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.

I think I dreamed about competing at the Olympics, maybe hoping to win a gold medal. Not that I ever thought that I would, but I dreamed about it.

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

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

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.

In group lesson number six I think we learned how to turn backwards and then just kind of wiggle. That wasn't really skating backward, but I guess I was going in the right direction.

I worked as hard as I could. I was always the first one on the ice, and the last one off.