Following an Icy Road : World Champion Michelle Kwan Still Has the Drive to Succeed

There are three words that give one pause when spoken by Danny Kwan. “Michelle, you drive.” Then he hands his recently-licensed daughter the keys to the family’s Toyota van, climbs into the seat on the passenger’s side and gives a visitor a buckle-your-seat-belts smile.

This short trip, from the Ice Castle International rink where Michelle Kwan trains at Lake Arrowhead to the quaint village for lunch, should not be an adventure. After all, Kwan, 16, is one of the coolest young women in the history of the cold, cold world of figure skating. She angled her way into her first senior national championships at age 12, played a much-publicized third lead in the Tonya-Nancy spectacle as the U.S. alternate to the 1994 Winter Olympics at 13 and was fourth in the world at 14.

Last winter, the Torrance teenager and her coach, Frank Carroll, huddled in a janitor’s closet at the Edmonton Coliseum while she tried to focus on her upcoming long program but could not help but hear the public address announcer call out the scores of China’s defending world champion, Chen Lu. Included were two perfect 6.0s.

Knowing she needed to at least match, Kwan not only earned two sixes but skated a program as Biblical seductress Salome that Carroll said would be remembered alongside Katarina Witt’s Carmen and Oksana Baiul’s Black Swan and became, at 15, the third-youngest world champion ever.

Kwan said afterward that she hoped never again to face a challenge as stressful. Then came her driving test last summer, her first one.

Asked about the experience during a recent conference call with the North American media arranged by the U.S. Olympic Committee, Kwan could be felt blushing over the telephone.

“The first time was so bad, yuck,” she said. “I’ve never been so nervous in my life. Worlds was easier than taking my test. Isn’t that weird? I was sweating. My hands were gripping the wheel. Driving is supposed to be easy and fun. It wasn’t that day.

“My sister felt sorry for me, but my brother was laughing so hard. Everybody was. It’s so embarrassing to tell anybody.”

It was more humorous to her after returning to the San Bernardino DMV a couple of months later and passing her test. Rinks around the world, including the one in Springfield, Mass., where she will open the new season Friday and Saturday at Skate America, might still be reluctant to give her the keys to the Zamboni. But she handles the small, winding roads of Lake Arrowhead with ease.

Her only problem on this crisp, October afternoon is in negotiating the parking at the crowded Lake Arrowhead Village lot. She finally finds a space large enough for the van and pulls in crookedly, although not over the lines. No perfect 6.0, maybe a 5.7. Her father asks her to try again, but there is so much traffic in the aisle behind her that she cannot pull out. He shrugs and tells her to leave it, which she is happy to do.

Besides earning her driver’s license, this has been a year of significant changes for Kwan. During training at Ice Castle, she no longer skates alongside sister Karen, who graduated from high school and is now enrolled at Boston University, but rival Nicole Bobek, the 1995 national champion who wants to take the title back from Kwan next February. She must also become accustomed to being recognized as the world champion. Or almost recognized.

“A lot of people know me, but they’re not quite sure where from,” she says. “They say, ‘Are you from my school or something?’ I say, ‘Maybe. Where do you go to school?’ Or they call me Nancy Kwan, like the film actress. I guess they get Nancy Kerrigan and Michelle Kwan mixed up.”

Another change is of more concern to her father. “She’s growing up,” he says. “It scares me. But I know we’re going to have to let her go, like we did Karen.”

As a 12-year-old in 1993, Kwan went behind her coach’s back and tricked her father into letting her take the required tests to become a senior after only one season as a junior. With the 1994 Winter Games in Norway fast approaching, she believed there was no other way to achieve her goal of competing in five Olympics. She passed the tests, finished a remarkable sixth in her first nationals and would have skated in the Olympics a year later if Tonya Harding had pleaded guilty a month earlier for conspiring to cover up the attack on Kerrigan.

Kwan still speaks of skating in four Olympics.

