Meissner prepares for national championships

Posted on Thursday, January 4th, 2007 at 7:50 pm

Even though some of her chief rivals won’t be competing, Kimmie Meissner said she won’t let up as she prepares for the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

Defending champion and Olympic silver medalist Sasha Cohen last month withdrew from the nationals, to be held Jan. 21-28 in Spokane, Wash., saying she is taking a temporary break from competition.

With Michelle Kwan off at college, the 17-year-old Meissner is the overwhelming favorite in the women’s competition.

That doesn’t mean she’s taking it lightly.

“Every day, just hard core,” Meissner said Thursday, describing her training routine under coach Pam Gregory.

While Kwan and Cohen won’t be there, Meissner said she will be up against plenty of other talented skaters at the nationals, and that victory will go to the one who can nail her program.

“I think it’s definitely who does it that night, which is why I’m training really hard,” said Meissner, who finished second to Cohen at last year’s nationals. “Every time I go out there, I’m really competing against myself.”

Whether Meissner’s performance will include a triple axel is still up in the air. At the 2005 national championship, she became the first American woman since Tonya Harding in 1991 to land a triple axel in competition. She hasn’t attempted it since. She finished third, but, at 15, was too young to compete in the 2005 world championships.

“It’s an up and down jump for me, and I just don’t know if the risk is really worth it at the nationals,” said Meissner, who won the gold medal in March at the world championships in Calgary, Alberta. “There’s so much other stuff in my program.”

Gregory said the decision on a triple axel will be easy, based on how well her young charge does it in practice.

“We don’t decide at the last minute,” said Gregory, adding that she and Meissner don’t want the performance to be based on one jump.

While preparing for the Turin Olympics last year, where Meissner finished sixth, Gregory said Meissner has to hit a jump five consecutive times in practice before it is included in her program.

Meissner had success with the triple axel in practicing for the Trophee Bompard in Paris in November, but finished third in the Grand Prix competition after falling during the triple axel and singling two jumps.

“Putting it in really just throws everything else off,” she said.

But Gregory said she believes Meissner is a lot more comfortable going into the nationals than she was in the run-up to the Grand Prix competitions.

Off the ice, the Bel Air, Md., high school student, who has trained for about nine years at the University of Delaware, is looking forward to getting her driver’s license, which would allow her to drive herself to Newark.

“I am driving around Bel Air, so everybody should be aware,” she joked.

Meissner said she hopes to enroll part-time in UD’s sports science program this fall.

“With all the sports science they do with the skaters here, it’s just really interesting to me,” she said.

By Randall Chase
The Associated Press