Wife of Coach on D.C. Flight Reveals Final Call Before Crash
A figure skating coach has revealed the final conversation she had with her husband after losing him and two of their young trainees in the Washington, D.C. jet crash.
When the young figure skaters, coached by Natalya Gudin and her husband, Alexandr 'Sasha' Kirsanov, had to fly to D.C. for training camp, the couple made a choice: Natalya would stay and Sasha would go, according to an interview on ABC News.
Sasha, 46, accompanied his skaters, Sean Kay and Angela Yang, as they boarded American Airlines Flight 5342 from Wichita, Kansas while Natalya stayed home in Delaware.
Natalya spoke with Sasha on Wednesday afternoon just before they got on their flight.
'It's time for boarding,' Natalya recalls her husband saying on the phone. They agreed to talk again once Sasha landed at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
Sasha never called back. Instead, Gudin heard about a crash from the mother of another figure skater aboard the flight, who told her they should 'immediately go to DC.'
By Thursday morning, officials announced that the mission to rescue 67 people aboard the passenger plane and the military helicopter that it collided with had become a recovery mission. Hours later, Delaware Sen. Chris Coons confirmed that Sasha, Sean, and Angela had died.
'It is a tragedy that none of them returned home to our state,' he said in a post on X.
'I lost everything. I lost my husband. I lost my students. I lost my friends,' Natalya said from a hotel in Virginia. 'I need my husband back. I need his body back.'
Sasha represented the U.S., Russia, and Azerbaijan as an ice skater and became a coach when he retired from competing. He earned a top-five finish at the 2004 U.S. Figure Skating Championships and bagged a bronze medal at the 2003 Nebelhorn Trophy.
In an interview with Delaware Online, Natalya said their students, Sean and Angela, 'were so amazing.'
'All the judges were so proud and they had such a big future. And what, all on the same plane?' she said. 'For me, it's a triple loss.'
We have Angela Yang/Sean Kay & Zoe Stone/Jerry Stone heading to Wichita for National Development Camp with...
Posted by UDFSC on Tuesday, January 21, 2025
Sean and Angela were members of the University of Delaware Figure Skating Club while Sasha was a former coach there.
University President Dennis Assanis mourned the community's losses in a statement.
'The figure skating community is tight-knit, and many of our students and coaches have trained and competed alongside those who were lost,' he said. 'Our hearts go out to the families and friends of all of the victims of this horrific tragedy.'
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