Childhood and studies
A third child, a girl, Michelle Kwan, was born into a family of Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong in the city of Torrance, a suburb of Los Angeles in California. It was July 1980. At home they spoke a mixture of English and one of the dialects of Chinese. She and her brother and sister came to the skating rink for the first time at the age of five, and little by little training began. But when Michelle was in school and turned eight, training became simply terrible. I had to get up at three o'clock in the morning, skate the necessary elements, go to school, and after classes it was back to the skating rink. Only Chinese perseverance and a sense of duty, absorbed with mother’s milk, apparently helped the young, fragile body to withstand such stress. Two years later, the ice fee increased.
The family did not have enough money for classes. But then financial help arrived from the Los Angeles Skating Club. Michelle Kwan continued skating. But she was growing up, and she did not have enough time to study at school. So she left it and began to study on her own. She then went to university, then transferred to another, studying international relations and political science. By this time, she was finishing her sports career, and therefore became a graduate student, continuing to deepen her knowledge in the field of international relations. After completing graduate school, she received her doctorate.
Children's workouts
In the suburbs of Los Angeles, on July 7, 1980, a third child appeared in the Kwan family. The newborn was named Michelle. A five-year-old little girl was brought to the skating rink by her brother and sister.
The young figure skater began training. When Michelle turned eight, training turned into torture.
The girl got up at three in the morning, skated the elements, went to school, and then hurried back to the skating rink.
Michelle's incredible perseverance helped her to withstand such loads. Due to lack of time to train, Michelle left her studies to study on her own.
The young athlete received her first gold at thirteen at the Junior World Championships.
At the 1995 world championship, the girl got only fourth place. This became a lesson for her. She perfectly honed the technical and artistic aspects of the performance.
First achievements in sports
At 13, she wins gold at the World Junior Championships. At the 1995 World Championships, after a tense struggle, Michelle won 4th place. This served as a lesson for the girl, who began to pay even more attention to technique and artistic performance. Her signature element was the spiral, during which she changed the sliding ribs on the skate.
This is Michelle Kwan's famous spiral. The photo shows the 2002 US Championships. A lot of technical work affected the results after a year. At the championship in 1996, she won first place.
1998 competition
The US Championship was a triumph for Michelle Kwan. The short program was performed to the music of S. Rachmaninov (“Piano Concerto No. 3” and “Elegiac Trio No. 2”), and the free program by V. Alvin. All judges unanimously gave the highest score. One of the judges was crying. But relatively recently, the figure skater’s broken leg began to heal. All in the same year, the Winter Olympics took place in Nagano. Michelle climbed to the second place on the podium, receiving silver. From 1998 to 2005 inclusive, she did not lose a single US Championship. In the same 1998, the World Championship was won.
Michelle Kwan broke Olympic law
precedent
An unprecedented event took place in American sports on Friday. The famous figure skater, five-time world champion 25-year-old Michelle Kwan was included in the US Olympic team heading to Turin not based on the results of the national selection, but by the decision of a jury of five judges, in front of whom she skated both of her programs.
The case of Michelle Kwan will be discussed in the USA for a long time, because the athlete herself and those who accepted her conditions violated a sacred, one might say, rule in American sports: only those who were in the top three in the competition are allowed to participate in the Olympics, having qualifying status. And no one cares why the athlete did not pass the selection.
Kwan did not come to the US Championships, which took place two weeks ago in St. Louis. She didn’t show up, saying that a groin injury was preventing her from riding. Evil tongues wrote, however, that even if she were absolutely healthy, she still shouldn’t have appeared in St. Louis: 25-year-old Kwan’s programs are already so technically primitive in comparison with those performed by young people that she is ashamed to go on the ice. Plus, her form could not have been good for the reason that she missed the beginning of the season - that is, last year’s part - almost entirely due to the same injuries.
In general, if we follow American traditions, Sasha Cohen, Kimmy Meissner and Emily Hughes, who took the first three places in St. Louis, were supposed to go to Turin. But everything turned out to be not so simple. Kwan submitted an appeal to the US National Olympic Committee and the country's figure skating federation with a request to give her a place on the team. She claimed that she would gain the necessary condition for Turin and was ready to prove that she was not bluffing. Any athlete in her place would have been sent to hell with such a petition. But Kwan is a special case.
