Michelle Kwan
By Vy Ha Le
On July 7th, 1980, in Torrance, California, an American figure skater was born. Her name was Michelle Kwan. She was the third child of Danny and Estella Kwan.
She first became interested in figure skating at age 5, when her older siblings, Ron who is an ice hockey player and Karen who was a figure skater, first bought her onto the ice. From then on, her love for ice-skating increased.
When Michelle was 8 years old, Karen and her began serious training. They would practice 3-4 hours a day, waking up at 3:00 AM to train before school. After school, they would come back and train some more. Pretty soon, their training time at the ice rink increased and so did the payment. To afford the rink time and coaching fees, Michelle’s mother took on a second job and her father worked extra hours. But was their problem over? No. Eventually, they decided to sell their house. Unfortunately, that still wasn’t enough to finance the skating fees.
By the time Michelle reached the age of 10, her family could no longer afford a coach. Fortunately, a member of the Los Angeles Figure Skating Club offered them financial assistance. That allowed Michelle to come train at the Ice Castle International Training Center in Lake Arrowhead, California.
Later on in her life, a person named Frank Carroll coached Michelle. After Frank taught her for one year, Michelle was was eleven years old, entered Junior U.S. Nationals and came in 9th place. At age twelve, she became a senior-level figure skater. At her first senior U.S. championships, she placed 6th place. Later in that same year, she won the 1994 World Junior title.
As for Michelle’s education, she was homeschooled when she was 13 years old. Later, she attended Soleado Elementary School in Palos Verdes, California. In 1999, she graduated from Rim of the World high school and attended UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) for one year in the fall of 2006. Then, she transferred to University of Denver.
Even though Michelle is busy with figure skating, she was able to guest starred on some TV shows such as The Simpsons, Family Guy, Arthur, Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, and she provided her voice in the movie Mulan 2. She also appeared as an announcer in the film Ice Princess with her fellow figure skater Brian Boitano.
As a figure skater, Michelle won nine U.S. championships, five World championships and 2 Olympic medals. In 2005, her family opened the EastWest Ice Palace in Artesia, California. There, the ice rink houses many of her skating medals.
During Chinese President Hu’s 2006 visit to the United States, Michelle Kwan dined with the U.S. President, George W. Bush and President Hu Jintao.
Michelle represented American values especially to young people and sports enthusiasts and is expected to travel all over. Her first trip overseas was to China on January 17th to the 25th in the year of Michelle represented American values especially to young people and sports enthusiasts and is expected to travel all over. Her first trip overseas was to China on January 17th to the 25th in the year of 2007.
Besides being a skater and being on TV, she was also an author. The books that she wrote include The Winning Attitude, What it Takes to be a Champion, and at age 17, she wrote an autobiography called Hear of a Champion.
Information from: Michelle Kwan. 7 May 2007. 9 May 2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Kwan.
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