COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.-
Frank Carroll, who coached Michelle Kwan and Linda Fratianne and now works with U.S. men’s champion Evan Lysacek, has been elected to the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame.
Carroll’s skaters have won Olympic medals as well as numerous world and U.S. titles. He is one of only three coaches to have both the men’s and women’s U.S. champion in the same year: Kwan and Timothy Goebel in 2001.
Already a member of the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame, Carroll will be inducted into the world hall later this month during the world championships in Tokyo. The honor comes 30 years after Fratianne won the first world championships held in Tokyo.
“This is really special,” Carroll said Tuesday night. “It’s been quite a ride. I’ve certainly had my very big ups in my life. I’ve had my down periods, too, and disappointments. I think that’s very much the way life is.”
Carroll, who grew up in Worcester, Mass., was a successful junior skater under Maribel Vinson Owen. Owen was on the plane that crashed on the way to the 1961 world championships, killing the entire U.S. team, but Carroll still talks of her influence.
When Lysacek won his first title at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in January, Carroll stood by the boards, clutching one of Owen’s medals. When Carroll learned he’d been selected for the Hall of Fame, Owen was one of the first people he thought of.
“When I first was a young coach, I used to wake up in the middle of the night crying because Maribel was gone and I couldn’t call her and ask her about (teaching),” Carroll said. “It was a great loss for me.”
He began coaching in 1964, and established himself as one of the sport’s best by guiding Fratianne to the Olympic silver medal in 1980, gold medals at the 1977 and ’79 world championships, and four straight U.S. titles (1977-80).
But it was his decade with Kwan that made him a star.
The two began working together in 1992, when Kwan was an up-and-coming junior. She once infuriated him by taking her senior-level test when he was out of town—he’d told her he didn’t think she was ready—but their partnership was a model of stability in a sport where skaters change coaches as often as their skate blades.
At news conferences, they would often start talking at the same time, saying the same thing. They even showed up in matching U.S. team outfits one day at the Nagano Olympics.
Under Carroll, Kwan won four of her five world titles, five of her nine U.S. championships and the 1998 Olympic silver medal. The two split less than four months before the Salt Lake City Games, where Kwan won the bronze medal.
While Carroll’s students are always technically solid, his gift is making them into versatile skaters. Kwan, Fratianne and Christopher Bowman could put on performances that moved audiences to tears with their beauty and grace. Olympic bronze medalist Goebel was one of the best jumpers in the world, but it was Carroll who showed him how to put on a show.
“I’ve had wonderful kids,” Carroll said. “I look back at them, and they all were so unique, all so special in different ways. And not necessarily the ones that were most talented had the greatest success. But the ones who had discipline. The best workers had the best success.”
