Gold medalist Oksana Baiul remembers buddies and fellow skaters killed in Washington, D.C. Aircraft crash

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) – The determine skating neighborhood is mourning the surprising lack of six of its members killed on this week’s airplane crash in Washington, D.C., together with former Las Vegas resident and Olympic Gold Medalist Oksana Baiul.

“I was in shock yesterday,” she recalled. “But the realization has started sinking in.”

For Baiul, the tragedy has hit particularly near house, as she mourns a number of of her longtime buddies.

“We’re all connected as a skating family behind the scenes,” she defined. “We were all like texting each other.”

Amongst these on board the American Airways jet that collided with a navy helicopter, have been 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 determine skating coach Alexandr Kirsanov additionally died within the collision. He was somebody Baiul known as a longtime good friend.

She stated grief is simply starting to take maintain within the determine skating neighborhood, that may all the time be linked.

“Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of figure skating, since 1961,” Baiul stated, referencing one other tragic crash. “It’s tragic, it’s a huge loss for all of us.”