The Skater Who Stuck a Triple Axel Before Boarding the Flight

New York Times

31-01-2025

The trip to the U.S. Figure Skating national development camp in Wichita, Kan., started out as a young figure skater's dream, and Cory Haynos, a teenager from Northern Virginia, was there to make a mark.
On Wednesday morning, after most of the 150 invited up-and-coming skaters had left and only the very top of the group — maybe 40-45 athletes — remained for a special training session, Haynos launched himself forward into the air. He rotated in a blur, once, twice and a third time, like a human gyroscope, before landing on one foot, elated.
He had done it. Haynos had landed a triple axel, one of skating's hardest jumps. At the perfect time, too. He had landed his first clean one in December, but this time the camp's coaches, there to scout and nurture the nation's future elite champions, saw him.
'I'd been watching him work on it all week, just fighting to do it,' Mark Mitchell, one of U.S. Figure Skating's coaches at the camp, said Thursday in a telephone interview. 'So when I saw him, I just said, 'Oh, my gosh! Cory just landed the triple axel!' And he was so happy, just so happy.'
The 'level of excitement was off the charts,' Mitchell said, at the camp held in the three days after the conclusion of the U.S. Figure Skating national championships on Sunday. That made Wednesday night's news all that more gut-wrenching, he said.
Some of those athletes, ones on track to make it to the highest levels of the sport, and maybe even the national team and the Olympics, were on an American Airlines flight from Wichita that crashed as it neared the runway at Washington's Reagan National Airport. The jet, carrying 64 people, including crew, had collided with a military helicopter above the Potomac River. No one on board survived.
Haynos, who described himself on his Instagram as 'Figure skater/basketball' and wrote 'John 3:36 (look it up)', was among those who died. His parents, Roger and Stephanie Haynos, died with him. The Bible verse says that people who believe in Jesus will have eternal life.
All sports are local, but youth sports like this are the root systems of communities throughout the country. As the crash's toll took shape Thursday, the loss of Haynos and perhaps a dozen other skaters shook families, neighbors, skate clubs, schools. There were middle schoolers and high schoolers, and at least one Girl Scout. Several were from Northern Virginia, several others from the Boston area. At least two had trained in Delaware.
The Skating Club of Boston, in Norwood, Mass., confirmed on Thursday that the former Russian skating champions, Yevgeniya Shishkova, 52, and Vadim Naumov, 55, had died in the crash, as did two of their skating students, the teenagers Jinna Han, 13, and Spencer Lane, 16. The mothers of those skaters were on the flight with their children.
On Thursday afternoon at the Boston-area rink, the ice was gleaming and empty at a time when skaters and coaches usually would be there to train for the coming world senior and junior championships. But members had chosen not to skate, said Doug Zeghibe, the club's chief executive.
'Folks have chosen to take a break,' he said. 'It feels very fitting that it's gone silent. It's eerie, but it feels respectful.'
Some of the club's best known and most accomplished members and alumni gravitated to the rink on Thursday, seeking comfort in their close-knit skating community. The Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was there, and so were Dr. Tenley E. Albright, the first American woman to win an Olympic gold medal, and Paul George, a former national champion.
'We came here because we needed to be together,' said Dr. Albright, 89, who was the Olympic figure skating champion in 1956. 'We're family. It's a community, and the people on that plane, they're our family, too.'
'I can't believe that it happened,' she added, turning to gesture toward the ice behind her, 'because I picture them right here.'
Dr. Albright and Mr. George both remember the first time a crash devastated their skating community, in February 1961, when a plane carrying the entire U.S. figure skating team crashed in Belgium, killing the 18 team members, judges, coaches, family members and 16 international officials.
Mr. Zeghibe said on Thursday that 'almost half' of those lost back then were from the Skating Club of Boston, a catastrophic loss that generated 'black energy' for years afterward. It also ripped a gaping hole in a generation of talent for U.S. Figure Skating, and Wednesday's crash is likely to do the same.
But in many ways, this void left in the sport is different. These skaters were the ones who had not yet made the big time of the national team. Instead, they were the top athletes at the lower levels of the sport: juvenile, intermediate and novice. Like Haynos, they had been invited to the development camp after doing well at important meets in their parts of the country. At nationals, the group had been invited as spectators, given red jackets of the development team, and proudly wore them around Wichita.
