Ice Skating

Any figure skating coach can teach students how to land a jump or perform a spiral. Not every coach sees his job extending to providing life lessons that skaters will rely on long after they stop performing sit spins and triple flips. Tom Zakrajsek believes that to mold champions he must first mold character, and the accolades his students have won seem to validate his approach. The 45-year-old Ohio native guided three skaters onto the U.S.

Brian Boitano loves to watch figure skating on television. He is, was, always will be a charismatic Olympian, a gold-medal winner with the entertainer's flair and the athlete's grit. He's not a coach at heart, in fact he's still a skater, at the age of 45, still doing exhibitions and showing off. Still, one afternoon when Boitano was watching Alissa Czisny in a competition on television Boitano had the thoughts of a coach. He saw in Czisny's face a tension and in her jumps tentativeness.

Two-time U.S. figure skating champion Christopher Bowman, known as "Bowman the Showman" for his crowd-pleasing skills and as "Hans Brinker From Hell" for his unruly lifestyle, was found dead at a North Hills motel Thursday afternoon. Bowman, a Hollywood native who had lived in the Midwest but returned here to coach skating about a year ago, was 40. Bowman was found shortly after noon inside the Budget Inn in the 9100 block of Sepulveda Boulevard.

For a year, Christopher Bowman had told John Baldwin Jr. he was coming home to Southern California, but he didn't follow through, and after a while Baldwin stopped believing him. Then, a few days before Baldwin was to leave for Tokyo to compete in the World Figure Skating Championships last March, Bowman called him, asking to be picked up at Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade. The man he saw was not the confident athlete who twice won the U.S.

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- The applause from a standing ovation barely had stopped echoing in Mirai Nagasu's ears when it was replaced by the sound of her cellphone ringing. The caller was a friend at Arcadia High, where Nagasu is a freshman. Once Nagasu thanked the caller for congratulating her on winning Thursday's short program at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, the two began talking about a boy at whom Nagasu was angry.

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- The international age-limit rule that prevents three of the top four finishers in the senior U.S. women's event from going to senior worlds probably will create a ferocious competition for berths on the U.S. team at the 2009 world championships at Staples Center.

It wasn't part of their routine, and Rena Inoue was puzzled. She and John Baldwin were taking their bows last Saturday after their finale at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, waving to the crowd as they had done hundreds of times. But when she turned to face another section of St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center, Baldwin wasn't beside her. He was down on one knee, reaching for her hands. "I thought at first he was tired or something," Inoue said. "I was looking at him like, 'What's going on?'

It's barely 7 a.m., but the Pickwick Ice Center in Burbank is a maze of skaters, some so newly awake that pillowcase creases are still imprinted on their faces. One girl in a pink-striped shirt and ponytail stands out. She soars toward the ceiling when she jumps and turns into a colorful blur when she spins, swift and sure and confident. Just like a champion. Which she is.

This is when figure skaters want to pique, not peak. When they put together new costumes, music and a summer's worth of work and anxiously submit to the scrutiny of judges and audiences for the first time. Skate America, the first major competition of the season, begins today in Everett, Wash., and its significance goes beyond being the opener of the annual six-event Grand Prix series. This year, it will be the first step to the world championships, to be held in March at Staples Center.

Takahiko Kozuka of Japan was the surprise winner of the men's title at Skate America, overcoming a fall on a quadruple toe loop Saturday to perform an accomplished routine to "Romeo and Juliet" that vaulted him past Americans Johnny Weir and Evan Lysacek. Kozuka, the 2006 world junior champion, beat Weir by less than a point, 226.18 to 225.20. Weir two-footed his quad but had the second-best long program.