page_title: Ekaterina Gordeeva
section_title: Solo career
hierarchical_section_title: Ekaterina Gordeeva / Solo career
caption_attribution_description: English: Ekaterina Gordeeva solo performance at the Smucker's Stars on Ice performance in Bridgeport, CT (USA) March 25 2007
context_page_description: Ekaterina "Katia" Alexandrovna Gordeeva is a Russian figure skater. Together with her partner and husband, the late Sergei Grinkov, she was the 1988 and 1994 Olympic Champion and four-time World Champion in pair skating. After Grinkov's death, Gordeeva continued performing as a singles skater.
context_section_description: In February 1996, Gordeeva returned to the ice, this time as a solo performer. Her first performance was a tribute to her late husband, skated to the "Adagietto" section of Gustav Mahler's "Symphony No. 5." The number was publicly performed only twice, first at a preview performance at the Minto Skating Club in Ottawa, Ontario and then on 27 February 1996, in a televised tribute to Grinkov called "Celebration of a Life," in which numerous skating luminaries took part. Gordeeva has said that she felt as if she skated with Sergei that night, that she was "double strong" because she felt him with her. The same year, with the aid of author E. M. Swift, she told her story in a book titled My Sergei: A Love Story. In February 1998, CBS aired an eponymous docudrama based on the book. She published a second book in April 1998, titled A Letter for Daria. In 1998, she told an interviewer that "My life of great skating, and skating with him, is over ... I don't try to go now for Olympics. I take skating for a job."
  Gordeeva returned to Stars on Ice as a solo skater in 1996 and toured with the show every year until 2000, when she took time off to give birth to another daughter, Elizaveta Ilinichna Kulik, in June 2001. Gordeeva has returned to the tour as a guest star many times, but has never returned to full-time touring. In addition to tours and shows, Gordeeva competed successfully as a professional solo skater, finishing as high as second place at the World Professional Championships (in 1997). She stopped competing in 2000, but continues to skate in professional skating tours, shows and competitions. While she has never returned to pair skating as a full-time endeavor, she has performed pair elements in many shows through the years with partners including Artur Dmitriev, Anton Sikharulidze, David Pelletier and John Zimmerman. For the 1998–1999 season of Stars on Ice, she and fellow Russians Ilia Kulik, Elena Bechke and Denis Petrov performed a quartet which showcased her pair skills, and in 1999–2000, she and Kulik skated a romantic duet during the tour.
  Gordeeva has signed several endorsement contracts, the most notable of which was with Target and led to two perfumes ("Katia" and "Katia Sport") which were sold through Target stores. Gordeeva and her daughter, Daria, appeared in the 1997 holiday movie Snowden on Ice as part of the CBS Sports Special; Gordeeva appeared in the 1998 sequel, Snowden's Raggedy Ann and Andy Holiday Show. She has represented Rolex and also appeared with Daria in a "Got Milk?" ad.
  In 2001, she was the subject of a Lenox figurine called "Katia's Celebration of Life," which depicts her performing a layback spin in the tribute she skated for Grinkov. She also appeared in the 2003 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue as a featured athlete. In 2003, she appeared on the ice for the first time with Daria. The pair performed a duet during a Mother's Day show and took the ice together several times since 2003, including two different versions of Amy Grant's "Children of the World" at Kristi Yamaguchi's "Family & Friends" shows in 2005 and 2006. During that show in 2007, the mother-daughter duo became a trio when they were joined by Gordeeva's younger daughter, Liza, and all three skated together to "Homesick" performed live by The Cheetah Girls. Since 2007, all three are amateur skaters together.
  In 2007, Gordeeva starred in Skate for the Heart, a show designed to raise awareness of heart disease. She skated in honor of Grinkov. Gordeeva briefly returned to pairs skating during the 2008–09 season when she participated in a Russian reality television show called Ice Age 2, a figure skating version of Dancing with the Stars. She was paired with Russian actor Egor Beroev and they won the show. During the taping of Ice Age 2, she flew to the United States from Russia to headline Skate for the Heart a second time. She dedicated a number to the memory of her father, Alexander Gordeev, who died of a heart attack in 2008. In 2010, she was paired with hockey player Valeri Bure in another figure skating reality show, Battl
caption: Gordeeva performs solo in Smucker's Stars on Ice at the Arena at Harbor Yard in Bridgeport in 2007.
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