Sarah Hughes

This article is about the figure skater. For a lawyer, see Sarah T. Hughes , for a beach volleyball player, see Sara Hughes .

Sarah Hughes
Full name	Sarah Elizabeth Hughes
nation	United States
birthday	2nd May 1985 (age 35)
place of birth	Manhasset, New York
size	160 cm
Career
society	Skating Club of New York
Trainer	Robin Wagner
status	resigned
End of career	2003
Medal table
Olympic medals 1 × 0 × 0 × World Cup medals 0 × 0 × 1 ×
winter Olympics gold Salt Lake City 2002 Ladies  World figure skating championships bronze Vancouver 2001 Ladies

Sarah Hughes (born May 2, 1985 in Manhasset , Long Island , New York ) is a former American figure skater who started in a single run . She is the Olympic champion of 2002 .

Career

Hughes is the fourth of six children of American Amy Pastarnack, a breast cancer survivor of Jewish faith, and John Hughes, a Canadian of Irish descent who was the captain of the 1970 NCAA champions, Cornell University's ice hockey team . Her younger sister Emily was also a figure skater and participated in the 2006 Olympics.
Having experienced her mother's illness, Hughes is committed to breast cancer screening . She also enables free training lessons for girls in Harlem , New York.

Hughes started figure skating at the age of three. Her trainer was Robin Wagner , who she looked after until she took part in the Junior World Championship. In 1998 she became the US Junior Champion. She played her first national championship in the seniors a year later and finished in fourth place. In the same year she won the silver medal at the junior world championship and also took part in her first world championship in the seniors , as the runner-up in the national championships, Naomi Nari Nam , who would have actually qualified, was too young. Hughes was actually too young, but had already competed in the Junior World Championship, so this rule no longer applied to her. She finished the world championship in seventh place.

In 2000 she came third for the first time on the podium at the national championships . At the World Cup , she was able to improve by two places to fifth compared to the previous year.

In 2001 she was US runner-up behind Michelle Kwan and won her first and only World Championship medal in Vancouver with bronze behind Kwan and Irina Sluzkaja .

2002 Winter Olympics

Sarah Hughes meeting President George W. Bush in the Oval Office in 2002 . Far left her mother, Amy Hughes, and far right her trainer Robin Wagner

2002 was her most successful year. With third place in the national championships behind Michelle Kwan and Sasha Cohen , she qualified for the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City . There she was in fourth place after the short program. In her freestyle she landed seven triple jumps, including two triple-triple combinations. Hughes won the freestyle (with five to four judges' votes against Irina Sluzkaja) and, since those who placed before her made mistakes, also Olympic gold. Russia protested the result, but it was rejected. Hughes did not participate in the next World Cup. Her biography "Sudden Champion: The Sarah Hughes Story", written by Richard Krawiec, was published later this year.

Hughes was since Magda Julin (1920) the first Olympic champion in women's figure skating , who had never been world champion before and never became world champion afterwards. She is also the first US woman to win this title to never be a national champion.

In 2003 Hughes was US runner-up and finished sixth in her last world championship . She then ended her competitive career and began studying at Yale University . In the 2004/05 season she took a break from studies and ran an ice revue. In 2009 she graduated from the university with a bachelor's degree in American Studies with a major in US Politics.

Sporting successes

Competition / season	1997/1998	1998/1999	1999/2000	2000/2001	2001/2002	2002/2003
winter Olympics					1.
World championships		7th	5.	3.		6th
Grand Prix Final				3.	3.
Junior World Figure Skating Championships		2.
American championships	1st J	4th	3.	2.	3.	2.

• J = juniors

Awards

• USOC Athlete of the Year 2002

Web links

Commons : Sarah Hughes  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Sarah Hughes in the database of the International Skating Union (English)
• Sarah Hughes in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )