Feet and fingers amputated
Russian ice star Kostomarov wins fight for life
05/11/2023, 12:15 p.m
After extreme danger to life, several amputations and more than four months in a Moscow hospital, ice dance Olympic champion Roman Kostomarow is back in public. But the 46-year-old still has a difficult road ahead of him. The Russian public follows his fate.
Roman Kostomarow has lost the two feet that carried him to the Olympic victory in Turin in 2006. But the Russian ice dancer won the fight for his life, which was and is anything but a matter of course.
“There are still many difficulties ahead of me, but I hope that I can overcome everything,” said the 46-year-old, wrapped in a black hoodie, in an Instagram video. How narrowly Kostomarow was able to escape death, he illustrated by thanking his relatives and the “doctors who brought me from the other world”.
A coronavirus infection that seemed manageable developed into severe pneumonia in January, followed by a stroke, cerebral hemorrhage and massive circulatory disorders. In addition to his feet, the two-time world champion also had to amputate two fingers on his left hand.
Kostomarov once congratulated Putin
And the way back to a halfway normal life has only just begun for the native of Moscow. Not all wounds have healed yet, according to the Russian media, Kostomarov will need a lot of patience. Special prostheses have already been made, but the former European champion is not yet allowed to wear these walking aids.
Not only because of the immense popularity of figure skating in Russia, the public continues to take great interest in the fate of Kostomarov. After all, his wife is the former ice dance world champion Oksana Domina. His former ice partner Tatjana Nawka, who is married to Vladimir Putin’s government spokesman Dimitri Peskov, enjoys true VIP status.
A joint photo of the two on the athlete’s Instagram account suggests that there is also a close connection between Kostomarov and Putin. The only comment there is: “Best President!!!!!” Uploaded in the first days of the war. It is a photo that was taken on the occasion of the President’s 65th birthday and was distributed in the Russian media. More postings followed with messages that were difficult to interpret, but certainly related to the war and the interpretation of truth.