I wanted to learn how to skate backwards and they wouldn't help me and they went off and left me on my own.

In my teen years leading up to the Olympics, I loved having the excuse to skip out on parties because of skating. Partying wasnt my thing anyway. Mostly I hung out with other skaters. We were all buddies, so its not like I missed out on socializing. I was really enjoying myself.

You see the fairy tale - four minutes of glory at the Olympics. I thought my life would be cake after that.

My coach was a great politician, so he did most of the work. He was good.

I always had the sense that nothing was never good enough - striving for perfection. My mother and I had a sort of typical mother-daughter relationship.

I was just ice skating. I had no concept of that. In those days you couldn't see the judges. I was this little person on the ice and they were just people that would stand around the boards.

My mother stopped working when she had my brother. She was a full time mom until I started getting heavily into ice skating lessons, and it got to the point where they really needed my mom to earn an income.