Ten and one-half weeks. Nearly three months of tedium, of days filled with practices at 10 a.m., 1:15 and 5:45 p.m. Of nights spent in front of the TV or noodling on the Internet.
What else can a single, 23-year-old woman do in the California mountains to pass time during the 74 days between the last competition, when she won an eighth national championship in Atlanta, and the next, beginning two weeks from now, when she will try to win a sixth world title in Dortmund, Germany?
“It gets a little boring up here,” Michelle Kwan said of life in isolated Lake Arrowhead, Calif., her training base.
It is a long haul between events, even for a figure skater who continues to prove she is an athlete for the long haul. Twelve years into an elite career among the most distinguished in her sport’s history, Kwan is literally and figuratively entitled to feel some tedium over the daily grind.
No wonder Kwan decided one day to try a couple triple axel jumps, just because she could. So what if she fell on a jump only one U.S woman ever has landed. At least it was something different.
“I just felt good that day,” she said, laughing.
And no wonder Kwan seemed a little down in a phone conversation after the second of her three practices last Thursday.
“You sound like you’ve had enough skating for this year,” she was told.
“I just had a difficult practice, I guess,” she answered.
Monday afternoon, Kwan called back, just to make sure her previous mood hadn’t left the wrong impression.
“I was kind of mad about skating that day,” she said.
It was one of those days, she explained, when coach Rafael Arutunian had been on her case. Kwan understood he was yelling for her own good. That didn’t make it easier.
“It’s the life of an athlete,” Kwan said. “We have to push our bodies. Rafael has to get good practices in.
“You try to cope with the mentality of one thing at a time, but it’s hard. I just wish it was more continuous.”
For the last two seasons, Kwan has been content with two big events a year–nationals and worlds. The idea was to have more time for things outside of skating. Kwan soon realized that to skate at the level she wants, especially as years of intense training wear on her body, there was little time for things outside skating or physical preparation to skate.
Kwan’s agent, Shep Goldberg, asked if she wanted to go to the Academy Awards. She declined.
“Who am I going to go with? I didn’t have a date,” she said.
“You’ve got to hook me up with somebody,” she added, laughing again. “I’m free.”
She returns to Los Angeles on weekends to spend time with her brother. Kwan was pinned in Lake Arrowhead by a snowstorm March 2 when sister Karen made her an aunt, giving birth to Olivia Colett Oppegard.
After a five-year absence, Kwan returned to train in the mountains last October, when she began working with Arutunian. She lived in hotels until she could stand it no longer and moved in late January into the house she owns in Lake Arrowhead.
The victory at nationals showed the collaboration with Arutunian was working. Kwan skated with fire of a rare intensity, covering unfinished areas of her free skate with a fierce will to win.
With 2002 world champion Irina Slutskaya of Russia sidelined by illness, Kwan’s principal rival at worlds figures to be U.S. teammate Sasha Cohen, yet to win a world medal.
“The ones that haven’t been on top of the podium are more aggressive,” Kwan said.
Another world title would leave Kwan alone in second place on the all-time list, behind only 10-time winner Sonja Henie of Norway. It would not make the road between now and the 2006 Olympics any easier.
“You feel this tension to be hard on yourself and keep pushing because people are out there training,” Kwan said. “Days like [last Thursday], it’s tough. I’m doing everything. I know I’m walking through it, but sometimes you can’t be `on’ and aggressive every day.”
She practices triple-triple jump combinations but is unlikely to try one at worlds. She doesn’t want to risk botching other things by putting too much emphasis on a combination not necessary for victory. Kwan hopes to show improvement from nationals in other areas–spins, footwork, speed.
“I think I’m at the point where everything is on schedule,” Kwan said. “It’s very sensitive, the next few weeks. Physically, I’m ready. Now it’s all a game in the mind.
“It’s pointless for me to be motivated right now. I’ve been in so many positions where I was so ready, and then it kind of plateaus.”
That may have happened in the Olympics, where she twice was the favorite and finished with silver and bronze medals. Then she had years, not just weeks, to think about it.
“I’m still trying to figure it out, find the perfect recipe,” she said. “It’s always changing the recipe. It’s a constant thing, a constant struggle. It’s the same program, same everything, but you can never repeat a performance. That’s what makes skating or any sport so interesting.”
