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Elaine
Zayak's greatest accomplishment as a skater was competing
at the 1994 U.S. Championships. Zayak was the first former
U.S. ladies' champion to regain her eligible status under
the USFSA rule allowing reinstatement. Her last eligible competition
had been ten years prior, in 1984. She had skated professionally
for five years after that, then had retired from skating in
1989. But after attending the 1993 U.S. Championships, she
changed her mind. I realized how much I missed skating," she
explains, and the next week I decided it would be great to
try and make a comeback."
Twenty
pounds overweight when she started training, Zayak had her
work cut out for her. She couldn't do her trademark triple
jumps anymore.
"Getting
back in shape was exciting, but also discouraging sometimes,"
she recalls. "For a while it seemed like I'd never be able
to do a triple!' Her good friend, Calla Urbanski, encouraged
her. Though a few years older, Urbanski could still do triples
with no problem. "Calla said to me, Elaine, you used to do
seven triples in your program, are you telling me you can't
get one triple back? If I can do it, you can."
Zayak
was determined, though getting her triples back would require
more effort than she had ever imagined. She had never done
much off-ice training before. I never had to," she says. But
this time things were different. It
took me months to get my strength back, she remembers. I
worked with a trainer to relearn the body movements for jumping,
and 1 did a lot of cardiovascular work. Finally I was in such
great physical condition that when I
went back to trying triple jumps, it was easy."
Though
she was entitled to compete in the U.S. Championships based
on her previous record, Zayak chose to compete at the Regional
and Sectional levels first. I have a lot of respect for the
sport," she explains, "and I wanted to work my way back to
the Nationals. I didn't want it to seem like I had been given
anything."
The lower-level competitions were nerve-wracking. I was competing
against kids who were fifteen years younger than me and they
were good!'
When
Zayak took the ice at the U.S. Championships, the crowd began
to cheer even before her name was announced. I couldn't hear
the announcer say my name," she says. All that commotion was
unnerving, and for a moment she didn't know if she could keep
it together. But she skated two great programs and brought
the audience to its feet both times.
Although
she came in fourth, Zayak had done what she set out o do.
I wanted to prove to myself that I could get back in shape
and skate as well as, or even better, than I had before, and
I wanted to how other people that a 28-year-old woman can
still compete"
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