Word: kwan
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...such earthbound perseverance has emerged an amazing grace, with no trace of strain, as Kwan last month won the U.S. national title and the honor of leading America's women figure skaters to the Olympics next week. It was a victory that gave no evidence of the pain that shoots through her left foot when she lands one of those seemingly effortless triple jumps. The only expression on her face was that beatific smile, won by defiance of every sort of gravity, not just the earth's but the body's and the mind's as well, dangerous forces that...
...overcome fall after fall, and the memory of those falls, with the iron will to fly. Kwan skates three 45-min. sessions each day and sets goals for herself at each practice, devoting one session to the combination spin, improving the speed of the whirl and smoothing out the changes in direction, and another session to a jump. Kwan admits that when she has a "bad skate," her coach Frank Carroll will say, "It's O.K." But, she says, "I tell myself, 'You're not getting off the ice.' He knows I torture myself and put myself through all kinds...
...system booms their rivals' scores throughout the arena. As many as 40 min. can elapse between an on-ice warmup and a contestant's solo turn to compete. Some skaters plug in earphones, listening to whatever relaxes them, drowning out their bothers. (Lipinski tunes in to peppy dance mixes.) Kwan closes her eyes and visualizes herself skating a perfect program...
...Lipinski, a wizardly technician on the ice, says that during her long program, lasting 4 minutes, she doesn't think too hard about mechanics. "I try to keep the technical things in mind, but I don't think about it too much, because then you start to mess up." Kwan calls her competitive mode "emotional, yet unemotional," balancing the need to lose herself in the music and the movement yet remain in enough control to perform the difficult technical elements...
...Kwan knows what it is to lose control. The previous season was one of the hardest for her. She lost three major championships, including her national and world titles, in the space of two months. The defeats devastated her. Losing the nationals a year ago was the bitterest of all. She was the favorite for the gold medal, but a few minutes into her long program, she found herself sprawled on the ice after slipping out of a jump. After the first fall came another; then she had to put a hand down on the ice to steady herself after...