Total Recall: the ups and downs of the “twice-born” Roman Kostomarov

Throughout his life, Roman Kostomarov has repeatedly found himself in difficult situations, which he handled like a real fighter. In January 2023, the skater’s life was divided into “before” and “after”. How he copes with these events is shown in the movie “Twice Born”, which opens in the Russia exhibition on March 7 and on the big screen on March 9. On this occasion, we decided to remember the main events in the life of the Russian skater.

Skater career

Roman began to engage in figure skating from early childhood at the initiative of his mother, who knew that the boy’s grandmother dreamed of him becoming a professional figure skater. At the age of nine, he was training at the AZLK Ice Palace with his mentor Lydia Karavaeva. He achieved his first major victories at the Junior World Championships and the Russian Championships with his partner Ekaterina Davydova, daughter of Lydia.

Performances with Tatyana Navka began in 1998, when Roman moved to Natalya Linichuk. A year later, the coach decided to pair the skater with Anna Semenovich. After taking second place at the national championship in 2000, it was decided to continue the duet with Tatyana Navka. Together they won the World and European Championships in the 2005/06 Olympic season. After this season, both athletes announced their retirement and began performing in ice shows.

Family

Roman got married for the first time at the age of 27. His wife was Austrian figure skater Yulia Lautova. Before marriage, Julia and Roman lived for several years with visits and rare meetings. For the sake of her lover, the girl went to live in the USA, where at that time the figure skater was actively training for Olympic gold. However, their marriage did not last long and they divorced after three years.

Then another love appeared in Roman’s life – Oksana Domnina. The girl was friends with his ex-wife and even attended their wedding. For some time they lived in a civil marriage and even broke up for a short time. However, they managed to overcome all difficulties, especially since at that time they had a daughter named Nastya. They got married a few months after reconciliation, and their son Ilya was born in 2016.

Illness

On January 10, 2023, Roman performed in Ilya Averbukh’s “The Wizard of Oz” ice show. At that moment he caught a cold and was coughing a little and did not even suspect anything serious. As the skater later admitted, she decided to self-medicate because she was too self-confident, which disappointed her and led her life into a collapse. “Like everyone else, it’s not the first time I’ve gotten sick, I’ve had a cold, a cough, a fever,” he admitted in an interview.

However, on the same day, he was urgently taken to intensive care due to pneumonia. He was then transferred to Kommunarka Clinical Center where he was connected to an ECMO machine.

Then complications began to develop, sepsis developed, blood circulation was disrupted, and these led to gangrene. Necrosis began to occur in the skater’s left and right feet. Doctors had to urgently cut them off. Tissue necrosis also began in the hands, so doctors decided to perform additional surgery. He was discharged from the hospital six months later on July 6, 2023.

New life

In January, Roman said he would undergo another surgery on his hands in 2024 to prepare them for prosthetics. The figure skater adapted to life without legs and actively demonstrates all her achievements on her blog. By this time he had managed to get behind the wheel, swim, write his first word with the help of a prosthesis, get on the ice and repeat the Olympic routine, and recently even started snowboarding.