Ice skaters roll from us plane crash

No one at the Skating Club of Boston was in doubt that 13-year-old Jinna Han and 16-year-old Spencer Lane would go far in a sport they fell in love with.

Even at a club that has produced countless skaters at the elite level – where the competition is as fierce as it becomes – the two stood out.

“They had been sought out and identified as the future of the sport,” the club’s CEO Doug Zeghibe told me while standing with Rink, where the two athletes trained day in and day out.

“So to see such promising talents sniffed out, it’s hard. They really were, really at the tip of greatness and really, finally beating their goal not only to represent the skating club in Boston but representing their country.”

This talent, on full viewing in videos showing them both to perform with a strength and maturity beyond their ages, was the reason they were invited to the high -performance camp that followed the American national art skating in Wichita, Kansas, this week.

After the camp, they boarded an American Airlines Regional Jet on Wednesday night and planned to fly home to Massachusetts via Washington DC. They were among the 60 passengers killed when the jets had a in the middle of the air with a helicopter and fell into the Potomac River.

Their mothers, Christine Lane and Jin Han, and the club’s star trains Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova, were also on board, which means six of the broken victims were all associated with the world -renowned ice skating.

Skating at such a high level requires a huge commitment where school work is performed online after hours on the ice every day.

Inevitably, close relationships develop among coaches and club members, and in the light of such a disaster, the clubhouse is a natural place to gather.

Just a few days ago, club members Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov won the US Pairs title in Wichita before taking a previous flight home.

“They were only two sunshine that you get the energy from as soon as you see them,” Efimova told me.

“Every time I walked into this skating rink, I would see them in the morning tie their skates and say and just say ‘Hello’, seeing their faces lighting up.”

“Spencer was a fireworks, it’s the best way to say it,” added Mitrophanov.

“He started skating pretty later than other skaters, but because of his amazing talent he went so quickly.”

At the end of a hard day training, they told me the two would take off their skates and go upstairs to start catching up academic work.

In the club’s entrance are photographs that catch them in motion on the ice, surrounded by tribute and flowers. Jinna has her arms outstretched. Spencer maintains a look at deep focus on his face.

“You don’t expect it,” Mitrophanov said. “And when that happens it breaks you.”

Coaches Naumov and Shishkova, originally from Russia, were the 1994 world savings skating.

In its more than 100 years of history, the club has seen before how success can quickly be overshadowed by tragedy.

It was home to 10 of the 18 members of the American art skating that was killed in a plane crash on the way to the World Cup in 1961 in Prague.

CEO ZEGHIBE immediately thought of that crash when he saw the unfolding news on Wednesday night.

“My first thought was that this can’t happen again,” he told me. “And I was like, how can lightning strike twice?”

One of the club’s many well -known alumnus, Nancy Kerrigan, has also been in the club to show her solidarity and mourn the loss of the six lives.

Before her winter -ol in 1994, an attacking agent hit her knee with a baton stick after an exercise session. It was later revealed that the striker was hired by man to Kerrigan’s rival, Tonya Harding.

“The community was behind me, and I was grateful for that,” she said.

“And then it’s my turn now to hopefully be here. I’m not sure what to do. May Back what I feel like I have.

In just a few weeks, the club organizes the world’s art skating championships that take place in the city in March.

It is a huge responsibility to carry.

“It all takes a lot from us, not only in running this club, not only in running the World Cup, but now also in managing grief,” Zeghibe said when I asked him how they would do it.

The event will be a chance to honor the lost lives, not just from this club. A total of 14 members of the art skating were killed in the crash.

“I think looking at the future is part of the emotional healing process,” he said, “and it’s good to have things to focus on that are positive for the sport.”

“We will take that day by day, be there for our members as much as possible and then find out: How are we going ahead?”