We skated together. We grew up in Saint Petersburg and we skated on the same ice,” said Marina Eltsova, of Leawood. “It’s surreal. ... I know there are videos of what happened. I just did not want to see it.

The young figure skaters whose lives were cut tragically short when an American Airlines flight collided with an Army helicopter and crashed into the Potomac River on Wednesday night were just beginning their journeys to stardom.

Vadim Naumov, a coach at the Skating Club of Boston, was among the victims of a plane crash near Ronald Reagan National Airport outside of Washington, D.C. Wednesday night. Naumov was traveling with his wife, Evgenia Shishkova, as well as two athletes from the club and their mothers.

Six people associated with Zeghibe’s club in Norwood, Massachusetts, were killed in the plane crash: skater Spencer Lane and his mother, Christine, skater Jinna Han and her mother, Jin, and coaches Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, a married couple who were world champion pairs figure skaters from Russia in the 1990s.

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian ice skating coaches and former world champions Yevgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov were on board the American Airlines plane that crashed into the Potomac River in Washington on Wednesday night,

Russian-born ice skating coaches and former world champions Yevgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov were aboard the American Airlines plane that crashed into the Potomac River in Washington on Wednesday night,

A pair of 16-year-old skaters, their mothers, and two Russian coaches were among the passengers on board an aeroplane that hit a helicopter above Washington DC on Wednesday evening, the group's skating club in Boston says.