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Life is golden for Sarah Hughes
The gold medal skater is riding a whirlwind of publicity. But she still does her own laundry and helps with the dishes when she's home.
By MICHELLE JONES, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 4, 2002
[AP photo]
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TAMPA -- With her astounding performance at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City this year, gold-medalist Sarah Hughes became America's Golden Girl.
But she'd long been a hometown hero, as the mayor of Great Neck told her when she returned to the Long Island, N.Y., town.
After the Olympics, 16-year-old Sarah was welcomed with a parade. A gold stripe lined the parade route, and store windows were decorated in gold for the champion, whose victory was all the sweeter for being unexpected.
"The parade was so much fun," Sarah said via cell phone last week on the way to a practice session. "They changed the name of the street from Middle Neck Road to Sarah Hughes Way."
Sarah may have stunned the world by beating the likes of Michelle Kwan and Irina Slutskaya, and she'll soon be gracing countless boxes of Wheaties, but she still does her own laundry and washes dishes.
"Not because I want to," she quipped.
In a house of six kids, everyone does their share. And in the Hughes home, almost everyone skates, encouraged by their dad, John Hughes, captain of the 1969-70 Cornell University hockey team. Hughes, now a lawyer in Manhattan, built a backyard rink that, while not figure-skating quality, was the scene of lots of hockey games and snowball fights, Sarah remembers.
For all the excitement of the past few months, it's also been a difficult time for the Hughes family, with mother Amy Hughes battling and recovering from breast cancer. She's now well enough to join her daughter for part of the Champions on Ice tour, which brings Sarah and a dozen other Olympians -- including bronze medalist Tim Goebel, Kwan and Slutskaya -- to the Ice Palace on Saturday.
Sarah is a junior at Great Neck North High School, where she takes a full load of honors courses. She keeps up with her academics working with tutors via e-mail and telephone.
"It was really crazy at school after winning," she said. "But it's calmed down quite a bit and is almost back to normal."
With all the excitement of her Feb. 21 Olympic victory and getting back into school, Sarah wasn't able to participate in the world championships in Nagano, Japan. But now she's back into her training routine.
"It is nice to have good friends who support me," she said. "Since I don't have structured days, I can't call them and talk every day. But when we get together it's like we were never apart."
Skating with the Champions on Ice Show will be different from competitions.
"Not as much pressure, but I still keep my practice and training schedules the same," she said.
"I won't do the triple-triple in the show," she said, referring to the back-to-back triple jumps, a combination of two jumps with triple rotations in the air. "But I think the audience will like my program. It's delicate, and it's classical ballet."
Sarah was the first woman ever to complete two triple-triple combinations at an Olympics.
The governor of New York, George Pataki, presented Sarah with her own car tag, emblazoned TRPL TRPL, to commemorate her feat.
Now all she has to do is turn 17, get her driver's license and get a car to go with the tag.
For the ice show, she will be skating to You'll Never Say Goodbye, a song she selected because people are always asking her if she will keep competing.
"This is what I do; I love it," she said.
At shows like Champions on Ice, there is normally more audience involvement than in competitions.
"Except for the Olympics," she said. "The audience really got involved; it was more like entertaining than competing."
Thrilling as the cheers are, Sarah says her frantic schedule can be overwhelming.
"Especially when I'm tired," she said. "I then take a look at what I'm doing and think if I'm going to get overwhelmed anyway, it may as well be because of skating."
Even with the gold medal, Sarah is working to improve her jumps and her artistic presentation.
"All skaters aspire to always improve artistically," she said.
Fellow Olympian Tim Goebel, another of the John Hancock skating stars, says he's got the same goal.
Called the "King of Quad," Goebel was the first American man to do a quadruple jump in competition and the first man in the world to land the quadruple Salchow. Since then he has landed the quad in every competition including this year's Winter Olympics, where he took the bronze medal, and the recent World Championships, where he won the silver.
Now that he's got the jumps nailed, "I'm now trying to improve artistically," he said in a recent telephone interview from El Segundo, Calif., where he trains.
"We have to prove it is not a fluke when we perform a flawless performance," the champion said. "The judges have to see it over and over again."
Goebel, 21, said the men's and women's events at the Olympics were judged accurately, even though controversy swirled around the pairs competition.
"I believe it (the men and women's competition) redeemed the sport in the eyes of the public," he said.
In the past, Olympians didn't join the ice show circuit until their competition days were over. These days, skaters such as Hughes and Goebel switch between both arenas, viewing skating as both sport and entertainment.
"It is a combination of both," he said. "We skate in the Olympics because it is a sport. Some people lose that perspective and focus on just the entertainment part. We do both."
At the World Championships in mid-March, Goebel was in fourth place going into the free skate portion. But his performance, skated to An American in Paris, won him the silver medal. The Gershwin tune was good to him, but Goebel says his favorite music is rock and electronic music.
"But I have to skate to what will work on the ice," he said. "I have to be sensitive to the music."
Fans may notice Goebel crossing himself as he comes off the ice, a sign of his deep faith. "I pray daily and go to church twice a week," said Goebel, a Roman Catholic. "It helps me in my daily life and in my training."
An only child, he and his mother Ginnie moved to California so he could train with Frank Carroll, Michelle Kwan's former coach. His father, Rich, remained in Chicago to support the family.
A few years ago his former coach, Carol Heiss-Jenkins, said if anyone could accomplish the quint, (five rotations in the air) it would be Goebel. But that's not a big goal.
"I do think it is physically possible," he said. "I do rotate faster than most skaters, but I have no plans for doing it any time soon."
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PREVIEW: John Hancock Champions on Ice, 2 p.m. Saturday at the Ice Palace, Tampa. Stars Sarah Hughes, Tim Goebel, Michelle Kwan, Irina Slutskaya, Alexei Yagudin, Evgeni Plushenka, Elvis Stoyko, Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz, Michael Weiss, Sasha Cohen, Nicole Bobek, Victor Petrenko and Surya Bonaly. Tickets: $30.25-$65.25. Call Ticketmaster at (813) 287-8844 or (727) 898-2100.
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