Post by Admin on Jan 12, 2014 8:55:06 GMT -6
From the Philadelphia Inquirer:
February 9, 1994
SHEER SKATING MAGIC, AN OLYMPIC TRAJECTORY
by Diane Pucin
She is made of porcelain, pale and fragile. She must shatter, this thin, serious girl dressed in black on the ice. But then the tall, strong man takes her in his arms. Tosses her high like a sponge ball, and the porcelain girl spins, keeps spinning, around and around, and she doesn't shatter. She falls gently back into the muscled arms of the man and is placed sweetly back onto the ice. And the pair skate on.
Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergi Grinkov are back. This stunning figure-skating pair, last seen at the Olympics of Calgary in 1988, have come back from the ice shows and New Jersey and Florida and making money and having a baby. They've come back to skate like angels or something else not of this world. Because they are a world apart from the other pairs who will be skating in Lillehammer.
Better than the 1992 Olympic champs, Natalia Mishkutenok and Artur Dmitriev. So much better than any U.S. pair. The U.S. champs, Jenni Meno and Todd Sand, look like stiff cardboard figures compared with Gordeeva and Grinkov. Husband and wife. Mother and father. Gordeeva and Grinkov are always together but never more so than on the ice. They won easily last month at the European Championships here. Mishkutenok and Dmitriev skated tentatively in the shadow of the former champs and finished third behind another Russian pair, Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov.
Gordeeva is 22 now. Grinkov is 26. When they mesmerized the world and won the gold in 1988, the Soviet-trained pair now skating for Russia was supposed to dominate this skating discipline forever. Or at least for a decade or so. Gordeeva was barely 16, tinier even than she is now and looking like a frightened dove, all eyes and arms, until she glided onto the ice. Grinkov was the cocky one, the almost-grownup with flashing eyes and a smile that wasn't full of fun but of daring. Try to beat us, it said. No one did. These two had won a world championship in 1986 when Gordeeva was barely 14, and another a year later. They added two more world titles, in 1989 and 1990, then retired. Suddenly. Suspiciously. There were rumors of trouble between the two, of other men and other women coming between them. None of this was true. What was true was that these kids needed money, and they could make it - a lot of it - by skating in ice shows in the United States. They got agents and sponsors. They got married. They set up a residence in Tampa. Gordeeva had a baby in Morristown, N.J.
Why Morristown? "My agents set up everything," Gordeeva said. "They made arrangements. They are from New York, and this was close, so I had my baby in New Jersey."
A month after having the baby girl, Daria, in October 1992, Gordeeva was back on the ice. She loves her baby, Gordeeva says, but she loves skating with Grinkov, too. "Of course being a mother is the most wonderful thing to happen to us," Gordeeva says. "But it is separate from skating. I still love skating, too."
Love is what their routine is about. Grinkov touches Gordeeva with love. He is gentle and sweet when he gathers Gordeeva into his arms and tosses her into the air. She weighs 92 pounds, but somehow she floats. She turns in the air like a record set at slow speed, and it seems as if Gordeeva will never land. When she does, when some slivers of ice land on Gordeeva's hair like snowflakes, this pair continues on the ground, and every movement is full of grace and feeling.
You think there must be a mirror somewhere. It is impossible for two people to wiggle every finger, turn every ankle, jump and revolve in two complete circles, then land - all this at exactly the same time. After the pair competed in November at Skate Canada, Kurt Browning, a four-time men's champion, assessed the performance like this: "Their program has one big flaw. It doesn't last long enough. I wanted it to go on forever."
Like most of the professionals who have taken advantage of the International Skating Union's offer to return to the amateur ranks and come back to the Olympics, Gordeeva said the pair just wanted to prove that they could still compete.
"We wanted to see if we could do it," she said. "We wanted to see if we were still good enough." Gordeeva always speaks for the pair. Grinkov is uncomfortable with English still. He sits next to his wife. Whispers into her ear. Then Gordeeva - Katya, as he calls her - will smile, ruffle his hair and start her next sentence: "Sergi says . . . " Sergi smiles wickedly then and makes everybody wonder, what is the joke? What is Sergi saying?
But who needs English, or Russian or German or any language, when you can skate out your life? Their skating is more skating now than in 1988. Their faces are full. Smiles, then pain, almost tears, love. This is a couple that has grown up together. Gordeeva gives credit to both their mothers back in Moscow. "They take care of Daria for us," she says. "We could not be doing this without them."
Maybe not. But Gordeeva and Grinkov would not skate the way they do without Daria, without all their struggles to find money and stability and love. It will be a huge upset later this month in Norway if this pair doesn't win another gold medal. Sergi whispers in Ekaterina's ear. She smiles. He smiles. Like the cats who swallowed the canaries.
