Tatiana Totmianina
injured in scary fall

Plunge came during long program
at Skate America in Pittsburgh

Tatiana fell during a overhead lift comparable to the one shown above.

October 25, 2004

World champion pairs skater Tatiana Totmianina, who said Monday she still doesn't know what caused her to fall and sustain a concussion during the Skate America competition this past weekend, says she doesn't fear going back on the ice and doesn't remember the accident.

"My head is in pain, my body is in pain, but I don't really know what happened," Totmianina said on CBS' The Early Show.

"I'm not afraid," she said of getting back on the ice. "I want to go right now."

Her partner, Maxim Marinin said he feels guilty about the fall.

"It was kind of a technical mistake, and I'm also not real clear what's happened because when you're in a stressful situation, competition, everything is like going very, very quickly and you do not realize what's going on," he said.

Doctors at the hospital where she was taken in Pittsburgh, Pa., determined that she suffered a concussion and she also some bruises around her eyes.

Tatiana was released from the Pittsburgh hospital Sunday afternon. She will be resting for one week, and doctors advised her not to read or watch television. She will be assessed by her doctor in Chicago in one week.

The pair's coach, Oleg Vasiliev, "said that in the hospitals in Chicago there are Russian-speaking doctors who can examine the skater in detail."

Speaking to reporters from a wheelchair at Mercy Hospital on Sunday, Totmianina said she has little memory of anything that happened Saturday, including her accident.

She sported a bruise on her right eye, but joked with journalists about the move that led to her injury.

"Actually, it wasn't something unusual ... but it wasn't successful," she said. "How it happened, I don't remember. ... Yesterday, I don't remember almost anything."

Tatiana and Max will withdraw from Cup of China and Cup of Russia.

The fall, headfirst onto the ice during the free skate, was so terrifying it ended the Skate America competition Saturday night at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s Mellon Arena.

Marinin, 27, had his partner in a fully extended overhead lift when he hit an apparent rut in the ice that threw him off balance and caused him to accidentally throw Totmianina overhead and onto the ice.

Totmianina, 23, lay motionless for several minutes before being placed on a stretcher and taken to the arena’s medical room.

Once stabilized, Totmianina was rushed to Mercy Hospital’s severe trauma unit.

Liz DeSevo, the pairs agent for MCE, saw the fall and said it was one of the worst she’s ever witnessed.

Totmianina and Marinin appeared on their way to winning the pairs competition at Skate America, the first ISU Grand Prix event of the season.

They were performing an Axel lasso lift when the accident happened.

According to reports by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Dejan Kovacevic at the competition, Marinin, who stands 6 feet 2, lifted Totmianina, who is almost a foot shorter, with one hand high over his head while skating at close to top speed.
Then, Marinin apparently lost his balance and, as a result, flung Totmianina forward. The right side of her face hit the ice first -- with great force -- and she slid backward a few feet before Marinin rushed toward her.

For 15 seconds, there was only silence, and no one came to the ice to help despite a shout from the audience to do so, according to Kovacevic. Then, the pair's coach, Oleg Vasiliev, and another official went to the ice. A paramedic reached the rink about three minutes later.

Skaters and photographers who were close to the stretcher said that they believed Totmianina retained consciousness even while still on the ice.

A crew of city of Pittsburgh paramedics entered the building roughly 12 minutes after the accident. An ambulance did not enter until another eight minutes had passed, Kovacevic reported.

Brian Chiera, assistant general manager at Mellon Arena, told Kovacevic that organizers had an ambulance waiting outside the building. He said that the city paramedics who attended to Totmianina had left the ambulance to take care of her and that other drivers were summoned with a 911 call to bring the ambulance inside.

In the moments after the accident, the public address announcer appealed to the crowd to remain quiet and calm, and the audience mostly obliged. The announcer then declared that the final scores of the pairs event and its victory ceremony would be delayed until the exhibition that closes Skate America at 2 p.m. Sunday.

Julia Obertas and Sergei Slavnov of Russia skated just before Totmianina and Marinin, and they stumbled at what appeared to be the same part of the ice surface. A large rut was evident there an hour after the accident, even though the ice had been resurfaced by the Zambonis.