BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. — Alissa Czisny has been working for years on letting go of situations she cannot control, from a string of on-ice disappointments to real-life heartache.
And just as she seemed ready to end her figure skating career on a high note, having freed her grace and talent from a tangle of nerves to win the United States championships in January, she watched as Japan’s unfolding tragedies led to the postponement of the world skating championships. While it sat in limbo for weeks until last week’s announcement that it would be rescheduled for Moscow in late April, Czisny refused to let it get to her.
She had endured too much stress and anxiety in her career already and, at 23, is still skating only because she did not want her biggest disappointment — failing to make the 2010 Olympic team — to be the defining moment of her career.
“I’m enjoying this much more than I ever did,” Czisny said. “I’ve always loved skating, but this year has been something special for me. I struggled with this decision to keep going; it would have been really easy to quit and say I’m not going through this again.
Continue reading the main story“I want to keep going for myself. I want to see what I can become. I don’t want to have any regrets. I think now I can say I will be able to walk away from skating, when the time is right, with no regrets.”
That time could come after the world championships, now scheduled for April 24- to May 1 at Moscow’s Megasport Arena. Russian organizers were among several groups that offered an alternative site for the event, which was supposed to be held last week in Tokyo. But with the continuing crises after the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis, the event was postponed and then Japan decided to forgo the option of staging the event later in the year.
So Czisny now has a chance to write a new finishing chapter on her career, one that includes bouncing back from its lowest moment in 2010, when she finished 10th at the United States championships, killing her chance to make the Olympic team. She was the defending champion and knew it was her last chance at an Olympics.
Czisny said she went into a two-week funk. She knew what skating insiders thought: she possessed world-class talent but was mentally and emotionally fragile. Maybe it was time to retire.
She was also dealing with the news that her twin, Amber, had been found to have cancer. Amber, who is not revealing her type of cancer, says she is in remission. But at the time, she tried to hide the depth of her illness from Alissa.
“Everything just fell apart at one time,” Czisny said. “I felt numb for a while after nationals, then really sad over what happened. I needed to make some decisions, change my life.”
She regained her emotional bearings and decided to fight for her career. She was going to skate for one more year, on her terms.
“If she was going to continue to skate, she needed to do it for herself and not because of or for other people,” Amber said. “A lot of people just walked out on Alissa after last year and gave up on her because she didn’t handle the stress that they put on her. Imagine every person you know telling you how disappointed they are in you.”
Czisny made a series of gut-wrenching decisions. She parted with her coach, Julie Berlin, who had been coaching her since she was 11. She then approached the Detroit Skating Club coaches Yuka Sato-Dungjen and her husband, Jason Dungjen, to see if they would take her on.
“I was curious at first: I wanted to know why she wanted to keep skating,” said Sato-Dungjen, a world champion and two-time Olympian. “We saw what happened at nationals; it was heartbreaking. Did Alissa still have the heart to go through this? She said she did, so we said yes to coaching her. She believes in herself now.”
Czisny also moved from her parents’ home into her own apartment, paying her own bills. It was a risky move, as her mid-five-figure training costs were no longer mostly covered by U.S. Figure Skating or sponsors because of her Olympic-year failure.
Team Dungjen adopted a positive reinforcement tack with Czisny, trying to defuse her self-destructive perfectionism. They tinkered with her jump mechanics, but mostly with her mental approach, emphasizing that a bad practice was just a bad practice, not impending doom.
Czisny also credits Amber for unwavering understanding and support. Amber was a national-level skater before chronic injuries forced her retirement at 17. Amber helped her sister bounce back.
“When everything you have spent your whole life leading up to a moment like that and your world crashes down around you, it is the worst place that you can be,” Amber said.
These are much better days. After the United States championships, Czisny appeared in Chrysler’s Super Bowl ad starring the rapper Eminem. The commercial focused on the hard times Detroit has been through, and how its residents’ strength and determination were leading it back. Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” thumped in the background while Czisny carved a Biellmann spin on an outdoor rink in downtown Detroit.
“That line in the commercial, right before I came on, really hit me when I saw it: ‘It’s the hottest fires that forge the hardest steel,’ ” Czisny said. “I didn’t know what the commercial was going to look like until I saw it on TV, and it was just perfect.”
The world championships could be the last competition of Czisny’s career, as the year of skating on her terms is almost up. But she said she was not thinking about that yet. There is still a challenge ahead.
“I honestly don’t know if this is it,” Czisny said. “I’ve done a lot this year, I’ve grown a lot and I feel really good about myself right now. I did this for me, to prove to myself what I am capable of. I proved I am strong to myself.”
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