Michelle Kwan

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Michelle Kwan figure skating
Michelle Kwan, 2006
Full name Michelle Wing Kwan
nation United StatesUnited States United States
birthday July 7, 1980
place of birth Torrance, California
size 157 cm
Weight 49 kg
Career
society Los Angeles FSC
Trainer Rafael Harutjunjan, Frank Carroll,
Scott Williams
choreographer Tatjana Tarasowa, Lori Nichol,
Nikolai Morosow, Sarah Kawahara,
Peter Oppegard, Karen Kwan,
Christopher Dean
status resigned
End of career 2006
Medal table
Olympic medals 0 × gold 1 × silver 1 × bronze
World Cup medals 5 × gold 3 × silver 1 × bronze
Olympic rings winter Olympics
silver Nagano 1998 Ladies
bronze Salt Lake City 2002 Ladies
ISU World figure skating championships
gold Edmonton 1996 Ladies
silver Lausanne 1997 Ladies
gold Minneapolis 1998 Ladies
silver Helsinki 1999 Ladies
gold Nice 2000 Ladies
gold Vancouver 2001 Ladies
silver Nagano 2002 Ladies
gold Washington 2003 Ladies
bronze Dortmund 2004 Ladies
 

Michelle Wing Kwan (Kwan Ying Shan, Chinese  關穎珊 , Pinyin Guān Yǐngshān ; born July 7, 1980 in Torrance , California , USA ) is an American figure skater who started in a single run. She is the world champion of 1996 , 1998 , 2000 , 2001 and 2003 .

Personal

Michelle Kwan is the third child of Danny Kwan and Estella Kwan, both Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong . At the age of five, Kwan took an interest in figure skating through her sister Karen, who was a figure skater, and her brother Ron, who played ice hockey. She started professional training with her sister Karen at the age of eight. Two years later, the family could no longer afford to pay for the training hours. However, someone from the club where the sisters trained, the Los Angeles Figure Skating Club, agreed to support them financially.

From the eighth grade onwards, Kwan was taught at home. From 1998 she studied for a year at UCLA , in autumn 2006 she went to the University of Denver . In June 2009 she received her bachelor's degree in International Studies and Political Science . She then began studying International Relations at Tufts University .

Figure skating career

In 1991 Michelle Kwan and her sister Karen began training with the renowned coach Frank Carroll . In 1993 Kwan played her first national championships in the seniors and finished sixth. A year later she was US runner-up behind Tonya Harding in Detroit , which she qualified for the first time for international competitions, including the Olympic Games in Lillehammer . Last year's US champion, Nancy Kerrigan , was attacked with an iron bar after training for this championship, which prevented her participation in the national championship. Thereupon the association gave her the second place in the Olympic Games instead of the 13-year-old Kwan. Kwan traveled to Norway as a substitute runner, but was not used. It was only after the Games that it was found out that the attack was initiated by Tonya Harding. The title was subsequently withdrawn from Harding, but remained vacant. Kwan won in Colorado Springs , the World Junior Championship and took a little later to their first World Cup in the senior part. This took place in Chiba, Japan. After Harding's lifelong ban, Kerrigan's resignation and Nicole Bobek's failed qualification, she was the only US participant and had to make it into the top ten to secure a second starting place for the USA for the next World Cup, which she did with succeeded in eighth place.

In 1995 Kwan had to bend surprisingly to Nicole Bobek at the US championships because of problems with the Lutz jump in the short program as well as the freestyle and thus became runner-up again. At the World Championships in Birmingham she landed seven triple jumps in the freestyle and ended up fourth, one place behind Bobek, who won bronze.

After 1995, Kwan developed a more adult, artistic style and also improved her speed and jumping technique. For this she chose heavier choreographies. This paid off and heralded her international breakthrough. In 1996 she became US champion for the first time in San José and world champion for the first time in Edmonton . She beat the reigning world champion Chen Lu from China in a tight decision in which both got two top marks for their presentation in the freestyle. Kwan also won the first ever Grand Prix final in Paris .

In 1997, Kwan struggled with difficulty jumping due to growth spurts and problems with her skates. In her freestyle at the national championships in Nashville , she fell twice and stumbled once. So she lost her title to 14-year-old Tara Lipinski . She also had to admit defeat to her compatriot at the Grand Prix final in Hamilton and the World Championship in Lausanne .

The 1997/1998 season started well for her, with wins at Skate America and Skate Canada , but then suffered a fatigue fracture in her foot. At the 1998 national championships in Lipinski's hometown of Philadelphia, she showed an achievement that many consider to be the technical and artistic climax of their careers. In the short program she ran to Rachmaninov's 3rd Piano Concerto and in the freestyle to William Alwyn's “Lyra Angelica”. For her short program she received the top grade 6.0 in the presentation from seven of the nine judges and in the freestyle for her presentation even from eight of the nine judges. There were judges who were so touched that they burst into tears. The programs were choreographed by Lori Nichol . Kwan's performance was rated as the best ever shown at US championships and then she went to the Nagano Olympics as the favorite . There Kwan won the short program ahead of Lipinski and a victory in the freestyle or a better placement than Lipinski would have been enough for her to win gold. She showed a solid freestyle performance with seven triple jumps. She received 5.9 grades throughout for her presentation, 5.7 and 5.8 grades in the technical segment, which left some room for Lipinski in the technical area. Lipinski ran her freestyle last. Like Kwan, she showed seven triple jumps, but including a triple-Rittberger-triple-Rittberger combination and a triple- toe loop-half- Rittberger- triple- Salchow combination. Lipinski got higher technical ratings and won the freestyle, as well as the gold medal before Michelle Kwan. Lipinski and the third placed at the Olympic Games Chen Lu then ended their careers and Kwan won the subsequent World Cup in Minneapolis ahead of the Russians Irina Sluzkaja and Marija Butyrskaja , who became their main competitors in the next few years. Kwan won both the short program and the freestyle.

