As someone who watched it all happen, it's hard to explain just how magical Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov's gold medal-winning performance at the 1988 Winter Olympics really was at the time. There were some pretty amazing pair skating teams on the ice in Calgary that year (including Yelena Valova and Oleg Vasilyev, also representing the Soviet Union, who took home the silver). But the truth is, nearly 40 years later, I can barely remember them. Gordeeva and Grinkov's near-flawless performances in both the long and short programs, on the other hand, remain unforgettable.
The young skaters were paired as a team when Grinkov was 15 and Gordeeva was just 11 years old. As she explained in her book, My Sergei: A Love Story, their coaches decided to put them together because neither one of them were strong jumpers on their own at that point. Initially, the significant difference in their heights drew some criticism, but it wasn't long before they proved all the haters wrong. G&G (as the pair was known) won their first World Championships, as well as the Soviet Nationals, in 1986; they won the Worlds again in 1987.
Naturally, an Olympic medal was the next logical career milestone for the duo. But those dreams were almost dashed when Grinkov caught his skate in the ice while they were training for the games and dropped Gordeeva on her forehead.
"I didn't feel any pain at first, then my head felt like it was splitting apart. Someone picked me up, and then I blacked out. I came to in the first-aid room, and I was driven to the hospital," Gordeeva wrote.
The young skater suffered a serious concussion which forced her to stay in the hospital for six days.
"I lay there worrying about missing practice and the Olympics, and I was mad at Sergei because I thought this fall was his mistake," she recalled. "Then there was a knock on the door, and it was Sergei."
While Gordeeva always considered Grinkov handsome, she hadn't really thought of him in a romantic way before (he was just a "co-worker"). But in that moment, something changed.
"He was carrying a dozen roses, and he was very upset," she wrote. "It was the first time he'd given me flowers. I was surprised, even happy to see how distressed he was. Spending so much time together can lead to intense personality conflicts, and successful pairs are not necessarily friendly. But Sergei was so sad that I began to feel sorry for him."
As their personal bond developed, Gordeeva explained, so did the pair's symmetry on the ice:
"It was another week before I was allowed on the ice, and Sergei continued to visit me at home every day. When, at last, I could skate again, I immediately noticed a change in the way he was holding me. He was holding me tighter, as if he didn't want to give me a chance to touch the ice. Something had happened in those two weeks, and even I — so focused on skating, so serious about training and life — realized that his thoughts for me had changed. Before we had been like two skaters. After that, we were a pair."
It was the pair's seemingly effortless synchronicity that set them apart when they took the ice in Calgary. Of course, their technical skill and speed were staggering, too, but it was clear that these two had a one-in-a-million kind of connection.
So it wasn't a huge surprise when the gold medalists got married during a hiatus from competing in 1991; their daughter, Daria, was born the next year. Gordeeva and Grinkov made a triumphant return to the Olympics in 1994 at Lillehammer, Norway, where they won the gold again.
Tragically, the next year, Grinkov suddenly collapsed on the ice while training at the Olympic Center in Lake Placid, N.Y., with Gordeeva. After being taken to Adirondack Medical Center, he was pronounced dead at the age of 28. The cause of death was a massive heart attack, the result of an undiagnosed genetic condition that was later named after him, according to People.
“He was my hero,” Gordeeva told the Los Angeles Times in 1996. “From the first time I met him and the first time I started to skate with him, I always admired him."
Gordeeva is still active in the figure skating world as a performer, coach and choreographer.
Related: Skating Legend, Who Entered the 1988 Winter Olympics as an Underdog, Delivered One of Figure Skating's Greatest Routines
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