a day of training as other one anyone in Lake Placid's chill track in New York. Nothing was making presage to them to Katya and to Sergei, that those would be his last united steps. They were testing a launch - a double axel-, Sheriosha took impulse to raise Ekaterina, since so often it had done along his professional career, but something failed and fell collapsed to the soil. Terrified Katusha took it in his arms with the hope of ques ólo it was a simple faint, but in the same instant that Katya took his hand he sensed beforehand of that everything had finished. His husband and also his pair of skating has just died in his lap, a heart attack had fulminated it twenty-eight years after age. Katusyha was remaining a widow with twenty-two years and a daughter of three, the small Dasha, and his life was stopping making sense because his great passion, the artistic skating, had just wrested him from his only and great love: his husband Sergei Grinkov.

While Ekaterina Gordeeva was trying to assume the happened, the world of the sport was waking up with the terrible news: Sergei Grinkov, the champion Olympian double, in the discipline of artistic skating in the category of pairs, victim had died of unataque to the heart. The best pair of all the times, nevermore would return to furrow of the hand a track of ice. Beethoven's Moonlight, with which they gained his second Olympian gold in 1994 in Lilliehammer - they are the only ones that have obtained it - and that never remained recorded in the memory of many fans as the best seen program, it sounded that fatidical November, twenty sadder than never.

Grinkov and Gordeeva knew themselves in the track of ice of the CSKA of Moscow, she had only four years and he eight. The two were training in solitarily, as individual skaters, nevertheless as the years went by his preparers thought that they would have more possibilities as pair, so they began to work together. The results were not late in coming and in the year 1985 they gained his first World júnior. But his goal was like for other many sportsmen the Olympian gold, and in Calgary, Canada, in 1988 they had his opportunity, and did not waste it, though in the way towards the gold they had to overcome any more than one reef.

A few months before the Olympian appointment, Ekaterina suffered a serious accident while he was training with Sergei. In an elevation the tiny Katusyha - that in those days was not reaching the 1,50 deestatura - it slipped of the arms of his companion and struck his/her/its head against the ice. As consequence of the fall, Katya was two months deposited the hospital and his Sheriosha - as her was calling affectionatly Grinkov - not even one stopped being going to see her only day. Sergei was feeling guilty for having allowed that one should damage Katya, it was not possible to excuse it. Even it managed to consider stopping training, but the small Katusyha did not allow it to him and he him remembered that the Olympics were waiting for them, so it had to continue working though she was in the hospital. It was in this time when Sergei discovered the great thing that his companion of track was importing for him. Without realizing he had fallen in love and thanks to this inopportune injury in his fight for reaching the Olympian dream his hearts had remained close forever. On the ice of Calgary they demonstrated that they were the best and with only fourteen and eighteen years they were crowned as the new kings of the skating. With the music of the Sleeping Beauty they rubbed the perfection and captivated the Canadian public but very few ones knew that the fairy-tale was on the verge of real making.

After gaining the Olympics and several championships of the world Gordeeva and Grinkov left the official competitions. They wanted to form a family, so they married and there was born his daughter Daría. Nevertheless two years later the small worm of the competition touched them again. In 1994 and for the first time in the history of a few Olympic Games professional skaters might compete. Lilihammer was offering them an opportunity that they could not reject: to be the first pair in obtaining the Olympian doublet. And in spite of the fact that there Russians were also Arthur Dimitriev and Natalia Miskutianov, the judges yielded themselves to the elegance and majesty opened by Gordeeva and Grinkov. Once again they had obtained it. They had come to the highest thing sportingly and were living happy together with his small one, until the tragedy surprised them. Probably, as he said in some occasion the own Katya " everything was too perfect to be royal ".

 At present Katya his life has re-done with also champion Olympian Illia Kullik. Together they have had a daughter Daria, but Gordeeva has not returned to marry.