The faces, so young. The ambitions, so grand.
The tragedy, beyond scope and only growing.
At least 67 people were believed to have been lost Wednesday night when American Airlines Flight 5342 collided with a military helicopter near Reagan National Airport in Washington D.C.
Every one of them is a tragedy, a life gone too soon, a grieving family and friends left to cope with unexpected and incalculable pain.
That includes a subset from the world of figure skating, as many as 20 skaters, parents and coaches returning from a national development camp in Wichita, Kansas.
In the world of competitive athletics, figure skaters stand in their own category — underestimated and often misunderstood, but every bit, if not more, tenacious and tough as any 300-pound NFL lineman or 6-foot-10 basketball star.
This is a pursuit for only the most daring and dedicated, a collection of dreamers drawn to a sport where perfection is unattainable, where the boundaries of what’s possible are never met, where six or seven days a week, week after week, year after year, are required to just survive.
There are no shortcuts in figure skating — just painful falls that serve as stark lessons. You show up, lace them up and go after it with a focus that can seem maniacal. Out on the ice there are no coaches to call timeout, no teammates to spare you, just you and a massive sheet with no forgiveness. And ice, as they say, is slippery.
You miss a jump shot and it bounces off the rim. You miss a triple axel and you bounce off the ice.
The mental strength required to keep trying is immeasurable. The sacrifices are unyielding. Yet the spotlight is rare; perhaps every four years and only for the most elite of the elite who make the Olympics.
The rivalries between skaters pursuing a finite golden goal can be intense. Same with various powers around the globe — Russians, Canadians, South Koreans, Americans. Yet there is a community here that bridges all political borders, a shared respect for what got someone out onto that ice to compete.
As they climb, the challenges grow. More money. More time. More travel. There aren’t skating rinks, let alone elite coaching, in every city. Few schools have programs. This becomes a family undertaking, pinching pennies and driving through snowstorms.
It draws in idealists who think they can outwork the odds — or revel in the challenge of trying. There is little surprise when so many — champions or not — double as star students, some eventually populating Ivy League campuses.
That’s who these kids were. That’s always who these figure skaters are.
Spencer Lane lived in Rhode Island but trained in Massachusetts at the Skating Club of Boston. It’s the same organization that taught Jinna Han. Both were just 16. Both were lost.
So were their mothers — Christine and Jin respectively — and two coaches, Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, Russian-born world champions in 1994 who since the late 1990s had coached in the US. They were married.
“Skating is a tight-knit community where parents and kids come together 6 of 7 days a week to train and work together,” Doug Zeghibe of the Skating Club of Boston said in a statement. “Everyone is like family. … We are devastated and completely at a loss for words.”
Everyone is.
There is just no telling what these kids and these families were set to achieve on or off the ice. There is no telling who these coaches would have impacted.
Only the boldest and the bravest even try this. They could take up a team sport — with more clear camaraderie or possible cheering crowds come high school. They could get into gymnastics — more affordable and accessible. Acrobatically inclined, they could try some cool Winter X Games-type sport — half-pipes and big air. And many have.
United States Figure Skating was once a world power — from the 1952 Olympics in Oslo through 2006 in Turin, the Americans won 19 of a possible 45 medals, including seven golds, in women’s individual Olympic competitions.
It produced iconic talents and breakout stars — Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill, Kristi Yamaguchi, Nancy Kerrigan, Tara Lipinski, Michelle Kwan, Debi Thomas and so on. Yet it hasn’t had an individual female medalist since a silver by Sasha Cohen in 2006. American men have medaled just three times in the last eight Olympics.
Yet plenty still spin on sheets of ice. Plenty still fall for a sport full of falls.
They crave it. They chase it. They are shaped and pushed by it. Always. A figure skater has been forged by fire out of a crucible of pressure.
More names will come. More youthful, hopeful faces will flash out to the public. More terrible tales of potential loss will spread the sadness.
Every victim, young athlete or not, is a horrific tale, but in the figure skating world, where resilience is prerequisite and fighting on is the only way … everyone is suddenly reeling.
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