LAS VEGAS (KLAS) – The figure skating community is mourning the unexpected loss of six of its members killed in this week’s plane crash in Washington, D.C., including former Las Vegas resident and Olympic Gold Medalist Oksana Baiul.
“I started reading the news,” Baiul told 8 News Now. “And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.”‘
The figure skating star shared her shock and sadness with 8 News Now over the 67 people who lost their lives in Wednesday’s mid-air collision.
“I was in shock yesterday,” she recalled. “But the realization has started sinking in.”
For Baiul, the tragedy has hit especially close to home, as she mourns several of her longtime friends.
“We’re all connected as a skating family behind the scenes,” she explained. “We were all like texting each other.”
Among those on board the American Airlines jet that collided with a military helicopter, were 1994 World Champions Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova, whom Baiul remembers.
“In the early nineties after I won the gold medal,” she recalled. “Shishkova, Naumov, and myself, we used to live in Connecticut, we used to be colleagues, training on the same ice.”
Delaware figure skating coach Alexandr Kirsanov also died in the collision. He was someone Baiul called a longtime friend.
“I was able to from here tell the world about Alexandr, Shishkova, and Naumov,” Baiul told 8 News Now. “It felt like I broke out in tears, and it started feeling like, okay I’m a human, so now I can cry for them.”
She said grief is just beginning to take hold in the figure skating community, that will always be connected.
“Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of figure skating, since 1961,” Baiul said, referencing another tragic crash. “It’s tragic, it’s a huge loss for all of us.”
