Tag: Figure Skating

Longtime figure skating coach Frank Carroll, who over the course of a 60-year career helped guide six Olympic medalists at 10 Winter Games, including Michelle Kwan and Evan Lysacek, died Sunday. He was 85.

U.S. Figure Skating, with whom Carroll worked closely for decades, announced his death. It said Carroll died Sunday “after a battle with cancer.”

With a sharp wit and even sharper sense of humor, Carroll was instrumental in the success of American standouts such as Kwan, Lysacek and Linda Fratianne. He retired from coaching in August 2018, not long after his 80th birthday.

“He changed the lives of every skater and parent he came across,” Kwan said at the time.

Carroll, the younger of two children, was born on July 11, 1938, to a shop teacher father and city clerk mother. He was inspired by two-time Olympic champion Dick Button to learn to skate on the frozen ponds near his hometown of Worcester, Massachusetts, and later attended Holy Cross, where he graduated in 1960 with a degree in sociology.

Yet it was on the ice where Carroll showed such a brilliant ability to absorb, and pass along, his vast knowledge. Much of it was gleaned from his own first coach, Maribel Vinson-Owen, the two-time world medalist and 1932 Olympic bronze medalist.

“She taught me great discipline, about being on time, always showing up, never backing out, not saying, ‘Oh, I don’t feel well today,’” Carroll recalled later in life. “You go to the rink and you never complain about the ice.”

Carroll won a junior bronze medal at the U.S. championships before turning professional and skating with Ice Follies, a popular touring show at the time that featured elaborate productions. Carroll also dabbled in acting before getting into coaching, despite having been accepted into the law school at the University of San Francisco.

His first big stars were Mark Cockerell, the 1976 world junior champion, and Fratianne, who would win world senior titles in 1977 and ’79. But it was Kwan, the daughter of Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong, who launched Carroll to stardom in his own right. She would win five world championships along with silver and bronze medals at the Winter Olympics.

Carroll also coached Tim Goebel, Gracie Gold and Denis Ten to Olympic medals. His lone champion was Lysacek, whose stirring free skate at the 2010 Vancouver Games was enough to beat out Russia’s Evgeni Plushenko for the gold medal.

Lysacek honored his coach afterward with the Order of Ikkos medal from the U.S. Olympic Committee, which is designed to be a symbol of excellence in coaching as represented by an athlete’s achievement as an Olympic medalist.

“He made me believe that I could skate perfectly in the Olympics,” Lysacek said after the 2010 Games. “When I first heard the results, he was the first person I thought about. … He owns just as much or more of my Olympic gold medal as I do.”

Carroll was inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 1996 and the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2007.

Funeral arrangements were not available, but donations can be made in Carroll’s honor to the Memorial Fund. It was created after the 1961 crash of a flight from New York to Brussels, Belgium, that killed the entire U.S. figure skating team on its way to the world championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Many of Carroll’s friends and coaches were aboard the plane.

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AP Olympics https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

Ilia Malinin established such a big lead after his peerless short program at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships that the phenom’s free skate Sunday was less a competition and more a coronation.

Even though kings sometimes fall down.

After starting his program with a textbook quad axel — a jump only Malinin has landed in competition — he doubled a planned quad loop, fell on a quad lutz and doubled another planned quad. But even with those miscues, the 19-year-old “Quad God” was still nearly 30 points better than the rest of the competition, cruising to his second consecutive national championship.

“Even though it wasn’t what I wished for,” he said, “it was a fun experience. I enjoyed having the crowd with me every step.”

Malinin finished with 294.35 points, well below the world-leading score of 314.66 points he had at the Grand Prix Final in December. But it was well ahead of Jason Brown in second with 264.50 points, while Camden Pulkinen soared from fifth after his short program into the bronze-medal position with 262.33 points.

Malinin had been bothered coming into nationals by a boot problem, and he resorted to wearing an old pair that he used at the Grand Prix Final. And with that issue still in the back of his mind, he wasn’t sure whether he would try the quad axel.

He did. And he landed it in spectacular fashion.

The opening pass to his free skate, set to music from the HBO hit series “Succession,” had a base value of 12.5 points, but it was so well done that he scored more than 16 points on that element alone. He followed with a perfect quad lutz before a mistake on his planned quad loop, which he turned into a double that appeared to slow down his momentum.

Malinin recovered to land a quad salchow before falling on his quad lutz. And after doubling his planned quad toe loop, he came back to land a triple lutz-triple axel-triple toe sequence that scored 21-plus points and ended his program on a high note.

Still, the perfectionist in Malinin was evident the moment he stepped off the ice inside Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio, and began discussing the miscues with his father, Roman Skorniakov, a former Uzbekistani national champion.

