The Russian-born ice skating coaches and former world champions Yevgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov were on board the American Airlines plane that crashed into the Potomac river in Washington DC on Wednesday night, the Kremlin and state media said.
Shishkova and Naumov, who were married to each other, won the world championships in pairs figure skating in 1994 and had reportedly lived in the United States since at least 1998, where they trained young ice skaters. US Figure Skating, the sport’s domestic governing body, said athletes, coaches and family members were returning from the national development camp held in conjunction with the US figure skating championships in Kansas. “We are devastated by this unspeakable tragedy and hold the victims’ families closely in our hearts,” it said in a statement.
The couple were reported to have been returning from the competition and travelling with a group of young skaters. Russia’s Mash news outlet published a list of 13 skaters, many of them the children of Russian émigrés to the United States, who it said were believed to have been on the plane. Inna Volyanskaya, a former skater who competed for the Soviet Union, was also reported to have been on board, Tass said. She was a coach at the Washington figure skating club, according to its website.
Some Russian news agencies reported that Shishkova and Naumov’s son Maxim Naumov, who competed for the United States, may have also been on the flight, but the Daily Mail quoted another competitor, Anton Spiridonov, as saying he had seen the younger Naumov fly out two days earlier.
The Kremlin expressed its condolences to the families of Russian citizens who lost their lives in the crash and said that the sad news that Shishkova and Naumov had been on board appeared to be confirmed. “There were other of our fellow citizens on board. It’s bad news today from Washington. We are sorry and send our condolences to families and friends,” the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
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Russia’s figure skating federation expressed its condolences to those who had lost loved ones in the crash, but said it was unable to comment further.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the midair crash occurred around 9pm when a regional jet collided with the military helicopter while on approach to an airport runway. It occurred in some of the most tightly controlled and monitored airspace in the world, just over three miles south of the White House and the Capitol.
