The China Mail - Figure skating mourns plane crash victims at somber World Championships

Twenty-eight of the 67 people who perished when an American Airlines plane collided with a military helicopter in Washington DC on January 30 were members of the figure skating community.

The victims included several young US skaters returning from a training camp in Kansas accompanied by their parents and coaches.

For US duo Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov, the tragedy struck close to home on Wednesday as the victims were remembered in a ceremony at Boston's TD Garden in between the women's short program and the pairs short program.

Efimova and Mitrofanov both train at the Skating Club of Boston, which lost six members in the disaster -- skaters Spencer Lane, 16, and Jinna Han, 13, their mothers Christine Lane and Jin Hee Han, and coaches Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, the 1994 world champions.

Efimova and Mitrofanov held framed portraits of the six victims as they waited for the judges' scores after their performance.

"I feel the impact they have had in this actually quite short time we have known them is just huge," Efimova said, her eyes welling up. "I think they have played a big part of us being here today with all their support and love every day."

The TD Garden arena was plunged into darkness during a memorial service as the names and faces of the victims of the disaster were displayed on a screen above the ice.

The images were interspersed with speeches from Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, Governor of Massachusetts Maura Healey and figure skating officials.

- 'Avoidable accident' -

Doug Lane, who lost son Spencer and wife Christine in the disaster, said the crash had been an "avoidable" tragedy.

"My first hope is that even as we remember the amazing people from the figure skating community we lost, we take extra care to lift up the young skaters still here," Lane said in remarks to a hushed arena.

"They are hurting. I hope we can support them in their skating journeys.

"My final hope today is that we can prevent something like this from ever happening again. Some accidents are unavoidable, this one was not.

"But rather than looking for places to blame, I hope we can work with our elected officials to make air travel safer for everyone and for all of our families."

Lane later revealed that son Spencer had been due to participate at this week's World Championships as an awards presenter.

"These types of events are really special to my family and I know a lot of the other families as well, because I think for us, seeing some of the people they trained with go on and perform at this level is kind of a reminder of what they were aspiring to," Lane told reporters.

"Spencer had actually been selected to be an awards presenter at this event, so it was personally meaningful to me as well.

"Obviously, my preference would have been to be sitting in the stands with my wife cheering for him, but given that he wasn't able to fulfill that duty, it was meaningful to me to be able to be kind of a poor stand-in at his place."

Doug Zeghibe, chief executive of the Skating Club of Boston, said that the staging of the World Championships in the city had helped the grieving process.

"I think emotionally the club is holding it together," Zeghibe said.

"The love of producing the world championships really was a focus for us and it's something that our membership all came together for. So having a focus like that really sort of carries you through and gives you a distraction.

"It'll be interesting to see what it'll be like when these championships conclude and things quiet down and we're back to a typical routine, but I have to say ... there's a hole left by these guys."

B.Carter--ThChM