Ekaterina Alexandrovskaya dead: Olympian’s heartbreaking suicide note

A bombshell report has revealed the sad spiral of Olympic figure skater Ekaterina Alexandrovskaya started before she even landed in Australia.

Those close to Australian Winter Olympics star Ekaterina “Katia” Alexandrovskaya still refuse to believe the 20-year-old threw herself out a sixth floor balcony in Moscow.

The Russian-born figure skater, who represented Australia at the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang, was found dead on the pavement outside her apartment building on July 17.

Local Russian reports last month revealed the sad spiral that engulfed Alexandrovskaya in the months before her death — which investigators ruled had no suspicious circumstances.

However, a bombshell investigation by The Australian and The Daily Telegraph has now revealed the “heartbreaking” spiral started for Alexandrovskaya before she even arrived in Australia as a 16-year-old.

Alexandrovskaya, who became an Australian citizen in 2016, was forced to quit the sport after being diagnosed with epilepsy earlier this year. It is just the tip of the iceberg.

Alexandrovskaya’s coach Andrei Khekalo told AFP that even before she was diagnosed with epilepsy earlier this year, she suffered from depression, while Australia’s 2018 Olympic chef de mission Ian Chesterman alluded to her issues as she struggled with life without skating.

“We are all deeply saddened to hear the news today,” Chesterman said last month. “Life since the Games has not been easy for her and this is another timely reminder of just how fragile life is.”

She spent two weeks in a Russian hospital after the epilepsy diagnosis in January and was told she would never skate again.

It has now been identified in the report her funding from the Australian Olympic Committee was also cut in May, 2019.

Russia’s Channel 5 claimed Alexandrovskaya had been “forced to work in a striptease club” to make ends meet.

Australian figure skater Harley Windsor and skating partner Ekaterina Alexandrovskaya.

The publication also quoted Khekalo as saying Alexandrovskaya “ceased to engage in an active life” after she stopped skating, while her former choreographer Andrey Pashin reportedly said: “She had everything, and suddenly it was all over”.

The report said Alexandrovskaya left behind a two-word note on the day of her death, reading simply: “I love”.

The circumstances surrounding her decision to switch allegiances from Russia to Australia to join up with Aussie skating partner Harley Windsor ahead of the 2018 Olympics has now been linked with world athletics boss Sebastian Coe’s campaign to stamp out cases of “human trafficking”.

Coe banned the transfer of all track and field athletes under the age of 20 in 2018.

The report outlines the sad circumstances that saw Alexandrovskaya arrive in Australia reportedly after being headhunted by officials who were desperate to find a partner for Windsor in his push to become the first Indigenous Australian to compete at the Winter Olympics.

Her move was doomed from the start.

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Australia's Ekaterina Alexandrovskaya and Australia's Harley Windsor react after competing in the pair skating short program of the figure skating event during the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics.

Coe says the practice of athletes like Alexandrovskaya trading their national allegiances effectively constitutes “human trafficking” — and the tragic circumstances that have surrounded the Australian citizen’s death only supports his damning assessment.

Alexandrovskaya was training with Australian coaches in Russia at the age of 15 and was promised a citizenship fast-track when she agreed to compete under the Australian flag with Windsor.

She arrived in Australia in January 2016 without any friends or family, without being able to speak any English and just months after the death of her father.

She had a drinking problem within the year.

She drank to cope with the death of her father and her separation from everything she had previously known — and it consumed her.

The difficulty of living with epilepsy was nothing compared to her personal hell.

Despite not being diagnosed until this year, the report has identified that Alexandrovskaya’s epilepsy condition was spotted as early as 2017 when she is reported to have had a seizure at the ice rink inside the Macquarie Centre shopping mall in northern Sydney.

After collapsing at the centre, Alexandrovskaya waved away paramedics and medical help.

She could endure more torment and anguish than any person should ever have to experience in 20 short years — and it reached breaking point this year following her return to Russia, the epilepsy diagnosis and Windsor’s forced decision to end their skating partnership on the advice of her medical advisers.

Ekaterina Alexandrovskaya competed for Australia in the 2018 Olympics.

Despite this — and the findings of Russian authorities — those close to Alexandrovskaya still doubt the official recording that her tragic fall from her Moscow balcony was of her own doing.

“At the absolute bottom of my soul, do I think she purposely went out that window? No I don’t and I still don’t,” Belinda Noonan, a former Australian figure-skating cham­pion who became Alexandrovskaya’s mentor, told the special joint investigation by The Australian and The Telegraph.

“Do I think there could have been an episode? I think that could have been because she was diagnosed with epilepsy in January. I have those Russian medical ­reports.”

Windsor has also told the report of the moment he first learned of Alexandrovskaya’s death.

“Then it started to hit me, I was like ‘holy shit, I don’t even know what to think right now’,” he said after first hearing about the death in a text message from her uncle.

“I was trying to call people to find out more information but no one knew any more information.

“She was willing to do anything, she was 15 when she decided to go to another country and skate for another country, determined, hardworking, a lot of people loved her.”

The end of her partnership with Windsor and her skating career is still the greatest anguish for Australian skating officials still claim her tragic death could have been prevented if she had remained in Australia with the support of the Winter Olympics program.

“When she wanted to go home to look at some other things we didn’t sort of think a lot of it, and none of it was actually shared with us as far as what her health issues were,” Ice Skating Australia president Peter Lynch said.

“We’ve obviously since become aware of what they are but at the time she went back to Russia we were not aware of what issues she was dealing with or having investigated.

“We think that this contributed a lot to her state of mind on where they left her, they appeared to leave her without a future and that was the really sad thing about it.

“Unfortunately, they closed the door on her and then she could no longer compete, and that alone is the most heartbreaking thing.”