Celebrating Late Grinkov Top Skaters Pay Respects Before Crowd Of 15,000

She was not skating only for herself, Ekaterina Gordeeva said. No. That would have been wrong. Too narrow. Too selfish.

She was skating for everyone who has ever had a personal tragedy in their lives. For everyone who has ever lost someone and has had to start all over again. For everyone who has had to bear the unbearable.

“You must stand up from your knees and go forward,” Katya Gordeeva said. “You must find the strength in your heart, maybe find a person you can live for. A child. A parent. You must go on no matter how impossible it seems.”

So Tuesday night at the Hartford Civic Center, before an emotional sold-out audience of 15,000, there was Katya Gordeeva, standing at center ice, tears streaming down her face. All around her, the applause washed down from the upper reaches of the Civic Center, but it couldn’t wash away those tears.

Nor did she want it to. She had just finished doing what she said she would do. She had just finished skating for her husband and skating partner, Sergei Grinkov, who collapsed and died of a massive heart attack last November during a training session in Lake Placid, N.Y.

It was a strange and powerful moment when Gordeeva, 5-foot-1 and 90 pounds, appeared on the ice, resplendent in white while the huge audience rose and gave her a standing ovation. And then the crowd watched in near-total silence as Gordeeva skated to Mahler’s Fifth Symphony.

But you didn’t have to know what the piece was saying. Gordeeva was saying it better with her mournful performance of a love lost. Time and again, she reached out to the audience, and there weren’t many dry eyes when she was done.

G & G they were called - Gordeeva and Grinkov.

His death shocked and stunned the skating world, and Tuesday night that world rallied around the widow of their fallen friend and skated their own tributes.

Rarely, if ever, has one rink held so many great skaters at one time. There were Olympic champions and world champions and national champions.

Scott Hamilton, the American gold medalist, was there. So was the glamorous Katarina Witt and Oksana Baiul of the Ukraine, probably the No. 1 female skater in the world today. The list simply went on and on - Brian Boitano, Kristi Yamaguchi, Rosalynn Sumners, Victor Petrenko, Kurt Browning, Marina Klimova, and Yuka Sato of Japan.

They called Tuesday night’s tribute “A Celebration of a Life,” and that fit Grinkov. He would have appreciated the variety of the show.

Alexander Fadeev, for example, skated to a medley of Elvis Presley tunes, and fellow Russian Petrenko performed to “Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman?”

Paul Wylie of Boston skated to Apollo 13 music and Katarina Witt was magnificent skating to Melissa Etheridge’s “I’m The Only One.” Yamaguchi was terrific with Cyndi Lauper’s “I’m Gonna Be Strong.”

Grinkov was the outgoing member of the pair - he was uncommonly tall, at 5-11.

Their signature move was a quadruple twist in which Grinkov would throw her into the air, where she would then make four revolutions. They met at a Moscow skating club when she was 4 and he was 8. Their coaches paired them when she was 11 and he was 15.

In 1986, they won their first world championship; in 1988, they won their first Olympic gold medal, at Calgary. They turned pro, and then when the Olympics readmitted professionals to the Games, they won the gold again in Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994.

But they transcended skating. He was the athlete, admired by skaters the world over. He was known for his athleticism and his love of life. She was known for her magnificent smile, a smile that showed her obvious affection for her husband.

None of it, of course, was lost on the judges, but marks and numbers never did describe their skating. Just as marks would have been useless Tuesday night.

How do you put up a number to express the feelings of Baiul? Young and fragile, she has had her own share of personal sorrow, having lost both parents and grandparents.

Tuesday night, Oksana, who had displayed nerves of steel in beating America’s Nancy Kerrigan for the gold medal in Lillehammer, skated in tears to Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” a stirring performance.

“I miss Sergei so much,” she said. “I just wanted to skate for him and Katya and try to smile. It’s really, really hard.”

Gordeeva and Grinkov were married for five years and have a daughter, Daria. They took up residence in Simsbury, Conn., a somewhat affluent suburb north of Hartford, and were connected with an international skating center based in Simsbury.

And there’s no doubt that Katya will remain in Simsbury.

“This is where Sergei and I owned our first apartment,” she says. “Everywhere I go, there are memories of Sergei. The happiest time of our lives was here. The people, when I came back from Moscow, welcomed me at the airport. They are kind. I am comfortable here, even more than in Moscow. This is close to my heart and soul.”

It was no ordinary skating show. The world’s best skaters were performing as if there were medals on the line; they expressed their feelings for their friend the best way they could, and that was on the ice.

And it was left for Witt, a close friend, to express it best.

“I think the world is so fast; everything is forgotten so fast,” said the thoughtful Katarina. “This is for Katya. We’re saying, ‘Hey, we’re here. We’re your family. If you need us, we will come.”

Tuesday night, they were there.