Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Plus the public's attention span is so short right now, if a skater doesn't strike while the iron is hot... well it's not like people will forget you, but they just won't care anymore.
I always thought the Vancouver Olympics would be my last destination, but I'm extending it to Sochi... I want to start anew, not as an Olympic medalist but just as yet another figure skater.
I think my style is kind of a cross between a skater hippie and an R&B star. If there were something I was going to endorse, it would probably be something like sneakers. Something that would be me.
My father used to say to me, 'The only limit to your success is your own imagination.' I actually believed that - like, I'm still coming to terms with the fact that I might not be an Olympic figure skater.
I was born in a blizzard, a special out-of-season blizzard, the worst blizzard Oslo ever suffered. Family, home, circumstances, the country I lived in and the weather I was born in all conspired to make a skater of me.
Music is fun, but I'm an ice skater. I may sing songs and do shows, make movies and other things... that's all well and good and I enjoy it, and I would never trade any of those for anything. But figure skating is who I am.
Being a figure skater myself and knowing what it took for my parents to get up at five in the morning to drive me to the rink before school and then drive me to practice after school - it's a huge commitment for any family.
I'm just excited to be in the fashion business. With my son, we did Trukfit, and I think that's been super innovative for the people that bought it and his lifestyle and how he comes across with the skater look. We just excited.
I was a really good ice hockey player when I was a kid. Now in the aftermath I think I wasn't maybe big enough, and I couldn't have put on enough muscle to actually be able to play with the better guys, but I was a really good skater.
I have been a figure skater for so long that when I stopped that competitive day-to-day grind, I didn't know what to do with myself. I don't know how the world works outside of being barked at by a Ukrainian woman and watching my weight.
Figure skating has been a great influence for me. I took dance at the School of American Ballet, which helped my own skating. And whether you are a skater or a dancer, without sounding narcissistic, it is all about looking in the mirror.
I have great artistry, I can spin well, I have good footwork, and I can jump. I can do the quad jump, and I've done it multiple times in competition. It's definitely a jump that I have in my arsenal. I like to think of myself as the complete skater.
It takes tremendous will to compete in any athletic endeavor, so it meant going to bed early and getting my homework done in advance. I had to sacrifice things, like a social life, to be a skater at 15. But I loved skating so much that it was worth everything to me.
A long time ago, a sports reporter wrote that I wasn't strong in the free-skate, that I was more of a short-program skater. And that bothered me because I work so hard every day just for a person to judge me on a couple of bad skates and deem me a bad free skater. That's absurd!
As a kid growing up, I didn't want to tell any of my classmates I did figure-skating because I knew they'd be like, 'Oh, you're a skater, you're gay, blah blah blah.' So I kept it to myself. Once I started getting to more of an elite level, I didn't really care what people thought, though.
Sometimes I even now feel like a stranger in my country. But I knew there would be problems because I had seen the world as a skater. And now? A lot of people in eastern Germany have lost jobs, rents went up, food costs went up, unemployment went to 20 percent. Freedom is good, but it is not easy.
It was really, really heartbreaking to not be named to the team in Sochi, but some things are just not meant to be. That experience changed me as a skater. I took a step back and decided that some things are not worth accepting. I wanted to be on another Olympic team. I took time to evolve myself as a person and as a skater.
'Thrasher' magazine's Skater of the Year is clearly my No. 1 goal. The only way I get that is skating. Other than that, I haven't set that many outrageous goals. If I got Skater of the Year, that would just really add to it all and make me feel really good. Whether it's this year, next year or five years from now, that is my goal.
Gwen Stefani has amazing style. I used to really love Courtney Love, and anything she wore I loved. Or Chloe Sevigny, because I really love that sort of classic look, and I like being girly and flowery, and wearing little D&G dresses. I wear hats a lot, too. I think it goes back to when I was a bit grungy and was a skater girl for a bit.
