There's a stigma to skating. People think of it as a kid's sport. People kept telling me I couldn't possibly make a living out of it. Then they said I couldn't keep it up in my 30s. And here I am in my 40s, and I'm still improving my skills.
I was just different. When the other kids gravitated to football or basketball, I went fishing and skating. I was into trapping animals, pheasants and squirrels. Not only was I trapper, I was a taxidermist.
Skating is now retro and hip.
Although in skating you compete with other people, anyone who achieves a certain level of success is first and foremost competing against themselves. And for me the idea that I could always do better, learn more, learn faster, is something that came from skating. But I carried that with me for the rest of my life.
My own mother, my sister and nearly all the women in my family had full-time jobs as mothers. They were wonderful at it. They drove their children back and forth to soccer, skating lessons, piano lessons, private schools, but I sensed, even in my own mother, a kind of distant dissatisfaction.
It's just skating, and you're going to have a couple of mistakes. Even in practice, you're not hitting 100%.
It's funny: when you're skating around during warm-ups, I'll see signs that say things like: 'Kane, Prom?' We have a fun, young team, and girls are asking you to the prom and giving you their numbers.
Figure skating is a bit dated - it's like that tweed jacket you pull out of the back of your closet from time to time, and I'm going to try to Chanel it up a little bit.
Figure skating is theatrical, and a part of it is wearing costumes. My costumes were very over-the-top and outrageous for figure skating. But for me, it's all beautiful. Even when nobody else believed they were beautiful, I felt beautiful in them.
Being surrounded by hockey, I got forced into it as a kid. I started skating when I was 4 and had a rink only 10 minutes from my home. In my town, we had one outdoor rink and one indoor rink, so you could skate all year long. I lived by a lake, too, so we did a lot of skating on the lake.
So the programs all start to all look the same. I watched one free skating competition, and I thought I was watching a short program. Everyone was doing exactly the same elements.
My parents are very good parents and have already said that they will look after me until the end of my skating career.
I usually just write down what I'm doing and how I felt. How I felt if I'm skating fast, compared to if I'm skating slow or if I'm tired. I can always go back and look as a reference and see what I was doing. It's pretty much my life on ice.
My hockey is good, but my ice skating is terrible. It's a bit of a mess to watch!
When I get bored, or get stuck on an equation, I like to go ice skating, but it makes you forget your problem. Then you can tackle the problem with a fresh new insight. Einstein liked to play the violin to relax. Every physicist likes to have a past time. Mine is ice skating.
I started skating when I was about 10 years old. It was in an alleyway. I picked up my brother's skateboard and stood on it. I started to roll down the alley, and I yelled at my brother asking him how I turn the thing. At the end of the alley, I just jumped off, picked up the board and physically turned it around.
Figure skating has been a great influence for me. I took dance at the School of American Ballet, which helped my own skating. And whether you are a skater or a dancer, without sounding narcissistic, it is all about looking in the mirror.
I would recommend anybody who gets a chance to see short track skating, make it a point to go out there when Apolo is skating because you won't see anybody better.
I would just love to be able to give back to figure skating.
I used to be a shopper before I had children. I'd go to Bergdorf and Barneys all the time. But now my weekends are spent differently. I go to the skating rink or the park, not the stores.
I started ice-skating when I was about 12 or 13 and I was selected in the Australian team for ice hockey. I met my wife at St Moritz Ice Skating about 1955.
Pairs skating and singles are two different things. Although some skaters have achieved this successfully, it is a very difficult transition. You're looking at double work.
