1994 Olympic figure skating silver medalist Nancy Kerrigan shared her condolences Thursday following the plane crash in Washington, D.C., that involved fellow members of the Skating Club of Boston.
All 60 passengers on American Airlines Flight 5342, the four crew members, and the three passengers of the Black Hawk Sikorsky H-60 that collided with the plane are presumed dead. Of those passengers, 14 were in the figure skating community, and another six were from the same skating club that Kerrigan joined in 1992. They included teenage skaters Jinna Han and Spencer Lane, their mothers, and two coaches, Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov.
“The kids here really work hard. Their parents work hard to be here. But I just feel for the athletes, the skaters, and their families but anyone that was on that plane, not just the skaters, because it’s just such a tragic event,” Kerrigan said.
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Kerrigan addressed reporters alongside executives from the Skating Club of Boston and skating legend Tenley Albright, who joined the club in 1947 and won several Olympic medals and world championships.
“We came here because we needed to be here together. We’re family, and it’s a community,” Albright said in tears. “There are so many memories. Just having seen the skaters competing.”
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Kerrigan is arguably best known for the attack on her knee at the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championship in Detroit. Tonya Harding, who was her main rival at the time and whose then-boyfriend and friends were held responsible for that attack, expressed her condolences over the plane crash on X.
“The events that took place last night in Washington, DC are absolutely devastating.
I’m being told that several professional figure skaters were aboard the flight as well. Sending my love and prayers to all the victims and their families,” Harding wrote in one of her first posts on the social media platform.
The skaters were on final approach into Reagan National Airport Wednesday night following the US Championships and a national development camp in Wichita, Kansas. Six of the skaters who participated in the multiday event came from the Skating Club of Boston.
The club will host the world championships at the TD Garden in Boston from March 25-30.
