Sergei Mikhailovich Grinkov (; 4 February 1967 – 20 November 1995) was a Russian pair skater. Together with his wife Ekaterina Gordeeva, he was the 1988 and 1994 Olympic Champion and a four-time World Champion (1986, 1987, 1989, 1990). Personal life Sergei Grinkov was born in Moscow to Anna Filipovna Grinkova and Mikhail Kondrateyevich Grinkov and had an older sister, Natalia Mikailovna Grinkova. He married Ekaterina Gordeeva in April 1991. They had two ceremonies because the USSR did not recognize religious ceremonies. The legal, official state-approved wedding was on 20 April, and a religious wedding in the Russian Orthodox Church took place on 28 April. On 11 September 1992, Gordeeva gave birth to their daughter, Daria "Dasha" Sergeyevna Grinkova, in Morristown, New Jersey. After the 1994 Olympics, they settled in Simsbury, Connecticut. Daria took up skating seriously at age 9, appearing with her mother in several skating shows from 2003–2007 but quit competitive skating to pursue other interests in 2007. However, Daria still skates with her mother in amateur ranks. Grinkov's father died of heart disease in 1991. His mother died in 2000 in Moscow. Career Grinkov first took to the ice at the age of five, entering the Children and Youth Sports School of CSKA in Moscow. As Grinkov was not a strong solo skater, his coach decided to try him in pair skating, and in August 1981, at age fourteen, he was paired with eleven-year-old Ekaterina Gordeeva at the Central Red Army Club (CSKA) in Moscow by coach Vladimir Zaharov. The pair won the 1985 World Junior Championship in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The following year they won the first of their four World Figure Skating Championships. They became repeat world champions the following year and won gold at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta. Grinkov became one of the youngest male figure skating Olympic champions. After a fall in their long program, they took silver at the World Championships in 1988, but they reclaimed that title in 1989 and successfully defended it again in 1990. They turned professional in the fall of 1990. They won their first World Professional Championship in 1991, and went on to win that title two more times (1992 and 1994). Gordeeva/Grinkov won virtually every competition they entered. In the 31 competitions they completed at the Senior and professional levels, they finished first 24 times and finished off the podium only once; from