World Ice Stars Bring First-Class Skating To Spokane
If the names of the skaters on the Discover Stars on Ice tour aren’t instantly recognizable, they’re at least familiar to anyone who’s an avid TV watcher.
Kristi Yamaguchi and Scott Hamilton, Jill Trenary, Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean - Olympic champions all - will be skating at the Spokane Arena Sunday night along with Olympic medalists Paul Wylie, Kurt Browning and Rosalynn Sumners.
These skaters and a bevy of others out on other professional tours benefitted from the growth of interest in figure skating that started about five years ago and got a boost from the Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding club-to-the-knee incident.
Seeing the pre-Olympic interest in ice skaters spike after Kerrigan was attacked, TV producers flooded the airwaves with post-Olympic figure skating competitions and exhibitions. And they never looked back. Each winter brings a new wave of skating specials and pseudo-competitions on prime-time TV and continent-wide tours have followed.
Spokane is just one stop on a 60-city tour of the Discover Stars tour.
And, if there’s any doubt about the interest in watching these former Olympians skate in exhibition, they were put to rest with the addition this year of Ekaterina Gordeeva to the lineup.
Since the death of her 28-year-old husband and life-long skating partner, Sergei Grinkov, in 1995, Gordeeva has launched a solo career with TV specials and a book, “My Sergei: A Love Story.”
Grinkov died of a heart attack while practicing with his wife at Lake Placid, N.Y. She buried him in their native Moscow, Russia.
The two were paired when she was just 11, he was 15 and they were trained to “skate for the state.”
In her book, Gordeeva recalls how their coach, whom both despised, “took us to places that had stairs. The longest was 225 steps; another had 175 steps. Sometimes he made us not run, but jump up the stairs, first with one leg and then with the other.”
The pairs team won the world championship in 1986 and took the Olympic gold in 1988. She was 16, he was 20. They married in 1991 and had a daughter, Daria, in 1992. Together they won four world championships and two Olympic gold medals.
Three years later Gordeeva was a widow trying to figure out her future as a figure skater.
While some pairs skaters have difficulty converting to solo skating, Gordeeva has adapted quickly and beautifully. She made her solo debut in the TV special “A Celebration of Life” last February. “I skate for Sergei and hope that people will remember him each time I take the ice,” says Gordeeva.
How could anyone who watched these two skate together forget?
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 color photos
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: SKATING The Discover Stars on Ice will perform at 7 p.m. Sunday at the Spokane Arena. Tickets are $45, $35 and $25, available at G&B Select-a-Seat outlets or call (800) 325-SEAT.