Kimmie Meissner
Kimberly Claire Meissner is an American former competitive figure skater. She is the 2006 World champion, the 2007 Four Continents champion, and the 2007 U.S. national champion. She is the first American and the first woman to simultaneously hold the World, Four Continents, and national titles. In 2005, Meissner became the second American woman to land the triple Axel jump in national competition. She was the youngest American athlete to compete at the 2006 Olympics, coming in sixth place. She won the World Championships the following month, and the U.S. Nationals the following season. She was inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2020.
Meissner was one of the best technical figure skaters of her time, but was an inconsistent skater, especially towards the end of her career. She was compared to Olympic skater and U.S. champion Michelle Kwan, who called her "the new face of figure skating". By 2020, she worked in the medical field and coached young skaters in Maryland. Meissner was the spokesperson for the "Cool Kids Campaign", a pediatric oncology charity.
Early life
Kimberly "Kimmie" Meissner was born on October 4, 1989, in Towson, Maryland, the youngest child of podiatrist Paul Meissner and Judy Meissner. Her father Paul played hockey in youth leagues when he was in high school in Buffalo, New York, and in adult leagues in Maryland, after attending the University of Buffalo, graduate school in Cleveland, and a surgical residency in Detroit and Baltimore. Meissner's maternal great-grandparents, Emmanuel and Paulina Novo, emigrated to the U.S. from Galicia, Spain, in the 1920s; they met in Buffalo and had nine children and 60 great-grandchildren, including Meissner. Meissner's family is Catholic; she was baptized in Williamsville, New York, near where her parents grew up in Buffalo. They attended Mass regularly, at a parish in Hickory, Maryland.All three of Meissner's older brothers, like their father, played hockey, and she was brought to their games. She skated for the first time in January 1996, when she was six years old, after "a freak ice storm" turned their backyard in Bel Air, Maryland, into a temporary rink; she used one of her brothers' skates stuffed with paper towels. She took to skating right away, and her parents bought her a pair of skates and gave her lessons at a local rink. A few years later, she took lessons at the Delaware Skating Club in Newark, and began working with coach Pam Gregory. At first, Meissner and Gregory "had a somewhat prickly relationship", but they eventually came to respect and trust each other.
Meissner attended Fallston High School, a public secondary school in Fallston, Maryland, even though both her parents and all her brothers attended Catholic schools, because Fallston was closer to her family's home and made commuting to Delaware for her training easier, and because it provided her with more flexibility to attend classes early mornings and train in Delaware in the afternoons. It also provided Meissner with a sense of normalcy while attending high school. Her family worked hard to make Meissner's life as normal as possible; her mother acted as both her chauffeur and manager. The arrangement allowed Meissner to attend her school's prom in 2006. She graduated from Fallston in 2007. In 2014, she graduated from Towson University. In early 2020, she was taking courses in Towson's physician assistant studies program and coaching five skaters in Baltimore.
Competitive career
Early career
Meissner began skating when she was six years old, after watching her older brothers play hockey. She had watched figure skating on television, eventually giving up ballet, which she began when she was four, because she "liked skating more". She landed her first triple, the Salchow, six years later.In the 1999–2000 season, Meissner competed as a juvenile in the 2000 South Atlantic Regionals, coming in fourth place, and qualified for the 2000 U.S. Junior Championships, where she came in 16th place. The following season, 2000–2001, she also placed 16th at the U.S. Junior Championships, but at the intermediate level, and came in third place at Regionals. She came in seventh place at the 2002 South Atlantic Regionals, also as an intermediate.
She moved up to the novice division during the 2002–2003 season, coming in first place at the 2003 Eastern Sectionals and second place at the 2003 South Atlantic Regionals, qualifying for the 2003 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. She "burst on the scene" and won the gold medal at Nationals, her first U.S. Nationals event. She came in first place after the short program, putting her in a good position, and won the free skate as well, with three triples, including a triple Lutz jump. She singled a planned fourth triple, a Salchow, but ended her program with a double Axel-double toe loop-double loop combination. She ended the season with a third-place finish at the Triglav Trophy in Slovenia.
2003–2004 season
Meissner competed as a junior during the 2003–2004 season. She earned a silver medal at the Sofia Cup, the Junior Grand Prix event in Bulgaria, and a gold medal at Slovenia, which qualified her for the Junior Grand Prix final in Sweden, where she came in fifth place. She competed as a junior at the 2004 U.S. Nationals and won the gold medal, after coming in second place in the short program and winning the free skate. Her win, along with her win the previous season as a novice, made her "one of the rare skaters" to win back-to-back Nationals in different levels.U.S. Figure Skating placed her on the U.S. team for the 2004 Junior Worlds Championship in the Netherlands, where she won the silver medal; she was one of the youngest skaters at the competition. She finished in third place after the short program, earning marks ranging from 4.9 to 5.7. She successfully completed her triple Lutz-triple toe loop combination, a triple flip, and double Axel. Meissner later said that it was her first clean program of the season. She came in second place after the free skating program, opening with a triple flip that was not fully rotated. She completed a triple Lutz-triple toe loop combination, a triple Salchow, a triple loop, two double Axels, a triple Lutz, but popped a second triple Salchow. She also completed a layback spin with good position. She earned marks ranging from 5.1 to 5.7, her highest scores in her career thus far.
