Figure Skating Phenom is on Track for Olympic Glory
Before 2010, Mirai Nagasu will compete against the 'big girls' at two competitions. The biggest thing on her mind is homework - ugh!
ARCADIA, Calif.-Without the help of her skates, Mirai Nagasu easily gets lost in a crowd. The 14-year-old walks anonymously through a busy mall dressed in a sweatshirt, shorts and bright pink knee socks. It happens a lot, she says sheepishly. Her high school classmates don't even know about her success.
She thinks it's because she's so short (4-foot-11, for the record), but the squeaky teen in real life is a far cry from her image as a champion figure skater who last year faced a roomful of reporters after winning her first national competition with shoulders thrown back, back straight and hands clasped while artfully answering every question.
On ice, Mirai floats and bends her body into impossibly beautiful positions like art in motion. But on land, she says she's a normal teenager.
"Just more stubborn," she laughed.
She likes to read Harry Potter books and enjoys "High School Musical." Ask her about her first year at Arcadia High School and she will sigh about homework. There are no boyfriends on the horizon either - she just does not have the time.
Mirai is every inch a normal teen if you don't count the national gold medal sitting on her parents' fireplace mantel and the constant nagging about being the future of figure skating. Most other teenagers would fold under the pressure, but Mirai beams from ear to ear.
"I want to be the future. I have to work hard to become the future."
'She just wanted to play.'
Mirai's first sport was a little less icy - golf.
"Yeah, it's a little random," said Mirai. Her Shin Issei parents, Ikuko and Kiyoto, were golf enthusiasts who took their only daughter along on games. But one rainy day changed the course of their lives when Ikuko took Mirai, then five, to the ice skating rink. She enjoyed it so much, she turned her back on golf and even stopped Japanese language school to learn to glide, spin and jump.
"She just wanted to play, so we said okay," said Ikuko, who was born in Matsumoto, Japan and came to the U.S. in 1990.
But it wasn't just playtime on the ice for Mirai. She won competitions, gained a top-notch team of coaches and skated almost flawlessly at the 2007 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in January to become the new U.S. junior ladies champion beating the heavily favored and previously undefeated Caroline Zhang, 14.
"It was big," said Mirai about her first place finish at the tender age of 13. At the press conference following the upset, Caroline talked about going sledding with Mirai to dispel any talks of a rivalry. But almost a year later, Mirai says although there are no ill feelings, they are not close friends.
"We don't live very close. We don't really hang out or anything, but when we see each other we're like 'hi!' and stuff. That's it though."
Maybe it's all for the better because Mirai is slated to go head to head with Caroline in an upcoming competition - a rematch at the nationals in St. Paul, Minn. in January. Caroline has gone on to compete at the senior level ahead of Mirai, who hopes to progress there next year.
"She's going up against the big girls at nationals," said Charlene Wong, Mirai's coach.
When asked if she's nervous about the nationals, Mirai shrugs and admits she hasn't really thought about it yet. She's concentrating on the Junior Grand Prix Final in Gdansk, Poland in early December.
Mirai, Caroline and Bebe Liang, 19, are also the only three Asian Pacific American ladies singles on Team B of Team USA.
"I'm taking it step by step."
Training a Champion, Raising a Kid
To prepare for the Junior Grand Prix, Mirai practices before school six days a week. Which means she gets up at 4 a.m. to be driven by Ikuko to the Burbank, Calif. rink where she skates for two hours.
Just two hours, she laments.
"I heard Mao [Asada] is on the ice for four to five hours. That's more than twice my time," Mirai said about the 17-year-old Japanese skater who was the first woman to make a triple axel at the junior level.
But it's choices like these that set Mirai and her family apart from many other aspiring figure skating champions out there - it's the desire for normalcy. Mirai shakes her head vigorously against the idea of home schooling.
"You can be sure this young girl has a balanced lifestyle. She has a lot going on in her life by choice. She's chosen to be busy and not make the sacrifices that other athletes at her level would do. She's been adamant about staying in regular school because that's where her friends go. It's a choice she made for this season," said Wong.
After school, Mirai heads over to her parents' sushi restaurant, Kiyosuzu, to eat and work on her homework before going to bed at 9 p.m. They're currently looking for weekend ballet classes, but she's struggling with the workload of high school a bit.
"It's really hard," said the skating star, who is either painfully unaware of the high expectations of her talent or is simply unfazed.
The Web is bursting with videos of Mirai's performances, fan sites and discussion forums about everything from her being the next Olympic champion to in-depth analysis on her costumes - but she says she never has time to surf the Web for tidbits of information about herself.
Not even the "Mirai Nagasu Fans!" group or the more cheekily named "Caroline Zhang and Mirai Nagasu are the next Michelle and Sasha" group on the popular social networking site, Facebook.com.
"My job is to have fun skating and keep getting better," she said.
But the fact is, many skating pundits are predicting Olympic glory for this young group of ladies. It's a long three years until the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, but the field has been leveled since superstars like Michelle Kwan have left the ice.
Mirai's eyes gleam when she hears the word Olympics, but she quickly checks herself and says she can't think about that yet. In the next few years, she has no grand predictions or expectations - she just wants to continue skating.
"Talent wise, she's definitely in the running for the 2010 Olympics," said Wong. "But nothing is a guarantee. At the end of the day, it's all going to come down to who wants it the most."
But the sport of figure skating has changed since it was rocked with Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding style drama. It's experienced a renaissance with ice darlings like Kwan, Sasha Cohen and Tara Lipinski. Figure skating is one of the most prominent sports in the Winter Olympics influencing more and more youths to take to the ice each year in hopes of becoming the next big thing.
But for almost every Kwan and Cohen, there is a Nicole Bobek and an Oksana Baiul - young ladies who experienced too much too fast.
There's nothing to worry about with Mirai. She said she'd stop skating when it stops being fun.
"If you don't love it ... it's kind of like someone going to law school but they don't like it and so it just makes them tired. There wouldn't be any point in doing it if I didn't love it."
"She's emotionally resilient," said Wong, who competed in the 1988 Winter Olympics. "It's a good pressure - a pressure by choice. Her parents aren't making her do it. I'm not making her do it. Mirai wants it."
Print This Article-
Email This Article