Even now, my husband Jerry, our son Matthew and I live only five minutes away from my parents home, and my brothers live about ten minutes away. It's been great having such a supportive family.

It wasn't always easy getting up at 5 o'clock in the morning to go to the rink. Sometimes I wanted to just go back to sleep.

I think it's a lot harder for the pros to have a long career in ice dance and in pairs. It seems the singles have a little bit of a longer career.

But it seems that the judging maybe they shouldn't at least see the practices all week long. That can taint the way they go into the judging and the outlook of what's going to happen, instead of just watching those four minutes and judging on those minutes alone.

Part of being a champ is acting like a champ. You have to learn how to win and not run away when you lose. Everyone has bad stretches and real successes. Either way, you have to be careful not to lose your confidence or get to confident.

I started skating when I was six years old.

My parents never pressured me to skate. They always said I could quit if I wanted to. They only expected me to skate when they had already paid for the expensive lessons. But, otherwise they said I could do what I wanted to do.