SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
The figure skating community is still reeling from Wednesday's midair collision between an American Airlines jet and an army helicopter over Washington, D.C. Fourteen people on that aircraft had ties to figure skating - established coaches, rising stars, parents and family members of skaters. They were all returning from a figure skating competition in Wichita, Kansas. Robert Samuels is a Washington Post reporter who covered that competition and has since been reporting on how the crash has upended the skating world. Welcome.
ROBERT SAMUELS: It's good to be here. Thank you, Scott.
DETROW: You were just in Boston because The Skating Club of Boston lost six people in this crash, including two coaches. What were those conversations like?
SAMUELS: They were hard. The figure skating community is a very interconnected community, very insular and very emotional. There was a lot of conversation between coaches and younger skaters about the power of returning to the ice and being strong. But then they'd look to a particular corner where Jinna Han or Spencer Lane, two of the young skaters who died, used to sit, and they'd find themselves breaking down. And so it's a community. It's a club that's really trying to reestablish itself and get itself ready for all of the things that it has to do.
DETROW: Yeah. I feel like when somebody dies in this sort of way, at a young age, there's this period of time where you just don't really believe that that actually happened. Like, I can't imagine the different feelings and emotions on the ice at practice in Boston right now.
SAMUELS: Well, I mean, could you imagine that you saw these people - they were Snapchatting you going onto that flight? They had just really had one of the best moments of their lives. These kids were selected because they were the top figure skaters - young figure skaters in the country, to get extra help to train and learn from their heroes. And then in a flash, they're gone. You know, it's also important to say that The Figure Skating Club of Boston - in 1961, there was a terrible plane crash on the way to the world championship, and the entire world figure skating team was lost at that point. Half of the people who are on that plane were from the Skating Club of Boston.
DETROW: Wow.
SAMUELS: So that club, it has this legacy that it had always tried to rebuild from the shadow of this. And now here they are rebuilding again.
DETROW: And you had just been - you had been in Wichita for the competition that happened ahead of this training camp. I'm wondering, are you having conversations with people that you saw in a much different setting a few days before, reporting on a competition, reporting - you know, I was reading your stories - and it's just about the competition, the energy of these skaters, and then a few days later, it's just, like, a wildly different story? As a reporter, as somebody who covers and really appreciates this world, how have you sorted through the wildly disparate conversations that you're having with the same people in one setting and then a wildly different one?
SAMUELS: The shock that I feel just as a human being - those kids, the kids in the development camp - when they were at the national championships, they were right in front of me, and there was such jubilation. They danced. They cheered the loudest. They wanted people to notice them. And the jubilation of older skaters who went to see young talents, like Ilia Malinin, who's from the D.C. area, land quadruple axels, Amber Glenn, the American champion, landing triple axels - those were (ph) the conversations we had about just how strong the American figure skating program was.
DETROW: Yeah.
SAMUELS: And to then have to call those people on Thursday morning - it's a little tricky as a reporter, I'll be honest with you, because you usually talk to them about something they love. And that's a very hard conversation to broach because the first thing you want to do is make sure they're OK. And the next thing you want to do is to be able to help them tell a story that they're still processing in real time while you're still processing it.
DETROW: Robert, you cover a lot of different things. You write a lot - about a lot of different things. I should say, you won a Pulitzer Prize for your reporting on George Floyd's life. What is it about figure skating - the sport, the community - that has drawn you so much, that has interested you so much over the years?
SAMUELS: Yeah. Well, I've never figure skated. I've stepped - been on ice a few times in my life. But early on, when I was a kid, I noticed that there was something really thrilling about being a figure skater. I loved the idea of a single person going out there on a sheet of ice, and they had 4 minutes to try to prove something to the world. And if they made a mistake, that was it. It takes a lot of resilience and strength.
And then when you go to a championship and you see someone who, you know, is not going to be on a Wheaties box, but they have dedicated their life to this, and they jump, and you hear that thud when they have a bad fall - sometimes, you can even hear the reverberations on the board - and you see them get up, you realize that there is something really special about someone who tries to do this sport.
DETROW: Yeah. That's Robert Samuels of the Washington Post. Thanks so much for talking to us.
SAMUELS: Anytime, Scott. Have a good day. Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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