I never had the pleasure of seeing Denis Ten skate (so lucky, those of you who did!). I have a story, it’s kinda convoluted, so bear with me.
I was so excited last year to hear that Denis was skating to “SOS d'un terrien en détresse” (performed by his friend and fellow Kazakhstani Dimash Kudaibergen) for his free program. The song is from the French musical Starmania, and is about a man grieving his lover, who has died in his arms.
To the best of my knowledge, the only other skater who has used this song is Brian Orser, in 1996 (Brian used the English version). He skated the program for Stars on Ice, and for the 1996 Legends of Figure Skating Championships. I have never been able to find the performance on YouTube, except for a few seconds in this video,
https://youtu.be/xS4DYTYuwH4?t=142
where Brian discusses why the song is meaningful to him: it reminds him of Rob McCall, who had died a few years previously, and also his mother, who was ill at the time. Some Orser fans had speculated at the time why he had chosen such a melancholy song to skate to, and it was only later that we found out about his mom’s illness.
Several skating fans have mentioned that Denis’s death has hit them in the same way that Sergei Grinkov’s did. Untimely, tragic, beyond belief. This is my experience as well. Emotion is a wormhole, it takes you back directly to something you experienced years ago, all the intervening years disappear. (Right before Brian skated his Starmania program at Stars on Ice 1996, Ekaterina Gordeeva skated her first program as a single skater for SOI.)
Poignancy (Rob) piled on poignancy (Sergei) piled on poignancy (Denis).
It was only this morning when looking at Denis’s wiki page that I noticed he planned to skate this free program again this year. Possibly he felt, because of his injury, that he had not been able to do it justice last season. And now we’ll never get to see it happen.
I am grieving for the whole figure skating sisterhood and brotherhood, so closely knit, but especially for Denis’s coaches and choreographers. Mentors aren’t meant to outlive their proteges.
.)
