SPORTS
January 21, 2009 | HELENE ELLIOTT
Leaning against the cinder-block wall of a small locker room, their skates at their feet, the two women chatted as if they had been friends all their lives. They talked of small things and big dreams, of dreams delayed or denied and entwined in the thread that united them at East West Ice Palace in Artesia last week.
SPORTS
March 27, 2009 | DIANE PUCIN, ON SPORTS MEDIA
Most of the coverage of the World Figure Skating Championships this week at Staples Center has been hidden away on the Oxygen Network where even the most ardent of fans have had trouble locating the broadcasts. But finally, on Saturday for the women's finals, Channel 4 is taking the broadcast and bringing out the stars.
SPORTS
January 4, 1994 | RANDY HARVEY, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Too nervous to sleep in the hours before his youngest daughter made her debut last winter among the "senior ladies" in the U.S. figure skating championships, Danny Kwan decided that pacing was preferable to tossing and turning and had almost worn a path in the hotel carpet when he heard mumbling coming from Michelle's bed. Stopping to listen, he heard his still-sleeping daughter reminding herself, "It's nothing. It's nothing."
NEWS
February 20, 1998 | KATHRYN BOLD, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
As U.S. figure skater Michelle Kwan takes to the ice in pursuit of Olympic glory today, viewers around the world will finally have the long-awaited answers to their questions: How well did Kwan skate? Did she land the triple lutz that cost her the world championship last year? And, as if this were prom night instead of the Olympics, what did she wear? Few people understand the importance of that last question better than Mare Talbot.
SPORTS
January 13, 2006 | Bill Plaschke, Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.
Despite the occasional appearance of a sequined lad tumbling across the ice as if falling off a bar stool, there are no drunk skaters here. Advantage, ski team. Unless gobs of gel count, there are also no competitors here being busted for using anabolic hair replenishment drugs. Advantage, skeleton team. The U.S.
SPORTS
February 17, 2002 | Randy Harvey
Sasha Cohen slipped back into town Friday night under the cover of darkness. Quick! Lock up the women and children. Cohen stands 4 feet 11 on her tiptoes and weighs 90 pounds, but before the Winter Olympics opened nine days ago she was casting a giant shadow over the figure skating competition. "Queen, Sweetheart, Villain," shouted the headline in one newspaper over a story featuring the three women representing the United States. The queen, of course, is Michelle Kwan.
SPORTS
January 20, 2001 | HELENE ELLIOTT, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Michelle Kwan made it perfectly clear Friday that she has lost none of the elegance that has made her a three-time world figure skating champion. The 20-year-old Torrance native took a decisive step toward her fifth U.S. title when she earned seven perfect 6.0s for the presentation of her short program, a spellbinding performance to the orchestral suite from the remake of the movie "East of Eden."
SPORTS
January 15, 2006 | Helene Elliott, Times Staff Writer
Michelle Kwan's Olympic quest will continue at the Turin Games if she can prove to a panel of judges that she has recovered from the pulled groin muscle that prevented her from competing this week at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Sasha Cohen of Corona del Mar will go to the Olympics as the U.S. champion, having won her first title on Saturday after four runner-up finishes, and 16-year-old Kimmie Meissner of Bel Air, Md., will get her first Olympic experience.
SPORTS
May 14, 2000 | DIANE PUCIN
Michelle Kwan doesn't wear blue and gold when she competes. Nothing on her costume says "Bruins," but Kwan has won the 2000 world figure skating championship and which other UCLA student-athlete can brag of such an accomplishment? Not that Kwan will brag. She laughs when the question is posed. Is Kwan the most successful UCLA athlete of the year? "Well, maybe I did better than the basketball and football teams," she says. "But the [1999] softball and [men's] volleyball teams won NCAA titles."
SPORTS
January 28, 2006 | Helene Elliott, Times Staff Writer
As she walked past a line of TV cameras and clusters of spectators to reach the glass doors at the entrance of the East West Ice Palace on Friday, Michelle Kwan tried to tell herself it was just another day. She didn't quite succeed. "It was intense this morning at the rink," she said. "This was a situation I'd never been in before. I was thinking, 'This is a normal practice. You can do it. You've done the jumps before.' " But rarely had she done them with so much at stake. Kwan missed the U.S.