FIGURE SKATING: A SARAH SPINOFF?
Her salt lake Olympic teammates Michelle Kwan and Sasha Cohen were competing at the World Figure Skating Championships in Moscow last week, but 2002 gold medalist Sarah Hughes was back home headlining the Stars on Ice--"if it's Tuesday, it must be Toledo"--national tour. Both Kwan and Cohen appear pointed toward another Olympic spin in Turin, Italy, next February. But Hughes, who at 19 is the youngest of the three, told NEWSWEEK it's "really unlikely" she will return to Olympic competition. "I had great success in 2002 and I doubt I'll go back," she said.
Until recently Hughes was focused entirely on school. Last spring she completed her freshman year at Yale. But she couldn't resist returning to the ice for the lucrative world of ice shows. While a three-month, 60-city tour is grueling, show skating doesn't demand the difficult triple jumps required for competition. Hughes would be hard-pressed to get back into shape for an Olympic season after not having competed for more than three years. "I have no doubt I could do it if I wanted to," she says. "But my mind is not really there right now."
Hughes says she actually flirts with the idea of an Olympic comeback--not for Turin 2006, but for the following Winter Games, in Vancouver in 2010. After all, she points out, she would be just 24--the same age that reigning national titlist Kwan is now. If such an effort seems farfetched, it is also a smart positioning move. Even a gold-medal winner is more marketable if seen as a future Olympic contender, not just a former one.
There still might be a Hughes in Turin, though. Sarah's 16-year-old sister, Emily, was the top American finisher at last month's World Junior Championships, winning the bronze medal. "I'm looking for Emily to be the future of the Hughes family in skating," says Sarah. Another American teen, Kimmie Meissner, 15, finished third at the National Championships, where she became the first American woman to successfully perform a triple axel since Tonya Harding in 1991. Given that none of the last three ladies to win Olympic gold--Oksana Baiul, Tara Lipinski and Hughes--were older than 16, the American youngsters figure to contend not only for a spot on the team, but for an Olympic medal as well.
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Mark Starr was named a senior editor in March 1998. He continues to serve as Newsweek's Boston bureau chief, where he has been headquartered since 1985. Starr has also held the title national sports correspondent since 1992. Before moving to Boston, he spent four years as a general editor in National Affairs.
Starr has covered eight Olympics, beginning with the Winter Games in Albertville and the Summer Games in Barcelona back in 1992. Before the Salt Lake Olympics, he wrote a cover story on American skating queen Michelle Kwan and, during the Games, covered both figure skating's judging scandal and Sarah Hughes' upset gold medal. In December 2001, Starr profiled Hughes in Newsweek's year-end issue as the "Athlete to Watch" in 2002, calling her a strong upset possibility in Salt Lake.
He was also prominently involved in four cover stories on the Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding saga, which climaxed on the ice in Lillehamer, Norway in 1994. Starr has also covered three World Cups, writing cover stories on the shocking French men's home triumph in 1998 as well as America's "girls of summer," after they beat the Chinese in a thrilling Rose Bowl shootout in 1999. Starr has always been interested in women's sports. In 1996, he wrote on the U.S. women's basketball team hopes for an Olympic gold medal to jump-start a pro league. A year earlier Starr sailed with the women of America3 before its America's Cup challenge in San Diego.
Starr was a major contributor to Newsweek's special issue on the retirement of Michael Jordan, "The Greatest Ever" (October/November 1993) and the March 20, 1995, cover story on Jordan's first return to basketball, "Hoop Dreams." Starr has profiled a wide range of top personalities and performers in all sports including basketball's Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant, baseball's Pedro Martinez, NFL coaches Steve Spurrier and Bill Parcells, skating star Tara Lipinski, tennis' Martina Hingis, boxing champ Evander Holyfield, track stars Marion Jones, Michael Johnson and Carl Lewis, soccer superstars Roberto Baggio and Mia Hamm, Olympic gymnast Shannon Miller, speedskating queen Bonnie Blair and golfer David Duval.
Starr has also covered some of the more dramatic political stories out of Massachusetts, including John Silber's longshot bid to capture the State House, congressman Barney Frank's revelation that he was gay and Michael Dukakis's 1988 campaign for the presidency. Starr rode the Dukakis "bus" from New Hampshire until the November election.
Prior to Newsweek, Starr covered Central America for the Chicago Tribune during the Sandinista revolution of the late '70s. He was also a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury-News.
Starr, a native of Boston, holds a B.A. from Cornell University and an M.A. in journalism from Stanford.
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