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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Lu Chen

Chicago Tribune

Ice skating

Lives are full of odd junctures, confluences of events linking people who seem no more likely to have any primordial connection than matter from Mars and Mercury.

Such is the bond between Peggy Fleming and Lu Chen, both figure skaters to be sure, but from opposite ends of the earth. Chen wasn’t born when Fleming won her Olympic gold medal in 1968.

Chen fell in love with the sport at age 5, when she saw a Fleming skating special on television. “She was so beautiful, I wanted to be like her,” Chen said Saturday at White Ring arena.

Three years ago, Chen was unquestionably the most beautiful skater among those who would compete in the 1998 Winter Olympics.

Wednesday, when the women’s competition begins with the short program, this 21-year-old woman will try to evoke memories of that beauty, faded by two years of injury and turmoil.

Last week, on the 30th anniversary of winning the Olympic title that would lead to that TV special, Fleming underwent surgery to remove a cancerous lump in her breast. She soon will begin radiation treatment.

Chen would not presume to compare her situation to Fleming’s.

“I think what I have gone through made me grow up and understand more things,” Chen said.

Everything seemed perfect in 1995, when Chen followed her 1994 Olympic bronze medal with a world title. At the 1996 worlds, she received two perfect scores while losing the title in a split decision to Michelle Kwan.Undermined in 1997 by a chronic foot injury and years of friction with both her ex-coach, Li Mingzhu, and the Chinese skating federation over control of her career, Chen finished 25th at worlds.

Chen had to finish among the top six in a qualifying competition last fall for China even to have a women’s entrant in the 1998 Olympics. She won that event over a weak field.

When she skates her long program here, Chen said she will be trying for a medal.