On Feb. 15, 1961, the whole U. S. figure skating team was killed when Sabena Flight 458 crashed on its method to Brussels Airport. The Boston Skating Club, the best dancing club in the United States, had 10 people among the lifeless.
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” Almost half of everybody on board that]Sabena ] plane were from this club”, the group’s executive director Doug Zeghibe said Thursday.
It took seven long centuries for U. S. figure skating to begin to recover. Peggy Fleming, the beautiful and talented athlete, won Olympic metal in 1968. But, the Boston Skating Club had a big hole in its spirit and, in some ways, has not recovered from that huge blow.
” It had much, long, reaching implications for this dancing club and for the game in this region. Zeghibe argued that losing coaches like this also affects the sport’s potential.
” It’s been a long time in redeveloping it, and I personally feel that this team, the Skating Club of Boston, has just now, about 60 years afterwards, have been coming out of the ghost of that 1961 fall. It’ is mainly damaging.'”
Two Russian coaches who were earth and British warriors were killed on Wednesday when an American Airlines traveler aircraft and an Army Blackhawk helicopter collided in midair. At the 1994 World Championships, Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov won the pair title and went on to win the Olympics half. They were a favorite of both the riders and their families in Boston when they were coaching young skaters.
” Really popular with families, proven accomplishment”, Zeghibe said,” which is why I think they had so many children at the finals and at the regional development camp”.
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In addition to the mentors, two promising athletes died in the fall: Jinna Han and Spencer Lane, who were accompanied by their parents, Jin Han and Christine Lane.
The repeated tragedies are nearly very little. The figure skating society is tight-knit, as “skating parents” are much like “hockey parents” who give their kids every conceivable benefits. Kids know other parents, educators know another tutors, and the riders, although competitors, are bound by the shared vision of Olympic Gold.  ,
The 1961 accident also weighs heavily on the little find skating community.
At a memorial celebration at the team’s facility in Norwood in 2021, 1956 Olympic gold medalist Tenley Albright— after whom the Norwood agency’s Olympic-sized area is named — reflected on how the crash affected the club’s history.
” I’m contemplating the prizes that would have been here if this horror hadn’t occurred,” Albright said.
The most famous target of that 1961 fall was Maribel Vinson-Owen, an Olympic and world champion from Winchester who become one of the sport’s top coaches. Among her lieutenants were Albright, a two-time world champion along with her Olympic name, and Frank Carroll, who would eventually become a leading trainer himself and trained a group of world champion athletes in Linda Fratianne, Michelle Kwan, and 2010 Olympic hero Evan Lysacek.
” It was so sensational, so devastating, that I blocked it out of mind”, Carroll said at the Skating Club of Boston event in 2021. Later, he said, when he was coaching,” I couldn’t call up Maribel and ask her what I was doing wrong. She was dead, and I wasn’t going to be able to call her again”.
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The parents, Jin Han and Christine Lane, were “role model parents in youth sports, and you don’t always get that”, Zeghibe said. ” Our kids compete hard on the ice against each other, but when they step off the ice, it’s a pretty tight-knit group. The parents as well”.
Another memorial service for the victims of this plane crash will be held in 60 years. And the memory of the 1961 crash, along with the future champion figure skaters who were never able to realize their potential, will be remembered.
As we recall them” slip the surly bonds of Earth/ and touched the face of God,” the memories will be bittersweet.
