Yekaterina Gordeeva and Sergey Grinkov (born May 28, 1971, Moscow, Russia, USSR; born February 4, 1967, Moscow—died November 20, 1995, Lake Placid, New York, USA), Russian-born ice skating duo that won four world championships and two Olympic gold medals. The pair was regarded as one of the greatest pairs skaters in history.
They were the first pair to win four consecutive World Championships (1990–1995). They also hold the record for most consecutive World Championship gold medals, with two (1990 and 1991).
Gordeeva and Grinkov were killed in a plane crash at Lake Placid, New York, where they were preparing to compete in the 1997 Winter Olympics. They are considered by many to be one of the best ice dancing teams in history.
Their Olympic career began successfully at the 1992 Games in Albertville, where they captured the gold medal after outscoring their opponents by a wide margin on every dance they performed. At the 1994 Games in Lillehammer, Norway, they added another gold medal to their collection.
During their career, Gordeeva and Grinkov won almost every major international competition several times over, including the European, World, and Olympic titles. Their signature move was the double axel.
They started learning how to skate when they were 3 years old in the Soviet Union.
Sergei Mikhailovich Grinkov was a figure skater from Russia. He and his partner and wife Ekaterina Gordeeva became Olympic and World Champions in 1988 and 1994, respectively. Sergei Grinkov was born in Moscow to Anna Filipovna Grinkova and Mikhail Kondrateyevich Grinkov, and he had an elder sister named Natalia Mikailovna Grinkova. His family moved to Saint Petersburg when he was young so that his father could take up a teaching position at the College of Physical Education of Leningrad University. There he met another talented student of his father's, Oleg Tumanyan, who would become his partner in skating for many years.
As a child, Sergei loved to play with balls of all sizes, and this is what led him to choose figure skating as a career. In 1977, at the age of 18, he started training under the guidance of Viktor Petrenko in Saint Petersburg. A year later, he went to Montreal where he competed for the Soviet Union in the first ever Winter Olympics. Although he did not win a medal, he achieved success by setting three new records. This prompted the Soviet government to offer him a contract which he accepted. From then on, he would represent his country at every major international competition.
In 1984, after winning two silver medals at the European Championships, he and Oleg Tumanyan were selected by the Soviet authorities to replace an injured Alexander Zaitsev and Andrei Bukin at the Los Angeles Games.
Ekaterina Gordeeva is a Russian professional figure skater. She and her ex-husband are both two-time Olympic and four-time World Champions. Although her husband, Sergei Grinkov, was not a very great singles skater, he was an unstoppable teammate with his wife. They won three consecutive World titles from 1991 to 1993. After their marriage in 1989, they became one of the most successful pair skating teams in history.
They decided to retire from competition after winning the 1994 Winter Olympics in March 1994. Since then, she has been working as a coach and manager of several talented young skaters. She has also worked as a television commentator for figure skating events.
She was born on January 4th 1969 in Moscow Russia. Her mother's name is Alla Snegirevna Zagorodnaya and her father's name is Vladimir Dmitrievich Shternin. He was a famous Soviet singer who died when Ekaterina was only six years old. Because of this reason, she started learning to skate at a very early age so that she could follow in her father's footsteps and become a singer too. But since she was much better at skating than singing, she never tried out for any talent shows or anything like that. Instead, she spent all her time practicing sports and music theory classes.
Grinkov, Sergei Sergei Grinkov, a two-time Olympic pairs champion, died of a heart attack on November 20, 1995, in Lake Placid, New York, while rehearsing with his wife and partner, Ekaterina "Katia" Gordeeva, for the start of the Stars on Ice tour, which was just five days away. He was 42.
Born on February 23, 1958, in Moscow, Russia, Sergei Grinkov started skating at age four. He became one of the leading figure skaters in the world during the 1980s, winning two gold medals at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo and one each in 1988 and 1992. After retiring from competitive skating, he turned to coaching, helping Katia win three silver medals at the World Championships between 1993 and 1995.
In 1991, after the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia decided to allow its citizens to choose their own sport to compete as a nation. So, Grinkov chose pair skating and joined forces with Katia, who was already an established star back then. The two won their first gold medal at the 1994 Winter Games in Norway. They went on to become one of the most successful pairs teams in history, winning six consecutive World Championship titles from 1998 to 2003 and becoming one of only eight couples to ever achieve 300 or more points at a single event.
After they stopped competing, Grinkov stayed on as Katia's coach until 2006, when she decided to retire from skating altogether.
The two Russian rival figure skaters who delighted world audiences in PyeongChang, Medvedva and Zagitova, have both retired. The two young athletes won silver and gold without the Russian flag. However, this is not the first time that Russian sports have received worldwide notice. In Sochi 2014, Russia was proud to see its athletes win five gold medals out of a total of 102 medals awarded for individual events.
Russia's Olympic achievements date back to 1924, when it debuted on the global stage. Since then, Russia has been competing annually in the Summer and Winter Games.
In Pyeongchang, South Korea, Russian athletes captured seven gold medals, three silver medals and one bronze medal. This makes Russia the most successful country at these games with 12 gold medals, six silver medals and four bronze medals.
However, Russia's national team has been involved in several controversies during the course of the games. Most notably, allegations were made by some competitors and observers that Russia's track and field team was involved in widespread doping practices. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) investigated the claims and found them to be true: Russia had violated anti-doping rules by using secret labs to try to evade detection of drugs in competition. As a result, all of Russia's track and field athletes were banned from the games.
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