History has been repeated at the Boston Skating Club.
Paul George, a club member for more than 60 years, received a touch on his wife’s shoulder at 6:30 on Thursday morning before she told her the news that has destroyed the world of figurative skating.
Two adolescent club skaters, Jinna Han, 13, from Mansfield, and Spencer Lane, 16, from Barrington, Ri, their mothers, Jin Han and Christine Lane, and coaches, married the couple of Evgenia Shishko and Vadim Naumov, all died in the most dead in the country. Air disaster in a generation.
They were on their way home from the US Championship and the National Development Camp in Wichita, Kansas.
“Very vivid memories,” George said, when his father told him the morning of February 15, 1961, that the entire artistic skating team of the United States died in a plane crash in Belgium on his way to the World Championship In Prague, Czechoslovakia.
Almost half of the skaters in that team came from the Boston skating club, including the legendary coach of George, Maribel Owen. George, 19 at that time, won the US Junior Championship. Uu. With his sister a year later.
“As today, 1961 was a tragic moment,” George told reporters gathered in the mysterious Norwood facilities on Thursday afternoon. “It was a day that music stopped a lot. However, I think it made us more resolved as we advanced as young skaters. … He took time, but we returned, I think more strong, better. “
George stopped in the New England epicenter to skate figures with some other club members who carry legendary names in sport: Tenley Albright, the first American woman to win an Olympic gold medal to whom he is named after the main track of the main track of the Club, and Nancy Kerrigan, AA Olympic Medalist Highly decorated.
In his first words, Kerrigan said that “he was not sure how to process” pain when he began to drown.
“I feel for the athletes, the skaters, their parents (and) anyone who was on that plane, not only the skaters, because it is such a tragic event,” Kerrigan said. “We have gone through tragedies together, as Americans, as people, and we are strong. I guess that’s how we respond.
“My answer was to be with people who care and love me, and I needed support,” he added. “That’s why I’m here. It’s a shock. “
The Boston Skating Club sent to 18 skaters to Wichita to compete in the United States championship and 12 to the National Development Camp, which the CEO Doug Zeghibe explained is for “young competitive skaters with the greatest promise of being a champion of the tomorrow.
This is exactly like everyone in the club that knew Lane and they have described the skaters: they had unlimited potential in the ice, and their trust and positivity transcended the ice.
Lane and had been in the crowd when the skaters of the Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov club won the title of couples last weekend in Kansas.
“It is very special for us to see these children at the audience,” said Efiomova, “seeing this community, seeing this energy and power of these young skaters encouraging and screaming.” It really helps me bring a lot of joy to skating. “
Lane was a sectional champion that became popular among the skating community on social networks. On Wednesday, he published a video that showed him by making a triple toe loop to conclude the development camp.
“It has been my goal almost since I realized that it was one thing. I learned so much new information that I can apply to my daily life, and I met many incredible people, ”Lane wrote in an Instagram post on Wednesday, hours before he published a photo aboard the plane just before he left Wichita.
Han, who had just turned 13, recovered from a tendonitis attack before the sections and obtained a trip to the development camp, wrote the skating lesson in a Facebook post on Thursday.
“Mother and daughter were known for being positive, enthusiastic and workers,” said the publication. “Jinna was very worried about her friend who suffered an injury in the sections that (her coach) Olga (Ganicheva) implored that” she is selfish. “
The artistic skating of the United States and the Massachusetts flags were reduced to the personal environment outside the newly built track of the Centennial Club. Flower deliveries arrived at the reception counter, while visitors were received with long and crying hugs.
Young skaters practiced their routines on the two club practice in silence.
A table with framed images of Lane, Han and the coaches replaced another full of messages that want luck to all skaters in Wichita for noon.
Tenley Albright, who won an Olympic gold medal at the 1956 Winter Olympic Games, tried to rebuild what had happened when tears flowed. She said she lost 22 of her friends on the plane in 1961 on the way to the World Championship. She did not travel because she was in her last year of the School of Medicine.
“I certainly have no response,” Albright said about this week’s tragedy. “I really can’t believe it happened because I imagine them right there, the coaches always stopped in that entry, the skaters only flew throughout the ice doing notable things, inspiring us all.”
Associated Press contributed to this report
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