“I’ll only be 25 in 2006,” she says.

But she has other goals on her mind as well. Through tutoring and correspondence courses in subjects such as biology, algebra II and French III, she is amid her junior year in high school with grades high enough to make her start thinking about going to Harvard in a couple of years. She knows that she could continue her skating career in Boston, although with a different coach. Karen, fifth in the national championships last year under Carroll, is skating there for former men’s national runner-up Mark Mitchell. Michelle also knows that the curriculum at Harvard would be more demanding than she now faces and wonders out loud about the compromises she would find necessary.

“Skating can’t wait; education can’t wait,” she says. “So what do I do?”

As her outlook has matured, so has her body. Early last season, Carroll and choreographer Lori Nichol were criticized for giving Kwan the role of Salome, whose seductive dance of seven veils earned her the head of John the Baptist from King Herod. Kwan, who had never even worn makeup, appeared like a little girl dressing up in her mother’s clothes. But by the end of the season, she had grown into the part.

This season, say observers who saw Kwan unveil her new programs in a made-for-television competition earlier this month in Edmonton, she appears natural in the short program as Desdemona, the ill-fated lover of Othello, and in the long program as a queen whose palace is the Taj Mahal.

“She’s not a kid anymore,” Carroll says. “She’s definitely a young lady.”

In the long program, the music by Azerbajani composer Fikret Amirov conjures up North Africa and the Near East--exotic, mysterious, dramatic. “A little creepy at times, soft and beautiful at others,” Kwan says.

More memorable, though, is the extremely demanding routine that goes with it. Kwan does the same triple jumps that she did last season, but she does three of them in the final minute of the four-minute program. In all, there not only are seven triple jumps, including two in combination, but four other ballet-style jumps known as jetes. She has a footwork sequence in the middle but no poses that usually are built into programs to give the skaters chances to catch their breath.

“For four minutes, there are no stops,” says her agent, Shep Goldberg. “The audience will be gasping if she pulls it off.”

So might Kwan.

“I’m just beginning to do complete run-throughs,” she says. “You should check on me in about a week to see if I’m still alive.”

Another challenge is involved, Carroll says. “Salome was a breakthrough program for women’s skating,” he says. “But Michelle’s really pushing herself because she feels she has to be that good again or even better. I tell her she doesn’t have to be that good every year, just skate well. It’s hard enough being the world champion, with everyone expecting you to skate perfectly every time out. I’d like to take some of the pressure off.”

Kwan is favored to repeat as world champion. Chen has problems with her coach and federation and recently was called home to China from her training site in Burbank; Russia’s Irina Slutskaya is energetic but has neither Kwan’s poise nor grace; Japan’s Midori Ito is suspect under pressure; and France’s Surya Bonaly is injured. So is Bobek, whose back injury might delay the start of her season.

There was speculation that Bobek’s move to Lake Arrowhead to train under Carlo Fassi, who coached Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill and Jill Trenary, would distract Kwan.

But her father says, “The only time it’s a distraction is when people ask if it’s a distraction.”

Says Michelle: “Why should I shoot down somebody else’s opportunity to get better? It’s not my ice rink. Besides, sometimes it’s good to have competition in the rink. It’ll keep me from letting down.”

Kwan is secure, a condition that extends to her bank account. Neither she nor her father will speak in detail about finances, but it has been estimated that she earned as much as $1 million in the last year in prize money, appearance fees and endorsements.

She also charges her father a fine for smoking.

“Every time I catch him, he has to pay me $20,” she says. “But he still smokes. I’m thinking about upping it by five times, but that’s only $100.”

“Michelle!” Danny says, “A hundred dollars is a lot of money.”

A lot of money to her is the $150,000 that the men’s world champion, Todd Eldredge, recently spent on a new Ferrari. But she says she would rather not have one.

“I’d probably put a big dent in it,” she says. “It’s like a six-shift. That wouldn’t be good for me.”