Sergei Grinkov

At 28 years old, Sergei Grinkov has this physical status:

Grinkov first took to the ice at the age of five, entering the Children and Youth Sports School of CSKA in Moscow. As Grinkov was not a strong solo skater, his coach decided to try him in pair skating, and in August 1981, at age fourteen, he was paired with eleven-year-old Ekaterina Gordeeva at the Central Red Army Club (CSKA) in Moscow by coach Vladimir Zaharov.

The pair won the 1985 World Junior Championship in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The following year they won the first of their four World Figure Skating Championships. They became repeat world champions the following year and won gold at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta. Grinkov became one of the youngest male figure skating Olympic champions.

After a fall in their long program, they took silver at the World Championships in 1988, but they reclaimed that title in 1989 and successfully defended it again in 1990. They turned professional in the fall of 1990. They won their first World Professional Championship in 1991, and went on to win that title two more times (1992 and 1994).

Gordeeva/Grinkov won virtually every competition they entered. In the 31 competitions they completed at the Senior and professional levels, they finished first 24 times and finished off the podium only once; from the time they won their first World Championships, they never placed lower than silver and took gold in all but four of the competitions they completed. They are one of the few pair teams in history to successfully complete a quadruple twist lift in international competition, at the 1987 World Championships. They also completed the difficult maneuver at the 1987 European Championships, but due to a problem with Grinkov's boot strap and a misunderstanding about the rules, they were disqualified from that event (the referee signaled them to stop, going so far as to turn off their music but they continued skating).

The following season was the first year they toured with Stars on Ice. They skated throughout the United States and Canada with the show, which ran from November 1991 through April 1992. Shortly after their daughter's birth, the pair was back on the ice training for the new season of Stars on Ice, which debuted that November and ran through April 1993.

In 1994, Gordeeva/Grinkov took advantage of a one-time rule change that allowed professional skaters to regain their Olympic eligibility. They won their second gold medal at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway — the only reinstated skaters to win gold. They then returned to professional skating in the United States. During the 1994–95 season, they toured again with Stars on Ice, this time as headliners. They won the World Professional Championships for the third time in December 1994, earning ten perfect 10s (and nothing lower than a 9.9). Their last competition was at the 1995 Challenge of Champions, which took place on 7 January 1995 in Tokyo, Japan where they skated to Verdi's "Requiem Mass." They won, earning four perfect 10s in their artistic mark. In the fall of 1995, they were preparing new programs and getting ready to return to Stars on Ice for a fourth season. On 12 November 1995, they appeared in an exhibition called Skates of Gold III in Albany, New York. They skated two numbers: Verdi's "Requiem Mass" and the Rolling Stones' "Out of Tears." It would be their final public performance together.

The pair was known for their quiet glide over the ice: "Grinkov and Gordeeva had something special that was more easily appreciated in person. They didn't make noise when they skated. They moved so fluidly that their blades whispered over the ice rather than scratching at it." Their last public performance, just days before Grinkov's sudden death, was in the "Skates for Gold III" television special in Albany, N.Y.

Source