Remembering Sergei

Some time today, Ekaterina Gordeeva will skate onto the ice at a practice rink in Lake Placid, N.Y., bringing the most painful year of her life full circle.

On this same rink one year ago today--Nov. 20, 1995--Gordeeva lost her skating partner, best friend, teenage sweetheart, husband and the father of her now 4-year-old daughter when Sergei Grinkov suffered a heart attack during a routine workout, collapsed on the ice and never regained consciousness.

Grinkov was 28 at the time. Gordeeva was 24. Together, they had won two Olympic gold medals in pairs figure skating, in 1988 and 1994, and were contemplating a run at a third in 1998. Grinkov wasn’t satisfied with his championship performance in Lillehammer, having landed a single salchow when the program called for a double.

“One little mistake,” Gordeeva says.

Grinkov the perfectionist was prepared to devote four more years to prove to the world that his one misstep in Norway was nothing but a fluke.

Suddenly last November, those plans were shattered by a blocked artery, a condition that had gone undetected despite regular physical examinations. Gordeeva buried her husband in his native Moscow and then returned to her new home in Simsbury, Conn., to a life without the man who had been her support system, protective shield and touchstone for the previous 13 years.

“He was my hero,” Gordeeva said during an interview in Century City last week. “From the first time I met him and the first time I started to skate with him, I always admired him. He was so open to everyone, so easy to talk with. He had so many friends. This was something that I wished to have--a lot of friends, this passion to have any conversation you want.

“He read a lot of books. He could talk about everything.”

Gordeeva looked away and smiled wistfully.

“I admired him a lot.”

Solace didn’t come easily for Gordeeva. In January, she resumed skating, singles skating, which she hadn’t attempted in 15 years. She joined the professional Stars on Ice tour, largely to maintain the company of close friends Scott Hamilton and Victor Petrenko. In February, she and the Stars on Ice ensemble performed a tribute to Grinkov in Hartford, the preparation for which left her “absolutely crazy and so nervous for two months.”

And in March, she began writing a book about her life with Grinkov as therapy--”part of the healing process,” she calls it. The book, titled “My Sergei: A Love Story,” written with E.M. Swift, was released earlier this month and, according to a Warner Books publicist, will top the New York Times bestseller list this Sunday.

After finishing a brief publicity tour for the book, Gordeeva is back in Lake Placid, preparing for the 1996-97 Stars on Ice season. Rehearsal could have been held at any number of sites in the New England area, but when tour director Byron Allen approached Gordeeva with the idea of returning to Lake Placid, she quickly approved.

“I’m actually very happy to go back there,” she said last week. “I mean, I would have come back there anyway. That was the place that it happened. I just think that I’m supposed to be there on this date. Even if I have a choice between there and Moscow.

“It happened there. It didn’t happen in Moscow.”

Gordeeva said “everyone” from the cast of Stars on Ice “is going to be there on the 20th. We’re going to go and stay on the ice and we’re going to ask a priest to read a little prayer on the ice. Because for everyone on the ice, this was the saddest day last year.

“It’s very, very important to have this anniversary, to share these feelings. Just have one day to remember Sergei again.”

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In her book, Gordeeva writes that she would “like to live my life over again backward. I’d like to live in a world where tomorrow would be yesterday, the day after tomorrow two days ago, and so on, because now I have little interest in the future.”

Gordeeva concedes that “I know that it’s maybe unfair or rude for Daria [her daughter] and for my family right now, but I just still have these feelings. I am still missing every day in the life of Sergei. I would change any day now for a day with Sergei.”

Since Grinkov’s death, Gordeeva said she occasionally has been approached by “strangers” offering to “help” her or give her money or buy her an apartment or a car. Opportunists? At best. Extortionists? Gordeeva’s friends, suspecting the worst, have advised her to steer clear.

“Before, Sergei would always take me away from these strangers,” Gordeeva said. “Now, I have a lot of them.”

Grinkov provided Gordeeva security and comfort off and on the ice. When, at friends’ urging, she began skating again, she said she “didn’t have any confidence at all, because I always felt confident with Sergei on the ice. Now, it was almost like saying, ‘Go skate, but without skates.’ Or, ‘Go skate, without feet.’ I had to learn all over again.”

When she skated alone for the first time in public--during the “Celebration of a Life” tribute to Grinkov--Gordeeva feared that “no one will see me. On the ice, I will be so small. People are so used to seeing big Sergei with his arms around me.”

No one at the Hartford Civic Center saw it that night, but Gordeeva believes she completed that performance in tandem--one last skate in the presence of Grinkov.

“I was feeling like I had double power,” Gordeeva recalled. “I don’t know why, but it feels like something helped me skate. Because I didn’t feel like I was skating--I felt like I had so much energy, I was just flying around there. . . .

“Marina [Zueva, Gordeeva’s choreographer] told me after that ‘Sergei was around.’ I think definitely, yes, that was true. Because I never felt as strong as I was that night. It was almost like it wasn’t just me. Definitely, I was skating with Sergei.”

Gordeeva plans to continue skating with the professional tour, but only solo, at least for the foreseeable future.

“I still can’t imagine skating with someone else right now,” she said. “I can’t say I’m never going to skate [pairs] again because I still love pairs skating more than singles. . . . I will try. I will try, maybe, with someone else. But now, I don’t want to think about it. I’m enjoying skating alone right now.”

Besides, she said, “I don’t think I can bring that much soul, that much heart to skating with another partner. I feel I left my soul and heart when I skated with Sergei.

“Plus, for me to take a partner and try to do the same, it’s not possible. That’s never going to happen. Ever. There’s never going to be another team like Grinkov and Gordeeva.”