Female Athletes and Boots Month - Ice Skating Week: Sarah Hughes
Sarah Hughes was the 2002 Gold Medal Winner at the Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah. Sarah was just 16 at the time, one year older than fellow American Tara Lipinski who won the gold medal at the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan. Her victory was the second straight gold medal for Team USA in Women's Singles Figure Skating and was the third out of the previous four Winter Olympic Games along with Krisit Yamaguchi. It would have been the forth consecutive win had it not been for a controversial scoring decision at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillhammer, Norway that prevented Nancy Kerrigan from winning the gold medal.
Sarah Hughes was a long shot to win the gold medal. Prior to the Olympics, here best performance was winning a bronze medal at the 2001 World Championships. Moreover, Sarah was forth in the short program before putting together a solid long program, including seven triple jumps, two of which were triple-triple combinations. Hughes benefited from skating before the three contenders ahead of her in the standings, all of whom made mistakes to give Sarah the gold medal.
After finishing high school, Sarah went on to graduate from Yale University with a degree in American Studies. Sarah is an accomplished saxophone player as well. Sarah's younger sister, Emily also competed in the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turin, Italy where she placed fifth.
One of the great benefits to winning a gold medal is the winner gets to have her picture taken with the incredibly beautiful Sasha Cohen, who won the silver medal at the 2006 Winter Games. Sarah is a modest winner. But, she did appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated and Wheaties made a special tribute box for her. Sarah saves wearing her knee high boots for special occasions, like Heidi Klum's Halloween Party when she dressed up as an adorable kitty cat.
