Ice Skating entrepreneur Tom Collins passes away at age 88

To call Tom Collins the father of figure skating tours might be hyperbole. Then again … “Tommy treated everyone like family,” Michelle Kwan, the greatest skater of her generation, said Sunday after learning of Collins’ death at his home in Minneapolis at age 88. “I skated for 14 years […]

“We lost our hero, Tom Collins, today,” the family said in a statement. “No words can explain how much love and joy he gave us. He shared his fun-loving charismatic personality with everyone he met. He will be dearly missed by all of us, his dear friends and the figure skating community.”

Scott Hamilton, the 1984 Olympic champion and himself an entrepreneur in the sport — Hamilton founded Stars on Ice soon after he won the gold medal — called Collins “the greatest impresario of skating.”