2004–2005 season
Meissner worked on a triple Axel jump early in the 2004–2005 season and had started to land them in August 2004, but had to take a two-month break from training the element due to a slight back injury. Her free skating program, however, included seven other triple jumps. Her "personal goal" for the season was to make all her moves larger and "to do skating so the people in the nosebleed sections could see what I was doing".She began the season at the Junior Grand Prix Courchevel in France, coming in second place in both the short program and free skate, coming in second place overall. At her second Grand Prix assignment, 2004 Skate Long Beach, she again came in second place, behind Mao Asada from Japan. She finished in second place after the short program, earning 46.33 points. She had difficulty with her triple Lutz-double toe loop combination, falling out of her Lutz jump and making a turn before her double toe loop. She also had difficulty with her triple loop, which was scored as a double jump, but the program had good flow, nice spins, and a double Axel. She also came in second place after the free skate; she completed a triple flip, followed by a triple Lutz-triple toe loop combination, but popped her loop jump. She went on to complete a triple Salchow, a good triple Lutz, and a downgraded double flip-double toe loop combination. She earned 87.40 points for the free skating program, and 133.73 points overall.
Meissner's two second-place finishes earned her a spot, for the second year in a row, in the Junior Grand Prix final in Helsinki. She finished in third place, despite a "poor short program" due to a popped triple Lutz that put her in seventh place. She later said that her Lutz "was really wacky" the entire week, although she performed two of them in her free skating program, including one in a combination, and came back to finish in second place in the free skate and third place overall.
Meissner made "an impressive senior debut" at the Campbell's International Figure Skating Classic in October 2004; she replaced Carolina Kostner of Italy, competed against Michelle Kwan and Sasha Cohen, and came in fifth place. It was the first time she competed against Kwan, who was her idol. She and her coach Pam Gregory viewed the event as preparation for Meissner's first senior Nationals in Portland, Oregon. There was speculation as Meissner went into Nationals about her ability to land a triple Axel; she told the press that she would decide at the last moment if she were going to include one in her free skating program. Gregory reported that Meissner had been consistently landing triple Axels for only a week before Nationals.
She was in fourth place after the short program, which the Associated Press called "a very respectable showing for someone just breaking into the senior ranks". Meissner also told the press that she felt good about her performance and the way she had completed all her jumps, although she thought she could have done better. Figure skating reporter Elvin Walker said that she skated "with pep and technical prowess". She chose to include a triple Axel, the third jump in her free skating program, after completing a clean one during the warm-up. She was the first American woman to successfully complete a triple Axel in competition in 14 years, since Tonya Harding did so in 1991. Kwan, who tied Maribel Vinson's record held since 1937 by winning her ninth U.S. title, stated afterwards, "It's amazing for skating, and for an American skater, it's fantastic. This is the hometown of Tonya Harding, so it's the perfect place for her to try and land it".
Meissner "fought mightily" to keep her balance out of the last rotation of her triple Axel, but her landing was secure and she ended up in third place, her first senior-level medal. She successfully completed seven triples, including two Lutz jumps and a triple toe-double toe-double loop combination. Her technical scores ranged from 5.7 to 5.9 and her presentation scores ranged from 5.4 to 5.7, putting her in third place in the free skate, and third place overall. E. M. Swift from Sports Illustrated reported that Meissner earned the biggest response from the spectators and diverted attention away from Kwan. He also stated that Meissner was able to "breathe fresh air into a sport that had begun to stagnate in the U.S. and offer a peek into the future of American skating". Meissner was not age-eligible to compete as a senior at the Worlds Championships, but was named to the U.S. team for the 2005 Junior Worlds Championships. Meissner told reporters that she was not disappointed and was excited to compete at Junior Worlds, but Gregory stated that it could have given Meissner valuable experience and prepared her for the 2006 Olympics in Turin, Italy. ESPN, however, sent Meissner to Worlds in Moscow "on assignment", for a special in which she appeared with Olympians Peggy Fleming and Paul Wylie.
At Junior Worlds in Kitchener, Canada, Meissner came in fourth place overall. In her short program, she came close to the edge of the rink, but successfully completed a triple Lutz-double toe loop combination. She also completed a triple loop and double Axel, earning 52.67 points and coming in third place, behind teammate Alissa Czisny by less than.25 points. In her free skating program, Meissner began with a triple flip, followed by a triple Lutz-double toe loop combination, a double Axel-double toe loop combination, a triple loop, and a triple Salchow. She turned both her Lutz and flip into single jumps towards the end of the program, earning 93.96 points and came in fourth place in the free skate, slipping to fourth place overall and earning a total of 146.63 points.