At the higher level junior and senior events at nationals, the development athletes — singles skaters, pairs skaters and ice dancers — sat in the stands together, a raucous group cheering for some skaters they knew personally, and others who were role models.
'It was hard to miss them,' said Mitchell, a former U.S. national team skater who coached at the development camp with his husband and former Swedish national champion, Peter Johansson. Gracie Gold, the Olympic bronze medalist for the United States, was among the coaches there, too, and gave the camp's closing speech before everyone headed for the airport.
During the camp, the young athletes had attended classes on how to skate better, but also sat through sessions on nutrition, mental health and dancing — everything they needed to know to be a top figure skater.
'These are passionate kids, the hungry kids, and super talented,' Mitchell said. 'I think that's what makes it even so much tougher to handle.'
The coaches from the camp were on a text message chain on Wednesday night, talking about the young athletes, when one of them asked if anyone else had seen the news of a plane crash in Washington. The plane had originated in Wichita. The coaches scrambled to check on athletes and parents. U.S. Figure Skating hadn't booked the flights, so they didn't know exactly who had been on the jet.
'Oh, no! We haven't heard from this one,' they said. 'And what about this one?'
But they knew that athletes bound for Boston had to fly to Washington because they could not get a direct flight home.
Mitchell and Johansson had talked to Kalle Strid, the personal coach of three athletes at the camp. He had flown back to the Washington area, where he was based, before they did.
All three of those athletes died — including Haynos and Brielle Beyer, who had proudly noted on her Instagram page that she was a member of the '2025 National Development Team.' Her skating club said she was 12. Her mother, Justyna Magdalena Beyer, was also on the plane. Just five days ago, Brielle posted a video of the champion ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates competing, saying 'They did so incredible!'
Haynos's training friend, Eddie Zhou, was on the plane, too. According to neighbors and co-workers of the family, both of his parents also died. Like Haynos, Zhou had executed a triple axel at the camp, Mitchell said.
On their teams' Instagram page, a photo of the two boys in the spring of 2023 shows them posing on the ice, smiling and giving each other bunny ears after passing their senior 'moves in the field test' and earning their first U.S. Figure Skating gold medal, the caption said.
The caption added, 'Only 3% of skaters within the U.S. earn a gold medal of any kind per year. We are so proud of you both.'
Haynos, who trained at the Skating Club of Northern Virginia, was one of several athletes and coaches from the Washington area who died. A statement from Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia said that three students and six parents from the district were killed in the crash, including two parents who had been school employees.
Like nearly all top skaters, especially ones with Olympic hopes, life often revolved around skating for Haynos and his parents, Roger and Stephanie. There were competitions, practices, and most recently, a trip from their home in the Washington suburbs to a training camp in Wichita.
'They left the house at 5 in the morning,' said Edward Haynos, Cory's grandfather, who lived with the family in Annandale, Va. 'Every time there's a competition, they go.'
Edward Haynos said he had not received official confirmation from authorities about the fate of his family, but he feared the worst. He stayed up until 3 a.m. watching the news, and on Thursday afternoon he was sitting at home with the television on, hoping for some answers.
'They were all on that flight,' he said. 'I can't tell you anything.'
Frank Quick, a neighbor who lived across the street from the family for 20 years, said Mr. and Ms. Haynos had both worked for the Fairfax County public schools.
He said Cory took up skating after seeing another neighbor's daughter get into it. 'It was kind of the two neighbors getting into skating at the same time,' he said.
At the camp in Wichita, it was clear how far Haynos had come as a skater. Mitchell, the coach, said he hoped someone caught one particular moment on camera — Haynos and Zhou performing an impromptu routine on the ice to the song 'APT.' by Bruno Mars and Rosé blasting in the arena. Other skaters and parents surrounded them, roaring with laughter and cheers.
'That's how I remember those kids,' Mitchell said. 'And that's how I will always remember them.'