At least 14 members of the US Figure Skating team were on the American Airlines flight that collided mid-air with a military helicopter over Washington, DC, Wednesday night, a skating official said.
Six members of the US Figure Skating team on the doomed flight were affiliated with the Skating Club of Boston, the club’s CEO and executive director Doug Zeghibe said, according to WCVB.
Skater Spencer Lane, his mother, Molly, skater Jinna Han, and her mother, Jin, and coaches Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, were all aboard the plane.
“Skating is a very close and tight-knit community. These kids and their parents — they are here at our skating facility in Norwood six, sometimes seven days a week. It is a close, tight bond, and I think for all of us, we have lost family,” Zeghibe said.
Zeghibe described Spencer as a “highly-talented kid” who was “rocketing to the top of the sport,” while Jinna he remembered as a “wonderful kid, great athlete, great competitor.”
He said both of their mothers were “role model parents” dedicated to their children’s sports.
There were no survivors from the crash, which involved an American Airlines plane carrying 60 passengers plus four crew members and a military helicopter that had three soldiers on board, officials said Thursday.
Shishkova and Naumov won the pairs title at the 1994 World Championships and competed at the Winter Olympics twice, according to the report.Their son, Maxim Naumov, who is also a competitive figure skater in the US, was not on the plane.
“This will have long-reaching impacts for our skating community,” Zeghibe said. “The [coaches] came to us in 2017 and were very much a part of our building the competitive skating program here at the Skating Club of Boston.”
The group was flying home from the National Development Camp, held after the US Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kansas. They were set to take a connecting flight from Reagan to Boston on Wednesday night.
It’s not the first time an airplane tragedy impacted the Skating Club. A flight carrying 18 members of the US Figure Skating team to compete in the world championships in Prague in 1961 crashed as it was trying to land in Brussels, according to the report.
All 73 people aboard the plane died, including 16-year-old Laurence Owen, who was known as “America’s Queen of the Ice.”
“Almost half of everyone aboard that plane were from (the Skating Club),” Zeghibe said. “It had long-reaching implications for the Skating Club and for the sport in this country because when you lose coaches like this, you lose the future of the sport, as well.”
