Since a remarkable re-entry into public life early this year, Katia, as her friends call her, has been taking her own advice. For the first time ever she performed solo, in a tribute to her late husband, with whom she won two Olympic gold medals and four world championships. On that evening, Gordeeva unveiled some of the rawest and most honest emotions ever etched on ice: the agonizing despair over the death of her husband and, finally, the rebirth of hope. Afterward, this wisp of a woman–just over 5 feet, barely 90 pounds–put on a megawatt smile and, with her young daughter, Daria, in her arms, told her tearful fans: “I want you to know I skated tonight not alone. I skated with Sergei. That’s why it was so good.”
Since that cathartic performance, she has also penned and published “My Sergei: A Love Story,” a sweet reminiscence of their lives and love that has climbed to the top of best-seller lists. But at the same time, Gordeeva has refused to mire herself in the past. She even quit her book tour midway because she didn’t want to discuss it anymore. Instead Katia has transformed herself as a skater, emerging as a showstopping solo performer as well as a formidable singles competitor on the burgeoning, made-for-TV pro circuit. “I’m proud of myself and what I’ve done because I’m still an athlete with those competitive roots,” she told NEWSWEEK last week. “But it would be too much to expect to skate the same perfection I did as pairs. I skated with Sergei 15 years to be that good.”
To the adopted country that has embraced this Muscovite turned Connecticut suburbanite, she is perfect enough right now. Of course, that response to the Russian beauty has much to do with America’s–and particularly American women’s–love affair with figure skating. Once just an every-four-year phenomenon, the sport is now a $100 million industry. Since the ladies’ finals at the 1994 Olympics, the fourth highest-rated show in U.S. history, it’s become a TV fixture. In the last two weeks of December, for example, there will be 12 skating shows broadcast on both network and cable. There is some fear of oversaturation, and of turning the sport into junk entertainment (see the “Rock ’n Roll Skating Championships” featuring judge Downtown Julie Brown). But with two competing tours thriving and TV ratings high, there seem to be more than enough champions to go round.
In any case, Gordeeva’s story–and her appeal–transcends her sport. It’s a tale of the perfect couple and an incandescent love that also struck at everyone’s deepest fears about the fragility of happiness and life itself. Her courage in the face of tragedy stands as an inspiration to anyone struggling with grief and adversity. Which is just about everyone, which explains why so many people will find her book under their Christmas tree. “Sometimes it bothers me that people now recognize me only because of a tragedy,” she says. “But I’ve come to understand that people really care and worry for me. I feel I should say to every person I meet, “I’m fine, Daria’s fine. Life goes on’.”
That she can now look to the future is a triumph of spirit. She had spent most of her life with Sergei, first as partner, then friend, then lover and, finally, wife and mother. On the ice those transitions were marked by their musical choices, from “The March of the Toreadors” to “Romeo and Juliet” to the Moonlight Sonata. After her husband died –his grasp slipping from her body as he slumped to the ice during a practice–she felt “absolutely naked in the world. I was weak in my physical condition, weak in my mental condition.” Her decision to return to the ice now seems inevitable. “Skating was the only thing that could bring back my confidence because it’s the only thing I can do,” she says. “I can’t draw, I can’t write, I can’t paint. I’m so happy to have a place to express my feelings.”
To go from pairs to singles skating involved reversing a lifetime of habits and techniques. Katia had to learn, for example, to jump up and out, when she was used to being thrown. Even more difficult, it turned out, was discovering how to connect directly to the audience, as the most successful singles skaters must do. She fretted about “where my eyes should go. When Sergei and I skated together, I skated for him. We told our story to each other. Now I have to find a way to make contact with all the people.” Some found the transition painful to watch. “She has this way of unfolding her arms to the back, and you expect her then to look back at him–and he’s not there,” says Jirina Ribbens, events producer for promoter Dick Button.
The figure-skating establishment awaited Gordeeva’s competitive debut this fall with anticipation, and some skepticism. “Everyone wondered whether she’d be capable of making people want to watch her alone,” says skating great Brian Boitano. Katia proved to have a unique style, one that somehow projects both fragility and strength. And while her jumps still need work, her footwork is dazzling. In a routine to “Giselle,” she actually does some of the steps on ice from the ballet. All skepticism among her peers has disappeared. “She’s absolutely wonderful,” says Boitano. “She’s elegant and somehow ephemeral–as if she floats on top of the ice. People are mesmerized by her. They’re thinking about her, not that they miss Sergei.”
In her first two individual competitions, Gordeeva finished second, behind Yamaguchi and ahead of two-time Olympic gold medalist Witt. And Saturday night in Landover, Md., facing her strongest field yet at the World Professional Figure Skating Championship, Katia finished fourth. “She’s showed us why all those Russian pairs are so great,” says top U.S. skating coach Evy Scotvold. “It’s because each is a great skater on their own.” Next week Katia will shift skating gears, beginning a grueling 60-city tour as a headliner for Stars on Ice. She will perform two solos and three production numbers. “To me each great woman skater is unique–like snowflakes,” marvels Button, Olympic champion turned commentator. “Ekaterina is a very elegant snowflake, but one that is made of steel.”
The tour will tear her away from her daughter, whom her parents will care for at her Simsbury, Conn., condo. But she is anxious to spend time with her new skating friends. “When Sergei died, I was out there alone,” she says. “I didn’t have any close friends, not even a close girlfriend.” So she was amazed when her fellow skaters rallied around her. “This has been some kind of new experience,” she says, “to find what friendship is all about.” For the first time, she’s going out on occasional excursions “with the girls.”
For the first time also, other skaters are discovering the real Katia. “If you just look at her, you always want to hug her so as to protect her,” says the great ice dancer Torvill. “But privately, she’s really remarkably strong.” Wylie, who is paired with Katia in a “Bach number” on the upcoming tour, says she constantly thanks them for their support over this past year. But Wylie says it’s Katia who always seemed to be reassuring them. “All we’ve seen is the smile and the seeming ease with which she’s handled her life,” he says. “She doesn’t let you see the pain and suffering.”
Because of the recent past, Katia says she has learned not to think about the too distant future. But she knows the hardest part will be letting go of Sergei. “I feel Sergei around–on and off the ice. And when he feels I need support, he’ll always be there,” she says. “But I don’t think I can ask for help every day. I have to stand on my own feet.” And thankfully, for the rest of us, on her own skates. That is where she and Sergei discovered their magic. And it is where Katia will, hopefully, find it again.
