Free My Sergei by Ekaterina Gordeeva, E. M. Swift

races. My times were abysmal. Zhuk was there, too, but fortunately
     not as our coach. He still sometimes worked with us in an overseeing capacity, though, and one day I twisted my ankle badly
     when he had us practicing the quadruple split twist off the ice after I was already tired.
    I told Sergei that anytime he wanted tea or coffee after dinner to come to my room, because I had an electric kettle. Or if
     he wanted to eat something sweet. He didn’t come often, but a few times he did, more to drink tea or eat a sweet than to see
     me. But it was a good feeling to be able to share these moments with him.

    At training camp, getting in shape for Calgary.
    If I went to the market to get fruits, I was always sure to get something for him, too. Sergei was too lazy to go to the market,
     but sometimes he bought me ice cream in the afternoon, which was wonderful for me. We never went alone, however. Sergei always
     had older friends around him, like Sasha Fadeev. But it made me happy to be included.
    Sasha was short, very muscular, with strong legs and a strong upper body. His eyes were tiny; his lips were tiny; his hands
     were tiny. Everything about him was tiny. But he was very quick when he skated, and he used to jump like a rubber ball. He
     was very, very talented, but in my opinion he never fully realized his talent.
    Off the ice, however, everything about Sasha was unbelievably slow and relaxed. If you asked him the time, you had to ask
     him three times.
    “Sasha, do you have the time?”
    “Huh?”
    “Do you know what time it is?”
    “Hmm?”
    “What time is it?”
    Then he would tell you. When you talked to him, he would be thinking about the last subject when you had moved onto the next
     one. He was also stubborn and independent. If everyone went into a restaurant and ordered one type of pizza, Sasha would be
     sure to order another type. He was proud to be different.
    Yet he was always very, very kind. Sasha used to catch me furrowing my brow when I was listening to him or Sergei. I was so
     little that I looked up to everyone, and as I did this my brow became furrowed. He’d use his fingers to smooth the wrinkles
     from my forehead. Everyone did this to me. It got to be quite embarrassing.
    The next training camp we went to was in Dnepropetrovsk, in the Ukraine, where we trained on the rink where Oksana Baiul learned
     to skate. That’s where, for the first time, we skated our Olympic programs. Because it was an Olympic year, the entire federation
     watched us to give their approval. I liked the free program Marina had made for us immediately, which was to a medley of music
     by Chopin and Mendelssohn. Marina told us we were supposed to be fresh and springlike, to skate as if we were looking at the
     blue sky from beneath apple blossoms. That’s why our costumes were sky blue, with sprigs of white flowers sewn over the shoulders.

    Sasha Fadeev
    The short program was from the opera
Carmen:
“The March of the Toreadors.” Many of the members of the federation thought it was too serious for us, that the music should
     be more romantic. Marina, ever the iconoclast, told us not to worry, it would be fine. Still, I couldn’t help but listen to
     the comments, and, like a good Gemini, I worried about this program one day and was confident about it the next. We changed
     the beginning many times before the Olympics, but kept the music. The program required us to act the part of toreadors marching
     before a bullfight, displaying all the beauty, grace, and pageantry of that passionate event.
    We bypassed the early competitions held in North America—Skate America and Skate Canada—so the team doctors could monitor
     our health as closely as possible. The Soviet Union’s sports machine left very little to chance. That was okay. The goal,
     we knew, was the Olympics; and as the Games approached, everything became a little more stressful, a little more intense.
    In mid-November we won an event called the