Hundreds of admirers and international skating champions bid a mournful farewell Saturday to Olympic star Sergei Grinkov.
Following a candlelight memorial service at the rink where Grinkov used to skate, he was buried at Vagankovskoye cemetery.At the graveside, his coffin was opened for a second time so mourners could pay final respects to Grinkov, while a Russian Orthodox priest chanted prayers and a Russian Army honor guard fired a salute.
Earlier, at the Central Army skating rink where he started his career, Grinkov's medals and heaps of flowers were placed before the open coffin.
Yekaterina Gordeeva, Grinkov's wife and skating partner, led the mourners, many of them in tears.
Olympic champions Scott Hamilton, Oksana Baiul, Viktor Petrenko and many Russian skating stars were among the approximate 500 mourners.
"Sergei was one of my best friends," Hamilton said as a dirge played. "Today is a very horrible day - a day I thought I'd never want to see. We all miss him very much. He was like family. He was a great man."
"He was a fantastic skater, an artistic skater ... It is not normal when such a young man dies," said Yelena Chaikovskaya, coach of Russia's Olympic skating team.
Grinkov, 28, collapsed and died of a heart attack at Lake Placid, N.Y., Monday while he and Gordeeva were practicing for a show.
Their partnership, which began when they were children in Moscow, culminated in two Olympic gold medals and four world championships.
The routines of the muscular, 5-foot-11 Grinkov and the ponytailed, 5-1 Gordeeva were known for their powerful lifts and spectacular throws. The quadruple twist was their signature and their secret weapon in the Olympics was the double axel.
They won gold at Calgary in 1988 and, after a stint as professionals, returned six years later to win gold again at Lillehammer, Norway.