Atlanta – If you can be statuesque at 5-feet-2, sitting down eating asparagus spears out of a glass, Michelle Kwan is. Away from the ice, she comes across as the woman we never got to know, not the pixie doll America has loved longer than any other U.S. figure skater.
Her long, black hair and a face right off a Maybelline ad give her the air of a Hollywood starlet who happens to live next door. Sitting in an office at Atlanta’s Phillips Arena before last Sunday’s Champions on Ice show, Kwan comes across as what you’ve heard and loved.
Balanced. Down to earth. Funny. At 24, America’s greatest female figure skater isn’t wrapped up in five interlocked rings. Two missed opportunities for Olympic gold haven’t changed that. She hasn’t even committed to Turin in 2006.
Yet she still loves skating enough to do Champions on Ice, which brings her to the Pepsi Center at 3 p.m. Sunday.
“I think it’s definitely the process of getting there,’ said Kwan, dressed in black pants and a black tank top. “It’s tough because you have to have a one-track mind when you’re an athlete. That’s why a lot of people get burned out, because suddenly they’re at the top of their sport and bam! It’s all gone.’
Maybe that’s why some of America’s past ice queens have been meteors that burned out while Kwan, a five-time world champion and record nine-time national champion, has not. Think about it. Peggy Fleming. Dorothy Hamill. Kristi Yamaguchi. Tara Lipinski. Sarah Hughes. All won their Olympic golds and left the ice. Kwan says a gold medal wouldn’t have changed her.
“She’s done more for American figure skating, when you get right down to it, than the other skaters,’ said Tom Collins, Champions on Ice founder and owner. “Dorothy Hamill, Peggy Fleming. … They were great, but not for the length of time as Michelle.’
Look at Kwan’s life and much of it comes across as a normal 24-year-old. She went to UCLA, even living in a – gasp! – dormitory. She’s a foodie who likes eating out with friends. She’s a devoted aunt to her new niece. She dated the Phoenix Coyotes’ Brad Ference.
So she’s a normal 24-year-old with a CEO’s income.
“She’s really nice to everybody,’ said Russia’s Irina Slutskaya, the two-time defending world champion who’s one of Kwan’s good friends. “She always asks if you need help. She always talks to everybody. Sometimes the competitors don’t talk with each other. They just hate each other. They compete off the ice and in the dressing room. We don’t have that.’
It wasn’t always this way. Remember, Kwan triple-lutzed into our lives at 15 when she won her first world championship. Suddenly she was America’s sweetheart and a favorite to win the gold in Nagano in 1998.
“Before the Olympics I thought, ‘What would I do if I didn’t win?” she said. “Because your whole focus is to win, win, win, win. And then when it doesn’t happen, I did the opposite. I said, ‘This isn’t everything.’ I woke up the next day and was like, it’s still sunny. I’m still alive. I still have my family.
“I have to say you have to stand in front of skating. It doesn’t control you.’
Lipinski came out of nowhere to win, sending Kwan into momentary tears until she saw the tape and realized, “She definitely skated perfect, too.’
Kwan’s classy reaction netted her a bigger piece of the oft-lucrative post-Olympic figure skating endorsement pie than Lipinski.
Much of Kwan’s balance comes from her parents, middle-class folks who raised three kids and paid for two daughters’ expensive figure skating youth.
One time when she was goofing off on the ice, her disgruntled father handed her $37, the price of ice time and a lesson. Suddenly she put life and skating in perspective.
Why else would an international superstar who could buy a dorm live in a dorm?
“It put everything in perspective because for me, if I fell on the triple lutz or didn’t skate well in the long program, then I’d be really down,’ Kwan said. “Then I’d go back to the dorm and everyone would be all happy. It’s another world.’
Her presence in Turin won’t depend on how she adapts to the new scoring system, which plays to her strengths, but in her first trial at the World Championships last month she finished fourth.
The rap on Kwan is she’s too cautious. She played it safe in the past two Olympics and lost to underdogs who had nothing to lose and skated like it.
“The only thing missing there was what the spirit of what the Olympics is all about,’ said Frank Carroll, Kwan’s coach until she left him before the 2002 Salt Lake City Games. “And the spirit of the Olympics is going for the gold, charging down the hill faster than anybody else.
“And I think Michelle skated that program with caution and with the desire to not miss anything.’
Still, other opportunities could sway Kwan from Turin. She has taken acting classes and received an offer to do a Broadway play. She has done voice-overs for “The Simpsons’ and co-hosted “The View.’ She would love Katie Couric’s job on “Today.’
“I’d have to weigh it,’ she said. “It could be anything.’
Whatever it is, she’ll enjoy the journey.
Staff writer John Henderson can be reached at 303-820-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
