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‘Horrific tragedy’: Six members of Skating Club of Boston among air crash victims
Six of the victims on the American Airlines flight that collided with an Army helicopter and crashed into the frigid waters of the Potomac River have been identified as members of the Skating Club of Boston, the epicenter of elite figure skating in New England.
Speaking to reporters at his Norwood facility, club CEO and Executive Director Doug Zeghibe tried to piece together what he described as a “horrific tragedy” that claimed the lives of two teenage skaters and their parents along with a husband and wife who coached together.
The six members – identified as skaters Spencer Lane, 16, and Jinna Han, 15, their mothers Christine Lane and Jin Han, and coaches Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov – had been on their way back from the National Development Camp in Wichita, Kansas when the collision occurred near Reagan Airport in Washington, D.C. Wednesday night.
Zeghibe said 14 skaters have been identified as victims. He said there are no direct flights between Boston and Wichita, with his six skating club members connecting at Reagan en route home.
“Skating is a very close and tight-knit community,” Zeghibe said. “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. I think for all of us, we have lost family.”
Zeghibe said Shishkova and Naumov’s son Maxim Naumov, who competed at the US Championships in Wichita on Sunday, flew back from Kansas on Monday. Maxim and the fathers of the teenagers killed were all en route to Washington Thursday morning, the CEO added.
Zeghibe said he had yet to speak with the fathers. He had been in contact with people close to them. He recounted his immediate thought process when the news of the crash started to break Wednesday night.
“The biggest thing was: ‘How can we get accurate information?’ At one point, we thought we had 12 skaters that were on and their families … I know it sounds crazy to be relieved, ‘Oh my God, it’s only six?’ But in some ways, I am relieved that it was only six but it is a devastating six.”
The Skating Club of Boston sent 18 skaters to Wichita to compete at the US Championships, and 12 were at the National Development Camp, Zeghibe said.
There were 60 total passengers and four crew members on the American Airlines flight and three soldiers aboard the training flight on the Blackhawk helicopter. It was believed that there were no survivors.
“We are devastated by this unspeakable tragedy and hold the victims’ families closely in our hearts,” U.S. Figure Skating said in a statement.
This isn’t the first time a plane crash tragedy has shaken the Skating Club of Boston.
The entire U.S. figure skating team died in a plane crash in Belgium on its way to the World Championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on Feb. 15, 1961.
Eighteen skaters, plus 16 coaches, officials, judges, and family members represented dozens of the 72 passengers killed in the crash. Almost half of the skaters on that team came from the Skating Club of Boston, Zeghibe said.
“It had long-reaching implications for the skating club and this sport and this country,” he said, “because when you lose coaches like this you lose the future of the sport as well. It has been a long time in redeveloping it.”
“I personally feel this club, the Skating Club of Boston, has just now, 60 years later, been coming out of the shadow of that 1961 crash so this is particularly devastating,” he added.
Shishkova and Naumov, who lived in Norwood, won the pairs title at the 1994 World Championships in Chiba, Japan. They competed twice in the Olympics before retiring from competitive skating and starting their decades-long coaching endeavors.
The married couple joined as coaches at the Skating Club of Boston in 2017, Zeghibe said.
“They were very much a part of our building a competitive skating program here,” he said of Shishkova and Naumov. “Very popular with families, a proven success which is why I think they had so many kids at the championships and the National Development Camp.”
Zeghibe described how the husband-wife coach duo applied what they learned and how they developed in St. Petersburg, Russia, where they grew up, to a group class at the club.
Zeghibe also spoke highly of the teenage victims, Spencer Lane and Jinna Han.
“Spencer, in the best way possible, was a crazy kid,” he said, “highly talented, like incredibly talented, has not been skating for that long and rocketing to the top of the sport. Very fun, very cerebral, a good thinker.”
“Jinna, just a wonderful kid,” he added, “wonderful parents, a great athlete, a great competitor, loved by all.”
Zeghibe highlighted how some of the club’s older members had already reached out to him, referencing the 1961 plane crash as they had lived through that tragedy.
“Our current members, leaders, management team, I don’t know what the word is,” he said. “Is it wrecked? Is it devastated? Folks are just stunned by this.”
“For me personally,” he added, “I’d rather have something like this happen in an accident than in terrorist activity or something where somebody was deliberately trying to cause harm. It somehow makes it easier to accept that it was an accident.”
Zeghibe said he hadn’t thought about the immediate next steps for the club but he assumed it would remain open because “skaters are resilient.” The club is the local host for the World Championships at the end of March at TD Garden in Boston, he added.
“I think also they come to the club and they will come to the club as an opportunity to come together and to grieve together,” Zeghibe said.
— Developing