Malinin, who won Skate America and was second at Grand Prix de France, was planning to use nationals as a warmup for the world championships in March. He finished third a year ago and will be considered among the favorites in Montreal.

“I definitely noticed a lot of improvement of just looking at the audience, having that connection between my own program and the audience,” he said, “and adding those cleaner lines and making everything neater — that’s the next step going to worlds.”

The biggest drama on the final day of the U.S. championships was who would take silver and bronze.

The 29-year-old Brown, performing his “The Impossible Dream” program from last year, opened with two brilliant triple axels — one in sequence with a double — after missing the same jump during his short program. He struggled with a combination later in the program, and he singled a planned double axel, but the fan favorite was still pleased with his performance.

“Grit over perfection,” he told his coach, Tracy Wilson, after stepping off the ice.

“This was very special,” Brown added later. “The crowd was awesome, and just the support and energy helped that much more.”

Brown earned the silver medal ahead of the 23-year-old Pulkinen, who performed his free skate to works by Giacomo Puccini and earned the best finish at senior nationals of his career. Pulkinen earned big points with a huge opening quad toe loop, and he had a strong triple axel later in his program that helped him land the bronze medal.

“I knew after the short it was a tight race,” Pulkinen said. “That’s what the audience likes to see: a tight race.”

U.S. Figure Skating announced later Sunday that Malinin, Brown and Pulkinen would be on the team it sends to worlds, while the duos of Emily Chan and Spencer Howe, national champs Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea, and Valentina Plazas and Maximiliano Fernandez would take part in the pairs event. Chan and Howe, who won the short program at nationals, made the team despite withdrawing before the free skate so that Howe could continue his recovery from shoulder surgery.

Ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates will try to defend their world title while competing alongside the American teams of Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko and Emily Bratti and Ian Somerville.

Amber Glenn and Isabeau Levito, who went 1-2 in the women’s competition at nationals, also will compete in Montreal.

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AP Sports: https://apnews.com/sports

American figure skater Ilia Malinin began his Grand Prix season in a familiar place.

Right at the top of the standings at Skate America.

The 18-year-old from Fairfax, Virginia, began the defense of his title with a brilliant short program Friday night to put a huge gap between himself and the rest of the field. Malinin was flawless on his three jump sequences, including a difficult quad lutz-triple toe combination, to score 104.06 points and earn a huge ovation at Credit Union of Texas Event Center in Allen, Texas.

Kevin Aymoz of France was second with 97.34 points and Shun Sato of Japan third with 91.61 points.

“I mean, I’m still kind of in shock. I was not expecting that,” said Malinin, who won both of his Grand Prix assignments in his senior debut last season. “Of course I was really prepared and in that zone. I was really glad I was able to do it.”

In the pairs competition, Annika Hocke and Robert Kunkel of Germany overcame her fall on the side-by-side triple salchow to score 63.59 points and take a slim lead over Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud of Canada.

The competition resumes Saturday with the men’s and pairs free skates, the rhythm dance and the women’s short program.

Malinin, the self-styled “quadg0d” on social media for his incredible leaping ability, spent most of the offseason working hard on his artistry. But the world bronze medalist showed Friday night that he can still do the jumps with uncanny ease.

Malinin began his short program, set to “Malagueña” by the Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona, with a quad toe loop in which he spun so fast he was a blur. Then came the quad lutz, the second-hardest jump behind the quad axel, and Malinin combined it with a triple toe loop to drive up his score. His triple axel looked easy given he is perfectly capable of doing a quad.

Oh, and he finished with his signature “Raspberry Twist,” a trick that he designed.

“I mean, it’s really a lot of fun for me to do,” said Malinin, one of the early favorites for the 2026 Winter Olympics, “especially in front of a crowd like that, to watch all those unique tricks I have to put out in a unique way,”

The question now is whether Malinin will try the quad axel in Saturday night’s free skate. The first to ever land the jump in competition showed it off in practice this week, but Malinin indicated he might keep the quad axel shelved so he can ensure a solid finish — ideally, a victory — that would help him earn enough points to qualify for the Grand Prix Final.

“I’m mainly focused on a solid theme program,” Malinin said, “but the Final, I may add it in there.”

Hocke and Kunkel have already had a busy season pairs season, the Germans finishing second at the Shanghai Trophy and third at the Nebelhorn Trophy and Lombardia Trophy, a pair of lower-tier Challenger Series events.

Pereira and Michaud were behind them with 63.22 points. Chelsea Liu and Balasz Nagy of the U.S. were third with 61.23 points, and fellow American pairs team Isabelle Martins and Ryan Bedard fourth with 52.92 for their short program.

“We’re in our fourth competition, so it feels like the middle of the season,” Hocke said. “We had one obvious big mistake — I fell on the sal — so that’s something we’re not happy about, but the rest we can be pretty proud of.”

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AP coverage of the Paris Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games