This figure skater in the USA is loved like no one else. Why is not an easy question. Perhaps this is explained by a coincidence of circumstances: there is a difficult childhood of a girl from an immigrant family (Kwan is Korean by birth), and natural charm, and a generally brilliant career with nine national champion titles and five world champion titles. But at the same time, my career is somehow incomplete, incomplete. When completed, at least at the end of the day, the most valuable thing is the Olympic gold medal. And Kwan, going to both of her Olympics - in Nagano and Salt Lake City - as a favorite, received only silver and bronze. And public opinion was on her side.
All that remained was to check Kwan in action. And they gave her a check. It took place on Friday at the skating rink in Los Angeles in the presence of five experienced judges from the federation, in front of whom Kwan performed her short and free programs for 12 minutes with a short break. The analysis of her performance took the judges much longer - three hours.
It must be assumed that while waiting for the decision, Kwan was quite worried, since her performance certainly could not be called ideal. For example, she never performed the double axel (she jumped this jump only when the musical accompaniment ended - especially for the referees), and she screwed up the triple toe loop. True, she did four jumps in three rotations, but this won’t surprise anyone today - they do more, and even in combination. For example, the current world champion, Russian Irina Slutskaya, has a program that is not just more complicated, but an order of magnitude more difficult.
However, the judges' verdict, announced by jury chairman Bob Horen, was triumphant for Kwan: she was included in the team instead of Emily Hughes, the younger sister of the same Sarah Hughes who sensationally beat Kwan and Slutskaya in Salt Lake City four years ago. What most struck the journalists who watched this performance was Khoren’s explanation. “In our opinion, Michelle is truly capable of winning the Olympics,” he said. The American press has already begun to speculate on how Kwan should train for the remaining two weeks in order to really improve her program to the level of the main contenders for victory, and what Khoren should do when the great athlete fails - already in full accordance with the forecasts - and at their third Games.
ALEXEY J-DOSPEKHOV
Other activities
By this time she had a large number of sponsorship contracts. She participated in television advertisements for major American companies. And she even became a representative of the Walt Disney Company. In 2005, she opened a skating rink for children in Artesia and by this time had written an autobiographical book, “The Heart of a Champion,” and another one intended for children, called “What it takes to become a champion.” She took part in television programs dedicated to figure skating. She voiced cartoons. Finally, she starred in a film that was dedicated to herself. And she even became the heroine of a computer game.
Medvedeva starred in a Canadian film with Serebryakov. She is not the first figure skater in the cinema
The New Year began with rather unexpected news: two-time world champion Evgenia Medvedeva , in addition to training with Brian Orser, managed to star in the Canadian feature film Petrichor, where she will join the famous Russian actor Alexei Serebryakov and play herself. The film will be released before the end of 2020, and Medvedeva’s move to Canada can no longer be called a complete failure - after all, almost every person has a desire to star in some kind of film. We will draw conclusions about whether the experiment was a success or not immediately after the film is released, but for now let’s remember other skaters who were able to rock not only on the ice, but also on the screen.
Some of the best American skaters in history, Japanese and Canadian
The film "Blades of Glory: Starbreakers on Ice" was released in 2007 and received positive reviews on one of the most respected sites for the film industry - Rotten Tomatoes. The film tells the story of two singles skaters who, for certain reasons, were banned from competing, but the guys return to the big sport as... a same-sex couple! Yes, they are not allowed to participate in singles competitions, but there were no prohibitions on pair skating. The film makes fun of various cliches of sports films (including villainous opponents and victory in the last seconds), and the filming featured such world skating stars as Sasha Cohen, Scott Hamilton, Peggy Fleming, Brian Boitano, Dorothy Hamill, Nancy Kerrigan, Keko Ina , Yuka Sato and David Pelletier .
