Ekaterina Gordeeva

Ekaterina "Katia" Alexandrovna Gordeeva (Екатерина Александровна Гордеева; born 28 May 1971) is a Russian figure skater.

She was not a particularly strong jumper, and in August 1981, coach Vladimir Zaharov paired the 10-year-old Gordeeva with the 14-year-old Sergei Grinkov.

Because Grinkov frequently missed practice, their coach eventually insisted that Gordeeva pair with someone else, but she refused.

Instead, the pair changed coaches.

Gordeeva and Grinkov won the 1985 World Junior Figure Skating Championships in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The following year they won the first of their four World Figure Skating Championships.

They are one of the few pair teams to win back-to-back junior and senior world championship titles.

They successfully defended their world title in 1987.

In November 1987, Grinkov caught a blade on the ice during a practice session and dropped Gordeeva on her forehead.

They landed the difficult element with ease at the 1987 World Championships.

They also completed the element at the 1987 European Championships, but due to a problem with Grinkov's boot strap and a misunderstanding about the rules (the referee signaled them to stop, going so far as to turn off their music, but they continued skating), they were disqualified from that event.

They stopped performing the quad twist because it made no significant improvement to their marks, making the added physical stress unnecessary.

Katia writes in her book, "My Sergei: A Love Story," that this element raised her heart rate and blood pressure to levels that alarmed the Soviet team's doctors.

"That summer we had learned a very difficult move called the quadruple split twist," she wrote, "in which Sergei threw me in the air, I did a split, then closed my legs and made four turns before he caught me. We were the only pair to do this quadruple element, and it was very exhausting—more exhausting than difficult, really. Soviet doctors had measured my pulse rate as exceeding two hundred beats per minute when I did it."

With her late husband Sergei Grinkov, she is the 1988 and 1994 Olympic Champion, a four-time World Champion (1986, 1987, 1989, 1990), a three-time European Champion (1988, 1990, 1994), the 1990 Goodwill Games champion, 1987 Soviet champion, and 1994 Russian champion in pair skating.

After Grinkov's death, Gordeeva continued performing as a singles skater.

Ekaterina "Katia" Alexandrovna Gordeeva was born in Moscow in what was then the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.

Her father, Alexander Alexeyevich Gordeev, is a dancer for the Alexandrov Song and Dance Ensemble, while her mother, Elena Lvovna Gordeeva, is a teletype operator for TASS.

She has a younger sister.

She has stated, "[My father] worked with me on movement very often when I was little."

Gordeeva began figure skating at age four, when she entered Children and Youth Sports School of CSKA Moscow.

She wore multiple pairs of socks inside skates many sizes too big because skates small enough for her feet were unavailable in the Soviet Union.

She was hospitalized for a time, but they were still able to compete in and win a gold medal at the 1988 Winter Olympics, which began the following February in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

They remain the youngest pairs team ever to win Olympic gold.

After a fall in their long program, they took silver at the World Championships in 1988, but reclaimed the title in 1989 and 1990.

They shared their first kiss on New Year's Eve 1988 and were married in April 1991.

Their state wedding was on 20 April and the church wedding was on 28 April.

By 1989, the skating partnership had grown into a romantic relationship.

They turned professional in the fall 1990, winning their first World Professional Championship in 1991.

From November 1991 through April 1992, they toured with Stars on Ice for the first time.

They also won that title in 1992 and 1994.

Gordeeva and Grinkov won almost every competition they entered.

In the 31 competitions whose results are known at the senior and professional levels, they finished first 24 times and never lower than second place from the time they won their first senior world title.

They are one of the few pair teams in history to successfully complete a quadruple twist lift in international competition.

On 11 September 1992, their daughter, Daria Sergeyevna Grinkova, was born in Morristown, New Jersey.

Shortly after Daria's birth, Gordeeva resumed training for the new season of Stars on Ice, which premiered in November 1992 and continued through the following April.

When a new ISU rule allowed professional skaters to regain their Olympic eligibility, Gordeeva and Grinkov decided to return to amateur competition for the 1993–94 season and skate in the Olympics.

In 1994, the couple won their second Olympic gold medal in Lillehammer, Oppland, Norway.

After the Olympics, the pair returned to professional skating and moved to Simsbury, Connecticut.

During the 1994–95 season, they toured with Stars on Ice, this time as headliners.