February 9, 1994
SHEER SKATING MAGIC, AN OLYMPIC TRAJECTORY
by Diane Pucin
She is made of porcelain, pale and fragile. She must shatter, this thin, serious girl dressed in black on the ice. But then the tall, strong man takes her in his arms. Tosses her high like a sponge ball, and the porcelain girl spins, keeps spinning, around and around, and she doesn't shatter. She falls gently back into the muscled arms of the man and is placed sweetly back onto the ice. And the pair skate on.
Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergi Grinkov are back. This stunning figure-skating pair, last seen at the Olympics of Calgary in 1988, have come back from the ice shows and New Jersey and Florida and making money and having a baby. They've come back to skate like angels or something else not of this world. Because they are a world apart from the other pairs who will be skating in Lillehammer.
Better than the 1992 Olympic champs, Natalia Mishkutenok and Artur Dmitriev. So much better than any U.S. pair. The U.S. champs, Jenni Meno and Todd Sand, look like stiff cardboard figures compared with Gordeeva and Grinkov. Husband and wife. Mother and father. Gordeeva and Grinkov are always together but never more so than on the ice. They won easily last month at the European Championships here. Mishkutenok and Dmitriev skated tentatively in the shadow of the former champs and finished third behind another Russian pair, Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov.
Gordeeva is 22 now. Grinkov is 26. When they mesmerized the world and won the gold in 1988, the Soviet-trained pair now skating for Russia was supposed to dominate this skating discipline forever. Or at least for a decade or so. Gordeeva was barely 16, tinier even than she is now and looking like a frightened dove, all eyes and arms, until she glided onto the ice. Grinkov was the cocky one, the almost-grownup with flashing eyes and a smile that wasn't full of fun but of daring. Try to beat us, it said. No one did. These two had won a world championship in 1986 when Gordeeva was barely 14, and another a year later. They added two more world titles, in 1989 and 1990, then retired. Suddenly. Suspiciously. There were rumors of trouble between the two, of other men and other women coming between them. None of this was true. What was true was that these kids needed money, and they could make it - a lot of it - by skating in ice shows in the United States. They got agents and sponsors. They got married. They set up a residence in Tampa. Gordeeva had a baby in Morristown, N.J.
Why Morristown? "My agents set up everything," Gordeeva said. "They made arrangements. They are from New York, and this was close, so I had my baby in New Jersey."
A month after having the baby girl, Daria, in October 1992, Gordeeva was back on the ice. She loves her baby, Gordeeva says, but she loves skating with Grinkov, too. "Of course being a mother is the most wonderful thing to happen to us," Gordeeva says. "But it is separate from skating. I still love skating, too."
Love is what their routine is about. Grinkov touches Gordeeva with love. He is gentle and sweet when he gathers Gordeeva into his arms and tosses her into the air. She weighs 92 pounds, but somehow she floats. She turns in the air like a record set at slow speed, and it seems as if Gordeeva will never land. When she does, when some slivers of ice land on Gordeeva's hair like snowflakes, this pair continues on the ground, and every movement is full of grace and feeling.
You think there must be a mirror somewhere. It is impossible for two people to wiggle every finger, turn every ankle, jump and revolve in two complete circles, then land - all this at exactly the same time. After the pair competed in November at Skate Canada, Kurt Browning, a four-time men's champion, assessed the performance like this: "Their program has one big flaw. It doesn't last long enough. I wanted it to go on forever."
Like most of the professionals who have taken advantage of the International Skating Union's offer to return to the amateur ranks and come back to the Olympics, Gordeeva said the pair just wanted to prove that they could still compete.
"We wanted to see if we could do it," she said. "We wanted to see if we were still good enough." Gordeeva always speaks for the pair. Grinkov is uncomfortable with English still. He sits next to his wife. Whispers into her ear. Then Gordeeva - Katya, as he calls her - will smile, ruffle his hair and start her next sentence: "Sergi says . . . " Sergi smiles wickedly then and makes everybody wonder, what is the joke? What is Sergi saying?
But who needs English, or Russian or German or any language, when you can skate out your life? Their skating is more skating now than in 1988. Their faces are full. Smiles, then pain, almost tears, love. This is a couple that has grown up together. Gordeeva gives credit to both their mothers back in Moscow. "They take care of Daria for us," she says. "We could not be doing this without them."
Maybe not. But Gordeeva and Grinkov would not skate the way they do without Daria, without all their struggles to find money and stability and love. It will be a huge upset later this month in Norway if this pair doesn't win another gold medal. Sergi whispers in Ekaterina's ear. She smiles. He smiles. Like the cats who swallowed the canaries.