Stars of Russian figure skating of the early 2000s
In 2007, the show “Ice Age” was broadcast on Channel One, in which all the familiar stars of sports, theater, cinema and television took part. The project was so successful that the bosses of the country’s main channel decided to continue to hype the figure and filmed the serial film “Hot Ice”, where the skaters tried themselves as dramatic actors. Alexey Yagudin, Roman Kostomarov, Irina Slutskaya - each of them wrote their name in the history of national sports, and in 2009, television viewers were able to see their idols on the screen. The writers of the series tried to show figure skating from the inside and filmed 100 episodes. Did the movie work? Most likely, no: implausible stories of athletes, not the best camera work, and most importantly, poor acting by former figure skaters. Still, they were much more comfortable on the ice.
Alexey Tikhonov
World champion 2000 in pair skating Tikhonov also starred in “Hot Ice,” but the audience still appreciated his acting work. This can probably be explained by the fact that in the mid-90s, Tikhonov accepted Tatyana Tarasova’s to perform at her All Stars ice theater.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Alexey Tikhonov (@alekseitikhonov71) on Dec 10, 2016 at 6:58pm PST
To date, Alexey has already played several roles in theater and cinema, and his performance in the series “Boomerang” was liked by the audience. Now we are waiting for Tikhonov to get one of the main roles in a feature film.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by TV series Boomerang (@bumerang_film) on Dec 31, 2018 at 9:57am PST
Sonya Henie
The only three-time Olympic champion in single skating in history, Norwegian Sonja Henie, left big sport at the age of 24 and went to conquer Hollywood. Between 1927 and 1958, Sonya starred in 15 films, the most famous of which is Sun Valley Serenade. In 1936, Henie signed a contract with Fox Studios, which made her one of the highest paid actresses of the time.
Sonya's life path has always been a reason for gossip, intrigue and scandals. But her contribution to the history of sports and the film industry is difficult to overestimate. A feature film was made about the life of the great Norwegian in 2018, called “Sonya: The White Swan.”
Michelle Kwan
The most titled figure skater in the history of American figure skating, Michelle Kwan, after retiring from her career, began to take an active part in social activities, wrote several motivational books, and also starred in several commercials.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Michelle Kwan (@michellewkwan) on Dec 28, 2018 at 12:22pm PST
In addition to sponsorship contracts, her acting work includes cameos in several TV series (for example, “The Simpsons,” “Family Guy,” and “Sabrina the Teenage Witch”), and in the comedy film “The Ice Princess,” Michelle played a cameo role as an ESPN reporter.
Kristi Yamaguchi
American figure skater of Japanese origin Kristi Yamaguchi competed in both pairs and singles skating for several years, and in both forms she was able to become the US champion. But only after the final transition to singles, Christie was able to achieve international recognition, winning the Olympic Games (1992) and the World Championships twice (1991, 1992).
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Kristi Yamaguchi (@kristiyamaguchi) on Dec 1, 2017 at 3:00pm PST
In 2005, Yamaguchi was inducted into the US Olympic Hall of Fame, and in the same year the film Ice in the Heart was released, where Christie played herself. The film talks about a difficult choice for a young girl: hockey or figure skating.
Subscribe to the Sport24 channel in Yandex.Zen
In the US administration
She was first invited to an official event at the White House in 2006 on the occasion of the visit of the Chairman of the DPRK to the United States. She attended a dinner between President Bush and the distinguished guest. That same year, Michelle was asked to become an ambassador for public diplomacy. This is how the life of Michelle Kwan changes, whose biography is now connected with social activities. Traveling extensively around the world, Michelle promotes American values. Obama, who replaced Bush, continues to support Michelle's work in this area. At work, she has a lot of contact with both the vice president and the secretary of state.
Personal life of Michelle Kwan
32-year-old Democrat Clay Pell served in the US Coast Guard and worked in the White House staff, working on national security. It was at work that the young people met. They were brought together by common interests. Both consider themselves lucky to have found each other. The couple dated for about two years and then decided to legalize their relationship. They announced their engagement in September 2012. Michelle's engagement ring was crafted from platinum in a vintage style. It was marked with the couple's initials. The bride's dress was designer, from Vera Wang.
About two hundred and fifty guests attended the wedding. Coast Guard officers made an arch of sabers over the newlyweds. And many guests held dazzlingly bright sparklers. The young couple were married in a church in Providence on January 19, 2013.
Figure skater Michelle has the largest number of awards in the history of America in this field of sport. Americans love and do not forget Michelle Kwan. The figure skater is also highly regarded in China. They are proud of her there.