In 1999 Kwan defended her title at the US championships against a weak field. She managed to defend her national title until 2005. At the World Championships in Helsinki she did not show her best performance and lost to Marija Butyrskaja.

At the 2000 World Cup in Nice , Kwan was behind Butyrskaya and Sluzkaya after the short program. She won the freestyle with seven triple jumps and since Butyrskaja was still placed behind her compatriot with her freestyle, it was enough for Kwan to her third world championship title.

She won her fourth world title a year later in Vancouver . In the short program she was still behind Sluzkaja, but she won the freestyle ahead of her, again landing seven triple jumps, including a triple toe-toe-to-toe-toe combination. In the fall of 2001, Kwan ended the collaboration with Frank Carroll. In December, Kwan lost the Grand Prix final for the third time in a row against Irina Sluzkaya.

Michelle Kwan, 2006

As a US champion, Kwan traveled to the Salt Lake City Olympics with runner-up Sasha Cohen and third-placed Sarah Hughes . Kwan and Sluzkaja were considered favorites for the gold medal. Kwan won the short program just ahead of Slutskaya. Cohen and Hughes were in third and fourth places. In the freestyle, Kwan landed her combination on both feet and fell on the triple flip. She fell back to third place in the overall standings, while her young compatriot Sarah Hughes won the controversial gold ahead of Irina Sluzkaja. At the World Championships in Nagano Kwan won silver behind Sluzkaja.

In the years after the 2002 Olympic Games, Kwan stepped shorter and only played one Grand Prix event in the fall of 2002 to 2004. Under her new coach Scott Williams , she won her fifth and final world championship title in Washington in 2003 . Then she switched to Rafael Harutjunjan , with whom she tried to raise the technical level of her programs. At the national championships in 2004 she got the 6.0 seven times in the presentation. At the 2004 World Cup in Dortmund she got deductions for her short program because it was two seconds over the time limit. From fourth place she started the freestyle. She showed a conservative performance with five triple jumps and got the last 6.0 ever awarded, because after that the International Skating Union introduced a new scoring system. She finished the freestyle in second place and finally won the bronze medal behind Shizuka Arakawa, who had shown seven triple jumps including two triple-triple-double combinations, and Sasha Cohen.

For the 2004/2005 season, Kwan hired Christopher Dean as a choreographer and ran her freestyle to Ravel's Boléro , with which Dean and his partner Jayne Torvill had made ice dance history two decades earlier . At the US championships, she won her ninth and final title, her eighth in a row and drew level with the previous sole record holder Maribel Vinson . Vinson was the coach of Frank Carroll, who in turn led to numerous successes as coach Kwan. At the 2005 World Cup in Moscow , Kwan was third after the short program. In her freestyle she fell in the triple Salchow and landed the triple Lutz on both legs. Although she was third in both the short program and the freestyle, she was only fourth overall, 0.37 points behind the bronze rank. It was the first time since 1995 that there was a world championship podium without Michelle Kwan.

Kwan tried to qualify for the 2006 Olympic Games in Turin to win the Olympic gold she was missing. But numerous injuries finally forced her to withdraw after much back and forth. However, she has not yet announced the end of her career. In August 2006, she underwent hip surgery. In 2007 she announced that she wanted to decide in 2009 whether she would take part in the 2010 Olympic Games . She did not, however, and continued her studies.

Summary

With five world championship titles , Kwan is together with her compatriot Carol Heiss and the Austrian Herma Szabó the second most successful figure skater at world championships after Sonja Henie . In 2003, Kwan became the first woman since Carol Heiss in 1960 to win a fifth world title. However, she is also the only woman who, with at least five World Cup victories, remained without Olympic gold . With nine national championship titles, she and Maribel Vinson hold the record in women's competition at US championships. Kwan received the highest grade of 6.0 57 times in her career.

Results

Competition / season 1992/93 1993/94 1994/95 1995/96 1996/97 1997/98 1998/99 1999/00 2000/01 2001/02 2002/03 2003/04 2004/05 2005/06
winter Olympics 2. 3. Z
World championships 8th. 4th 1. 2. 1. 2. 1. 1. 2. 1. 3. 4th
Grand Prix Final 1. 2. 2. 2. 2.
Junior World Championships 1.
American championships 6th 2. 2. 1. 2. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1.
  • Z = withdrawn

Awards

Works

Web links

Commons : Michelle Kwan  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.usatoday.com/olympics/owg98/og6/ogfs618.htm
  2. ↑ http://sports.jrank.org/pages/2658/Kwan-Michelle-Astounding-Performance-at-1998-Nationals.html
personal data
SURNAME Kwan, Michelle
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kwan, Michelle Wing (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American figure skater
DATE OF BIRTH July 7, 1980
PLACE OF BIRTH Torrance , California, USA