Skaters come home to roost

After a 30-year absence, the U.S.
championships return to Southern California,
a place many American skaters call home.

January 7, 2002


LOS ANGELES -- American figure skating is
coming home this week. Forget the mental
postcards you might have of future champions
attempting their first toe loops on frozen
New England lakes. America's real golden
ponds reside in places such as Lake
Arrowhead, Aliso Viejo and El Segundo where
World champions and Olympians arrive for
training on those long winter days of January
and February with the top down. "Southern
California," said Tiffany Chin, a two-time
World championships bronze medalist, "is ice
skating's mecca." This week the United States
Figure Skating Championships make a
pilgrimage back to Southern California after
a 30-year absence for a competition at
Staples Center that promises to be dominated
by skaters from the lower half of the state.
Timothy Goebel, an Illinois transplant who
has settled in the South Bay, will be favored
when he opens his defense of the men's title
Tuesday night. Four-time world champion
Michelle Kwan of Torrance begins her quest
Thursday to win a sixth national title.
Behind Kwan and Long Island teen-ager Sarah
Hughes, the battle for third place and the
final spot on the U.S. Olympic team next
month in Salt Lake City should be between
Laguna Niguel's Sasha Cohen, 17, and San
Pedro's Angela Nikodinov, 21. And there's
Beatrisa Liang of Granada Hills, who placed
in the top six at the U.S. Championships
before she could get into a PG-13 movie
without adult supervision. The Chin-coached
Liang, who turns 14 on March 31, is expected
to join Cohen and Orange County teen Naomi
Nari Nam in picking up from Kwan a torch
passed among Southern California skaters from
Peggy Fleming to Tai Babilonia and Randy
Gardner to Linda Fratianne. "Southern
California has been a center of figure
skating for probably 40 years," said Morry
Stillwell, chairman of the International
Skating Union's Grand Prix management
committee. Recent years have been especially
successful for local skaters. Since 1990
Southern California athletes in the men's,
women's and pairs divisions have won twice as
many U.S. championships (14) than either the
Northeast (7) or the upper Midwest (6). In
that same period local skaters have won 12
world championship medals. The rest of the
country has 18. "This has really been a
springboard for great skaters," said Fleming,
the 1968 Olympic champion. The foundation for
this success was laid - or at least smoothed
- by a former auto repairman more than 50
years ago. Frank Zamboni opened Iceland in
Paramount in 1940 as an outdoor rink. But
warm temperatures made it hard maintain ice
quality. Zamboni added a roof but still had
problems. In 1949 he built the Zamboni, a
vehicle that turned the area into a year-
round winter wonderland. Today there are more
than two dozen skating rinks in Southern
California with more than 30 skating clubs
and 4,000 competitive skaters. Those rinks
also have attracted some of the world's
premier coaches. John Nicks left his family's
sporting good business in England and settled
in Paramount in the early 1960s, where
Zamboni taught him the skating business
before eventually moving to Orange County.
Around the same time Massachusetts native
Frank Carroll opened shop in the San Fernando
Valley. Over the years Nicks' and Carroll's
skaters have won more than two dozen U.S.
championships and more than 20 world medals.
"In Mr. Nicks, Irina Rodnina, Christa Fassi
and Frank Carroll you have four of the best
coaches in the world, all within a two-hour
drive," Goebel said. "When you have coaches
like that, you're going to attract high-
quality skaters." Goebel, the first person to
do a quadruple salchow in competition, moved
from Illinois to train with Carroll. In doing
so Goebel joined an already-rich talent pool.
"There are a lot of great athletes here,"
Chin said. "And these kids start competing
against each other at an early age. When you
compete against the best, it's going to bring
out the best." The region has influenced the
sport in other ways. "Hollywood has had a
huge impact on the sport," said Doug
Williams, president of the 2002 U.S.
Championships. Again Nicks and Carroll led
the way. Carroll enlisted Bob Mackie, fashion
designer to the stars, to dress Fratianne.
Nicks, Williams said, has long emphasized
developing "personalities." "Hollywood,"
Williams says, "makes stars." And this week
the stars have come home to take center
stage.