Just ran across a new story by Phil Hersh on Michelle Kwan. Don't have any way to link it right now, so will just include some excerpts. I assume it'll be on the Tribune Web site at some point.
By Philip Hersh
Chicago Tribune
Out of competition for now, Michelle Kwan is into State Department duties and schoolwork. Michelle Kwan only has to look at her legs and backside for evidence
she isn’t a serious figure skater this year.
“I have a lack of bruises on my body right now,” Kwan said. “I can’t remember a day when I was competing or training that I wasn’t getting bruises from falling.”
The skating falls would come from practicing triple jumps, which Kwan has not attempted in the five months since undergoing surgery to repair a torn labrum in her right hip. The few bruises she has acquired recently came from tumbles while snowboarding in the Colorado mountains ...
For the first time since 1993, ... Kwan has not needed to prepare for the senior national championships, which begin Tuesday in Spokane, Wash. Never has she been so distant, both psychologically and physically, from the event she won a record nine times.
“It is kind of weird to be so disconnected,” she said before leaving for China and her debut as the United States’ first Public Diplomacy Envoy.
Kwan... has been traveling with Under Secretary of State Karen Hughes and meeting with Chinese students of all ages.
“I want to take her everywhere,” Hughes said via telephone Monday from Guangzhou. “In Beijing and here, people recognize her and are very proud of her. Young people relate and respond to her.”
...
In barely one term at the University of Denver ... Kwan’s intellectual curiosity has increased dramatically. Courses in Mandarin, political science and international relations have led her to seek clarity about things she never had time to understand in her dozens of international trips as a skater.
“All the cultures I’ve seen, you take it all in but you never know how to organize it,” she said. “Now I can apply the specific knowledge I’ve gained to help make sense of what I see and smell and taste and hear.”
...
Though five-time world champion Kwan, 26, is unlikely to realize her biggest dream, an Olympic gold medal, she is not ready to give up on competitive skating. She returned to the ice in December and found that not only did she miss the intensity of getting ready for nationals but that she still has the “inner oomph” that drives successful athletes as well.
As immersed as she is in life at the university, taking 19 units in the fall quarter ... Kwan has made no commitments beyond the winter term.
She may leave school in the spring to tour with Champions on Ice, she may stay in school and tour on weekends, or she may simply stay in school. She may study in Beijing or Shanghai next summer.
...
Kwan spent all last year under time constraints. She hoped the pain she felt in her hip would abate, then agonized over how she would have felt if it had disappeared immediately after she pulled out of the Winter Games. Neither happened.
“It still was hard to watch the Olympics,” she said. “But I can’t look back. The only thing I regret was being hurt.”
Bruises would have been OK.
By Philip Hersh
Chicago Tribune
Out of competition for now, Michelle Kwan is into State Department duties and schoolwork. Michelle Kwan only has to look at her legs and backside for evidence
she isn’t a serious figure skater this year.
“I have a lack of bruises on my body right now,” Kwan said. “I can’t remember a day when I was competing or training that I wasn’t getting bruises from falling.”
The skating falls would come from practicing triple jumps, which Kwan has not attempted in the five months since undergoing surgery to repair a torn labrum in her right hip. The few bruises she has acquired recently came from tumbles while snowboarding in the Colorado mountains ...
For the first time since 1993, ... Kwan has not needed to prepare for the senior national championships, which begin Tuesday in Spokane, Wash. Never has she been so distant, both psychologically and physically, from the event she won a record nine times.
“It is kind of weird to be so disconnected,” she said before leaving for China and her debut as the United States’ first Public Diplomacy Envoy.
Kwan... has been traveling with Under Secretary of State Karen Hughes and meeting with Chinese students of all ages.
“I want to take her everywhere,” Hughes said via telephone Monday from Guangzhou. “In Beijing and here, people recognize her and are very proud of her. Young people relate and respond to her.”
...
In barely one term at the University of Denver ... Kwan’s intellectual curiosity has increased dramatically. Courses in Mandarin, political science and international relations have led her to seek clarity about things she never had time to understand in her dozens of international trips as a skater.
“All the cultures I’ve seen, you take it all in but you never know how to organize it,” she said. “Now I can apply the specific knowledge I’ve gained to help make sense of what I see and smell and taste and hear.”
...
Though five-time world champion Kwan, 26, is unlikely to realize her biggest dream, an Olympic gold medal, she is not ready to give up on competitive skating. She returned to the ice in December and found that not only did she miss the intensity of getting ready for nationals but that she still has the “inner oomph” that drives successful athletes as well.
As immersed as she is in life at the university, taking 19 units in the fall quarter ... Kwan has made no commitments beyond the winter term.
She may leave school in the spring to tour with Champions on Ice, she may stay in school and tour on weekends, or she may simply stay in school. She may study in Beijing or Shanghai next summer.
...
Kwan spent all last year under time constraints. She hoped the pain she felt in her hip would abate, then agonized over how she would have felt if it had disappeared immediately after she pulled out of the Winter Games. Neither happened.
“It still was hard to watch the Olympics,” she said. “But I can’t look back. The only thing I regret was being hurt.”
Bruises would have been OK.
