Wanting To Deliver Bobek Strives To Be Part Of What Should Be Great U.S. Olympic Skating Team
Nicole Bobek calls it the package, and it will be delivered breathlessly to an enraptured worldwide audience next February.
The package includes the last three U.S. figure skating champions and the two most recent world champions. It is headed by those sensational teens, Tara Lipinski and Michelle Kwan, and rounded out by the enigmatic Bobek.
“It’s going to be something,” Bobek says with a smile as she looks forward to the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. “All of us bring something we are very strong at to the sport. Tara is so athletic and Michelle is so elegant and I’m entertaining.
“I think it’s going to be the strongest team we could possibly have and we could win (all) the medals.”
That would be an unprecedented feat, of course. And it’s incredibly premature, because not only haven’t any of these American ice queens made the Olympic team, but the next season doesn’t begin until fall.
Still, the 19-year-old Bobek can dream. After all she’s been through, it’s one of the things that keeps her going.
Bobek surged to the top of the sport in 1995, skating off with the national crown that seemingly was reserved for Kwan. It was the culmination of an erratic climb in which Bobek struggled to stay in shape; changed coaches almost as often as she changed costumes; suffered several injuries that cut into what little training she did; and had problems with motivation. Yet she also charmed audiences with the style and wit of her performances.
Through it all, Bobek somehow never lost her desire to skate or be the focal point for thousands in the stands and millions watching on television.
“The feeling always is the same for me, no matter how I’m skating,” Bobek says. “I tell myself that those people are here for me, they are rooting for me, they are watching to see me do well, and I don’t get nervous or down.
“Every skater at one point or another goes through tough times. Maybe you are fighting against an injury or equipment problems or your coaches or tons of things. But the love of skating always is there.”
Bobek should have loved the sport most in 1995, when, after winning nationals, she finished third in the world championships. She was working with Richard Callaghan, the coach who has helped Todd Eldredge become one of the best skaters in U.S. history and now is Lipinski’s coach. She trained in Detroit with Eldredge and some of the best skaters in the country.
But that relationship quickly soured - mainly because Bobek had trouble with Callaghan’s regimented coaching and heavy workload. Bobek refuses to talk about her relationship with Callaghan, probably the world’s premier skating coach.
“Everybody tells you how good you are. They offer you this and that,” Callaghan said. “You can almost lose your perspective on how you got there. And after two or three months of everyone throwing roses at your feet, you have to go back to work.”
After she left Callaghan’s tutelage, Bobek became an afterthought in 1996, withdrawing from nationals with an injured ankle and being denied an exemption for the world championships. Bobek skated in just three significant events without much success.
“I had trouble with the commitment to skating,” she admits. “I did not realize what I have and could have through skating.”
Heading into the 1996-97 season, she returned to Carlo Fassi, who coached her nearly a decade ago. Fassi, however, died March 20 of a heart attack at the world championships in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Bobek finished 13th at the world championships, her concentration shattered by Fassi’s death.
“I had a great desire to go out and skate for Carlo, because I knew he wanted me to do well and he would have wanted me out on the ice,” she says, her eyes filling with tears. “I tried to be strong, but it was a very hard thing to do.”
Continuing in skating was not a tough decision, she says. Fassi’s wife, Crista, plus Robin Cousins and Irina Rodnina, a three-time Olympic pairs gold medalist, will work with Bobek.