Word: skater
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...first time figure skater Sarah Hughes came face-to-face with Michelle Kwan, they weren't on the ice, but they might have been, for all the care that went into choreographing the meeting, at least on Hughes' part. Hughes had learned that Kwan, her idol, was competing near Hughes' home on New York's Long Island and would be dining at a local restaurant. Hughes couldn't let the opportunity pass and persuaded her older brothers and sister to eat with her at the same establishment. "I just wanted to go and eat at the same restaurant as Michelle...
...planned; each year she has bettered her rankings at both the national and the world championships. She covers the rink with more speed than Kwan and spins and jumps with more explosive energy. While Cohen does have the edge over Hughes in emotive prowess, Hughes is the more consistent skater...
...Yorker has proved herself a deft navigator of the skating circuit. She is a crafty competitor with enough international experience to know--and deliver--what the judges like to see. She bested both Kwan and Russian star Irina Slutskaya at an international competition in November, becoming the first U.S. skater to beat Kwan since Tara Lipinski did it at the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan...
...full-time coach, not to mention surrogate mother, mentor and confidant. Says Hughes: "She was always asking me whether I liked something. When you're 10, you always want to be the boss, and when someone asks you for your input, you get really excited." A onetime singles skater, Wagner connects with Hughes as both a former competitor and a coach, and their bond is undeniably strengthened by the amount of time the two spend together off the ice. Wagner picks up Hughes six days a week at a shopping-mall parking lot, as she has done for four years...
Once at the Ice House, the Long Islander shares the rink with Olympics-bound pairs champions from the U.S. and Russia, and it's all business. Training with pairs, who generate more speed than singles skaters, pushes Hughes to mimic that power. After soliciting feedback from judges last season, Wagner and Hughes devoted the summer to addressing two criticisms of Hughes' skating--her still nascent expressiveness and her faulty technique on the triple Lutz jump, one of the most challenging leaps a female skater makes (only the triple Axel is more difficult). Hughes was slipping badly onto the wrong blade...