November 21, 1996
From Moscow Times:
YEAR COMES FULL CIRCLE FOR GORDEYEVA
by Mike Penner
LOS ANGELES -- Some time Wednesday, Ekaterina Gordeyeva skated onto the ice at a practice rink in Lake Placid, New York, bringing the most painful year of her life full circle.
On this same rink one year ago -- Nov. 20, 1995 -- Gordeyeva lost her skating partner, teenage sweetheart, husband and the father of her now 4-year-old daughter when Sergei Grinkov suffered a heart attack during a routine workout, collapsed on the ice and never regained consciousness.
Grinkov was 28 at the time. Gordeyeva was 24. Together, they had won two Olympic gold medals in pairs figure skating, in 1988 and 1994, and were contemplating a run at a third in 1998. Grinkov wasn't satisfied with his championship performance in Lillehammer, having landed a single salchow when the program called for a double.
Grinkov the perfectionist was prepared to devote four more years to prove to the world that his one misstep in Norway was nothing but a fluke.
Suddenly last November, those plans were shattered by a blocked artery, a condition that had gone undetected despite regular physical examinations. Gordeeva buried her husband in his native Moscow and then returned to her new home in Simsbury, Connecticut, to a life without the man who had been her support system, protective shield and touchstone for the previous 13 years.
"He was my hero," Gordeyeva said during an interview last week. "From the first time I met him and the first time I started to skate with him, I always admired him. He was so open to everyone, so easy to talk with. He had so many friends. This was something that I wished to have -- a lot of friends, this passion to have any conversation you want."
Solace didn't come easily for Gordeyeva. In January, she resumed skating, singles skating, which she hadn't attempted in 15 years. She joined the professional Stars On Ice tour, largely to maintain the company of close friends Scott Hamilton and Victor Petrenko. In February, she and the Stars On Ice ensemble performed a tribute to Grinkov in Hartford, Connecticut, the preparation for which left her "absolutely crazy and so nervous for two months."
And in March, she began writing a book about her life with Grinkov as therapy -- "part of the healing process," she calls it. The book, titled "My Sergei: A Love Story," written with E.M. Swift, was released earlier this month. After finishing a brief publicity tour for the book, Gordeyeva is back in Lake Placid preparing for the 1996-97 Stars On Ice season. Rehearsal could have been held at any number of sites in the New England area, but when tour director Byron Allen approached Gordeyeva with the idea of returning to Lake Placid, she quickly approved.
"I'm actually very happy to go back there," she said last week. "I mean, I would have come back there anyway. That was the place that it happened. I just think that I'm supposed to be there on this date. Even if I have a choice between there and Moscow.
"It happened there. It didn't happen in Moscow."
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