Grinkov Collapses and Dies : Figure skating: Olympic gold medalist, 28, stricken, apparently by heart attack, while practicing with wife.

Sergei Grinkov, 28, the Russian pairs skater who with his wife won two Olympic gold medals and became the most graceful and beloved pair of the past decade, collapsed and died while practicing on the ice Monday in Lake Placid, N.Y.

Grinkov was skating with Ekaterina Gordeeva, his wife and partner, when he suffered an apparent heart attack and fell to the ice at Olympic Center. Paramedics were called to the rink, and Grinkov was taken to Adirondack Medical Center in nearby Saranac Lake, where he was pronounced dead at 12:28 p.m. EST, according to his publicist, Linda Dozoretz.

The apparent cause of death was cardiac arrest, but there was no official diagnosis, Dozoretz said. Over the objections of Gordeeva, an autopsy was planned for this morning, Essex County Coroner Robert Huestis Jr. told the Associated Press.

Gordeeva, 24, and Grinkov were practicing in Lake Placid for the Stars on Ice tour, a popular figure skating show that crisscrosses the United States from late December through March. Early reports said Grinkov, who was 5 feet 11 and weighed about 180 pounds, was lifting his 90-pound wife over his head when he was stricken. But Lynn Plage, the tour’s publicist, said that information was unconfirmed.

The only ailment Grinkov had complained of was a bad back, Plage said. His back had bothered him for several months.

Gordeeva and Grinkov, who grew up and trained in Moscow, burst on to the international skating scene in 1986 when they won the first of their four world championships. The teen-agers were known for a tremendous balletic grace, a telling characteristic of the Moscow school of skating. At that time, they had been paired together for four years, since she was 11 and he was 15.

In 1988, they won the first of their two Olympic gold medals at the Calgary Games. After skating professionally for five years, “G&G;,” as they were known in the United States, returned to the so-called amateur ranks and won the gold medal at the 1994 Olympics in Norway. By then, their ability to perform romantic, mature, breathtaking programs incorporating the most difficult of athletic moves and lifts had made them one of the greatest pairs in the history of their sport.

After the Olympics, they returned to professional skating, where the bulk of their work centered on the Stars on Ice tour, where they were to enter their third full season this winter.

In 1989, their partnership on the ice turned into a romance off the ice, and they married in 1991. They have a daughter, Daria, who is 3.

The news of Grinkov’s death stunned the figure skating community.

“It’s a very sad day,” said John Nicks, a venerable U.S. pairs coach. “We’re all shocked.”