December 30, 1995
From the Moscow Times:
GORDEYEVA STRUGGLES TO FACE LIFE ON ICE ALONE
by Gennady Fyodorov
Yekaterina Gordeyeva, the Olympic figure skating champion, stricken by the sudden death of her husband and partner, cuts a lonely figure at CSKA's Ice Palace these days.
She is still to be found working through her routines on the ice, but she is not preparing for competition. Skating merely helps her get her mind off the death of Sergei Grinkov.
"I did not come here to practice," said Gordeyeva quietly, after skating one day last week. "I just come here to skate. I can't stay home all the time. It's too depressing. I need to do something to keep my mind off all the things that happened to me recently."
Grinkov died of heart failure while the couple was practicing Nov. 20 in Lake Placid, New York and was buried in Moscow after a funeral service on center ice at CSKA, home to Gordeyeva for over a decade.
More concrete answers about her skating future will have to wait for the hurt to fade a little.
"I think it's possible for Yekaterina to come back with a different partner if she decides to do that," said her long-time coach Stanislav Zhuk. "Not only in professional ice shows but in competition as well."
But for now, Gordeyeva skates alone.
"I come here almost daily while my mother baby-sits for Darya, who is 3 years and 3 months old," she said in an interview. Gordeyeva said that she is staying with her parents, who help with the child.
"At CSKA, I started to skate and almost my entire athletic career was spent here. I know everyone here and people know me very well. They comfort me. I feel better here than just sitting at home, doing nothing," she said, her voice dropping almost to a She looks older than her years, sad and depressed.
"I don't know what I'll do in the future," she said.
"Probably, I'll continue to skate because this is the only thing I've done my whole life and I don't know anything else. Although, it is hard for me to say at this moment, where, when and in what capacity I'll resume my skating."
At that point in the conversation Gordeyeva almost broke down. Tears appeared in her eyes and it took a visible effort for her to pull herself together.
Zhuk said that while skaters fairly frequently change partners in mid-career, it is much rarer that a couple, after winning world and Olympic titles, breaks apart to achieve similar results with new partners.
One person who succeeded in coming back after splitting with her partner is Gordeyeva's countrywoman Irina Rodnina, a three-time Olympic and 10-time world pairs champion, who was also coached by Zhuk.
Rodnina and her partner, Alexei Ulanov, separated after they captured the the gold at the 1972 Sapporo Olympics, when Ulanov fell in love with another skater, whom he eventually married.
Soviet sports leaders ordered figure-skating specialists to do a country-wide search to replace Ulanov.
"We tried about a dozen different partners before looking at Alexander [Zaitsev]," said Zhuk.
"Zaitsev was about to give up skating, as he was deemed a lousy prospect by some coaches."
Zhuk's intuition paid dividends almost immediately.
"In 10 months, Sasha went from a beginner to world champion," said the coach.
Rodnina and Zaitsev went on to win two Olympic and eight world titles in the 1970s and 1980s.
Gordeyeva said that she will stay in Moscow until mid-January, when she intends to go to the United States with her daughter. She will stay in Connecticut with her coach, Marina Zuyeva.
The Stars on Ice show, which the couple skated for, is putting on a benefit performance Feb. 27 in Hartford, with all proceeds going to Gordeyeva and her daughter.
The skater said that she does not have any serious money problems for the time being, but down the road it might be difficult to raise a child by herself.
"I think it's nice what the other skaters are doing," she said.
She also expanded on the details of her husband's death. She said they were rehearsing their routine when Grinkov suddenly stopped.
"He felt something and lay down on the ice," she said. "He appeared out of breath. I kept asking him what happened, but he gave no answer. He just could not say anything, because he was gasping for air."
Grinkov then lost consciousness and someone called for an ambulance.
"The EMS came within three or four minutes," she said.
"I think he was still alive even at the hospital, because when they brought him there and did a cardiogram, the screen showed that his heart was still beating."
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