The figure skating world united in grief after it emerged as many as 14 skaters and coaches, including two 16-year-olds and a married pair of world champions, were onboard the American airlines plane that crashed into the Potomac river in Washington DC on Wednesday night.
Flight 5342 collided with a US army helicopter as it prepared to land at Reagan Washington International Airport, leaving more than 60 people believed to be dead. The Skating Club of Boston said six of its members had been on the plane, which had been bringing them back from a development camp that followed the US national figure skating championships in Wichita, Kansas.
It named the skaters Jinna Han and Spencer Lane, both aged 16, along with Han’s mother, Jin Han, and Lane’s mother, Molly Lane. A story on Lane’s Instagram account, posted on Wednesday evening, showed the view from an aeroplane window captioned by the airport codes ICT and DCA, corresponding to the journey in question. The club also said the Russian-born ice skating coaches and former world champions Yevgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who were husband and wife, were among its members who had taken the flight.
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Doug Zeghibe, the chief executive of the Skating Club where Shishkova and Naumov had been longtime coaches, said the organisation was “completely devastated and at a loss for words”. He added: “Skating is a very close and tight-knit community. These kids and their parents, they’re here at our facility in Norwood, six, sometimes seven days a week. It’s a close, tight bond. This will have long-reaching impacts for our skating community.”
Zeghibe stated separately that he believed 14 members of the skating community, including those from his club, had been lost in the crash. The Russian news outlet Mash published a list of 13 skaters, many of them the children of Russian émigrés to the United States, who it said were believed to have been on the plane.
Shishkova and Naumov, who were married to each other, won the world championships in pairs figure skating in 1994, also competing at two Winter Olympics. Reports suggested their son Maxim, also a skater and the US junior men’s champion in 2020, had been competing in Wichita but departed earlier in the week and was not on Flight 5342.
The Russian news agency Tass reported that Inna Volyanskaya, a former skater who competed for the Soviet Union and was a coach at the Washington figure skating club, was also onboard.
A statement from Volyanskaya’s club, published on Instagram, read: “We are devastated to hear the news of American Eagle flight 5342. Our thoughts and prayers are with our skating family during this difficult time. More information will be posted when appropriate.”
US Figure Skating, the country’s governing body for the sport, said in a statement: “We are devastated by this unspeakable tragedy and hold the victims’ families closely in our hearts.”
Tributes were quickly paid across the sporting world as news of the crash emerged. The International Skating Union said that the global skating community was “deeply shocked by the tragic accident”.
“We are heartbroken to learn that figure skaters, along with their families, friends, and coaches, are understood to be among those on board,” it said. “Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this tragedy. Figure skating is more than a sport – it’s a close-knit family – and we stand together.”
ISU president Jae Youl Kim expressed his condolences in a statement, saying: “Today, the world of figure skating is heartbroken. We share our deepest, most sincere condolences with the families and friends of all those who lost their lives in this terrible crash. To lose so many members of our community in this way brings sadness beyond words.”
Later Thursday, a moment of silence was observed prior to the evening session at the European figure skating championships in Tallinn, Estonia.
Others from the US skating system to voice their grief included the Skating Club of Phoenix, which wrote on Instagram that it was “devastated by the tragic news of Flight 5342”. The post continued: “This is a huge loss to the figure skating world. Our hearts are broken.”
Several senior International Olympic Committee members, who were gathered in Lausanne for the hustings to choose the next IOC president, also expressed their condolences. Sebastian Coe, the World Athletics president, told reporters: “It would be remiss of me if I didn’t reflect on the awful events last night in the United States. I know there was grievous loss of life across the range, but I’m also deeply conscious there were Olympians and the families of Olympians on that desperate fight. So on behalf of the whole of World Athletics I’d say that our thoughts and prayers with all those families and friends have suffered such a grievous loss.”
Another candidate for IOC president, Juan Samaranch Jnr, added: “The loss of life, of athletes and non-athletes, in the Olympic family and not in the Olympic family, puts everything into perspective. They have my sympathies and we hope for the best.”
In a statement, the Kremlin indicated that Shishkova and Naumov as well as several other Russians had been on board. “There were other of our fellow citizens on board. It’s bad news today from Washington. We are sorry and send our condolences to families and friends,” the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
The American figure skater Luke Wang also wrote on social media that several skaters were on board the plane. “We pray for everyone who was on the flight from Wichita to DC. Among the passengers were skaters and coaches,” he added. “It’s absolutely heartbreaking.”
