Kimmie Meissner Wins 2006 Readers' Choice Award

(8/7/06) - 2006 World champion Kimmie Meissner capped off her breakthrough season by winning SKATING magazine's Readers' Choice Award for 2006 Skater of the Year (Michelle Kwan Trophy). Voters logged on to www.usfigureskating.org to submit their votes for the most deserving skater(s) in the United States based on the accomplishments of the past season.

Meissner's performance at the World Figure Skating Championships in Calgary, Canada, in March included a near-perfect free skate packed with seven clean triples including two triple-triple combinations. It was the first World title for the United States in any discipline since Michelle Kwan won gold in 2003.

Meissner, 16, also competed at the 2006 Olympic Winter Games, where she finished sixth. She was the youngest member on the entire U.S. Olympic Team, and the event marked her first major international event. She won the silver medal at the 2006 State Farm U.S. Figure Skating Championships, her second straight medal at the event.

Following the season Meissner made several appearances, including throwing out the first pitch of the Philadelphia Phillies' home opener, speaking at the Association for Women in Sports Media national convention, being a spokesperson for the Cool Kids Campaign for children with cancer, and appearing at the ESPY awards, where she was nominated for “Best Breakthrough Athlete.” Meissner will be presented the Readers' Choice Award at the first ISU Grand Prix Series event, 2006 Skate America, in Hartford, Conn., Oct. 26-29.

The full title of the award is the “Readers' Choice Skater of the Year, Michelle Kwan Trophy.” In 2003 Kwan won her seventh Readers' Choice Award. She is the only skater in the history of the award to win it more than once. To recognize her accomplishments, SKATING magazine and U.S. Figure Skating named the trophy in her honor. Kwan is no longer eligible to win the award.

This year the top three included 2006 U.S. champion Johnny Weir and junior synchronized skating team the Chicago Jazz, which won the bronze medal at the 2006 World Challenge Cup for Juniors. Skaters eligible for the award included the top five finishers in all senior disciplines at the 2006 U.S. Championships and the 2006 U.S. Synchronized Skating Championships, and medalists at the World Junior Figure Skating Championships, the Junior Grand Prix Final and the World Challenge Cup for Juniors.

The Michelle Kwan Trophy, which represents both the sport of figure skating and SKATING magazine, is a one-of-a-kind crystal sculpture designed by Crystal Signatures of Pennsylvania. The Readers' Choice Award is given annually by SKATING magazine, the official publication of U.S. Figure Skating.

SKATING magazine Readers' Choice Award Winners
2006 Kimmie Meissner
2005 Tanith Belbin & Ben Agosto
2004 Sasha Cohen, Haydenettes
2003 Michelle Kwan
2002 Michelle Kwan
2001 Michelle Kwan
2000 Michael Weiss
1999 Michelle Kwan
1998 Michelle Kwan
1997 Tara Lipinski
1996 Michelle Kwan
1995 Todd Eldredge
1994 Michelle Kwan
1993 Scott Davis
1992 Paul Wylie
1991 Tonya Harding
1990 Jill Trenary
1989 Kristi Yamaguchi

Rosenthal gets early Olympic taste

If you missed Stephanie Rosenthal's performances at the Nationals this year, you missed a whole heck of a lot. We're use to seeing tiny girls skate to "Carmen", "Don Quixote" and Puccini, but Stephanie Rosenthal decided to take it a step further. Check it out. If she could get her triples consistent, she'd definitely make top 5 next year and get some international exposure. Short Program Long program Rosenthal gets early Olympic taste Champions on Ice By Michael C. Lewis The Salt Lake Tribune Though her career is on the verge of a breakthrough, figure skater Stephanie Rosenthal of course cannot be sure that she ever will have a chance to compete on the ultimate stage at the Olympics. But for one night, at least, she enjoyed a pretty reasonable alternative. Surrounded by just about everyone who's anyone in the glittering world of international figure skating, Rosenthal performed for the first time as part of the Champions on Ice tour on Wednesday night, giving the 18-year-old Salt Lake City skater a taste of what it might be like to lace up her skates at the 2010 Vancouver Games in Canada. Sure, it was just an exhibition performance at the Delta Center. But Rosenthal felt privileged, just the same, to take the ice with some of her sport's legendary figures - in the same arena that played host to the 2002 Salt Lake Games. "That was a huge deal for me," Rosenthal said. "I'm very excited just to be skating with this field. It's kind of surreal, a little bit." Makes sense. Although Rosenthal performed as a "Child of Light" in the Opening Ceremony at the 2002 Salt Lake Games and has competed at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships three times - she finished a career-best eighth six months ago, improving her chances of moving into international competition soon - she had never really been so close and involved with the athletes who make figure skating one of the most popular sports in the Olympics. And they were all there, from Michelle Kwan and Sasha Cohen to Irina Slutskaya, Evgeny Plushenko, Shizuka Arakawa, Evan Lysacek and the ice dancing team of Ben Agosto and Tanith Belbin. The cast included nine skaters who won medals at the 2006 Turin Games in Italy, and four others who had won previous Olympic medals, such as Kwan and 1992 men's gold medalist Viktor Petrenko. "It's a very prestigious tour," Rosenthal said. "Usually, only Olympic champions, national champions, and those kind of people are here. So for me to be put in that field - for whatever reason - is really exciting for me." Obviously, Rosenthal was included for the local connection. In fact, the show was the only one on the 56-stop tour in which she's scheduled to perform. But she has a lot of other promising things happening at the moment, such as herupcoming move to attend Yale University and a competition in two weeks thatcould vault her into some international assignments for the first time."I'm gearing up for that," she said. Rosenthal will compete Aug. 16-19 at the Silicon Valley Open in San Jose, Calif., where she will be monitored by officials from the U.S. Figure Skating Association in much the same way Kwan was monitored before being awarded a spot on the U.S. Olympic Team for the Turin Games. If the officials like what they see, Rosenthal expects to be assigned to compete internationally next season. That would be a big step in trying to move up in the national ranks, especially with teenagers like Kimmie Meissner, Emily Hughes, Katy Taylor and Alissa Czisny expected to line up behind Cohen to push for spots at the Vancouver Games when they finally roll around. But Rosenthal is trying not to think that far ahead. Though she always has aspired to skate in the Olympics - "I would tell everyone, 'Well, I'm going to the Olympics some day,' like, all bratty," she recalled - she is wary now of expecting too much, especially considering she doesn't know how college might affect her body or her training regimen, though she did choose Yale over Stanford in part because there's an ice rink just outside her residence hall. She has choreographed new short and long programs for the upcoming season - she performed her popular short program to Herbie Hancock's "Rockit!" for perhaps the last time as a solo in Champions on Ice - and has been working on improving the jumps that typically have not been as strong as her dance elements. "I'm taking it one year at a time right now," she said. "If that means four years down the road for the Olympics, then yeah, that means the Olympics.