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by Alina Adams

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Saturday, January 28, 2006

MICHELLE KWAN

So Michelle Kwan is off to compete at her third Olympics. Nothing unexpected there, or undeserved.

Since I've already said everything I have to say on the subject of "should she or shouldn't she," here, I thought that instead of rehashing the argument, it would be fun to take a look back at my own personal favorite Michelle Kwan Figure Skating Mystery.

Twelve year old Michelle Kwan first made a name for herself in 1993, when she finished 6th at the U.S. Championship.

Only 9th in the Junior division a year earlier, Michelle spun a tale of waiting until coach Frank Carroll was out of town before disobeying his instructions and sneaking away to take the test qualifying her to compete as a Senior Lady. The story instantly became a fixture in the growing Kwan legend.

Except for one point no one has yet to address or explain.

In order to take the Senior Freeskating test, every contender needs to present a USFSA form signed by their club officer, and their coach. Otherwise, the test isn't valid. If she was disobeying Frank's instructions, who signed Michelle's form?

Did Michelle ask another coach to sign it and, if so, did that coach know he/she was disobeying Frank's instructions (coaches do talk among themselves, and it's not unreasonable that other coaches would have known Frank was planning to keep Michelle Junior another year).

Or did Michelle forge the signature herself? In which case her Senior Test is invalid... as is every title she won with it.

Your thoughts? Do we have a major scandal here?
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4 Comments:

  • At February 01, 2006 5:38 PM, Anonymous said…

    You have some very interesting thoughts about Michelle Kwan and her senior testing. Wouldn't you think that someone higher up or a commentator, i.e. Dick Button, would have commented on this before and brought it to everybody's attention? It sounds like you know people; can't you solve this mystery? I would like to know the answer too. No matter what the truth is, Michelle is still my favorite skater and I know that she can win gold at Olympics this year. She has nothing to lose: go for broke.

     
  • At February 02, 2006 12:27 PM, Anonymous said…

    Dick has a lot of other things on his mind...

    ;)

    ALINA

     
  • At March 03, 2006 4:51 PM, Anonymous said…

    I thought I heard that her father signed it.

     
  • At June 01, 2006 1:02 AM, Anonymous said…

    Given the fact that this is such a well-known fact about Michelle Kwan's skating career, (for example, they did a substatial fluff piece about it during the NBC broadcast of the 1994 World Championships), it seems to me that someone along the line would have noticed a problem, should one exist. If, as you suggest, someone forged a signature or if there were any other irregularity with the form, the powers that be would have figured it out and raised the red flag back then. Since they did not, I can reasonably conclude that it must not be a big deal. The alternative is that no one ever bothered to check, which I find difficult to believe. It is an interesting point, but in the overall scheme of things, unimportant, and after the fact. Not even the ASFSA has the gall to invalidate everything that Michelle Kwan has accomplished in the last 12 years because of some stupid paperwork.

     

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