by Lucinda Ruh
This coach was definitely different from any I had before. For the first time in my life I felt like my coach really cared for me. He was calm and that is what I needed. I did not need anyone pushing me. For the first time I felt my coach actually understood me. He saw right away that I always trained, worked, and tried way too hard. Where all my other coaches had always pushed me far beyond my limits, he actually saw that for me to do well he would have to hold me back and tell me repeatedly not to do so much.
He started off with healing my injuries. He had the acupuncturist and massage therapist from the team come to my room everyday to treat me. My coach made me herbal baths to soak my feet in and herbal medicine drinks that I had to swallow by holding my breath and my nose since the smell and taste was indescribably horrid. Somehow, like never before, it all worked wonders. My injuries truly subsided and I started to get my strength back.
However, during the time of less exercise I had gained a little more weight and it looked like puberty would soon start for me. It was the summer of 1998 and I was nineteen years old now. Although still flat-chested I was getting some curves. Again, my coach did not like this and maybe if we had spoken up about my never having had my period and that it was not healthy for me to lose weight, he would have understood and given me time. But we did not, and he wanted me to lose the little excess weight I had. My mother was actually furious at him for telling me to lose weight. She had suffered through my sister being anorexic and she could not handle it again. So to her dislike, I went on a strict and balanced but minimal diet. I chewed gum all day so that I would not eat and I lost the weight fairly quickly. I always did whatever someone told me to do since I would just do it without thinking it through. I lost the onset of puberty and my body went back to looking like a boy. Hormonally I was not balanced and I was to suffer the consequences of this later on.
Since Harbin was the home to all the athletes at the training center, their parents visited often and brought food for their children and kindly brought us some as well. I was speaking pretty well in Chinese by then and had fun conversations with my teammates. The Chinese invited us much more into their culture than the Japanese had done. On the weekends after the morning practice on Saturday the athletes went back to their parents’ home and returned to camp on Monday mornings. Since my mother and I had no other home but the campgrounds, in the beginning we just stayed there on the weekends too. It was desolate, lonely, intolerably quiet, and you would hear the uninvited cockroaches scurrying! The kitchen would of course be closed as well.
During the week, when I rested in between practices, my mother ventured off to explore the city. She found a beautiful hotel, the best in Harbin, and some days we would go and have a proper (for us) dinner, and it just was so amazing. To eat with a knife and fork and have a piece of steak melt in your mouth was just heaven. It felt like a dinner fit for a queen after eating at the cafeteria. I wouldn’t want to leave the comfort of the hotel. To come from nothing and then have a dinner on a nice plate in a clean dining room felt incredibly indulgent. The contrast could be felt in every vein in the body. Even the sight of a few foreigners here and there and to hear some English being spoken brought us some sort of familiarity.
My mother had a marvelous idea! She decided she would treat herself and me to weekends at the hotel! So every Saturday afternoon we packed an overnight bag and went to the hotel. Ah, you don’t know how good the clean sheets and the big bed with the bouncy mattress felt, and oh, the bathroom was just marvelous. I never appreciated all these daily things as much as at those times. I would soak in the bathtub for hours scrubbing off all the dirt from camp. I would lie in bed cuddled in the clean white sheets all afternoon watching television, and we would just order room service. This was the life! It wasn’t glamorous at all but after camp, oh my goodness, it felt glamorous! We felt like queens.
On Sundays we had a big brunch and would stack away a few breads in our pockets for the next week. Sunday afternoon, like good soldiers, we would be back on the campgrounds and back to Chinese reality. At least now the weekends were something to look forward to and made the week more bearable. It was like a special treat!
The city outside the grounds was stimulating to say the least, in many different ways. Huge trash bins circled the gates and the trash was overflowing and had a horrendous stench to it. There was a huge market with a tent above it that sold everything you can imagine for very little. My parents and I would explore it often and have a blast. We used to buy tons of these colorful hacki-sacks that had a metal base and feathered heads. My teammates and I would play with them for hours. One time the sellers even wanted to buy my father’s pants off of him! There were bicycles and people everywhere. I have never seen that many people, not even in Tokyo. Or maybe I have, but in Tokyo everyone walks, and goes in the same direction in his or her own little bubble. It seems cold and distant, everyone camouflaged as if they all look the same. In China everyone was going everywhere in no order or manner, everyone pushing each other out of their way. There were barbers lined up on the street giving haircuts. It was alive and there was a sense of urgency in the air that all must keep on moving. Nothing must ever come to a halt. It was bustling with excitement.
My coach had seen me compete and train before, so he knew what I was all about. The first few days I was getting back on the ice were terrible. I was still healing from my injuries and I wasn’t landing any of my triples, but I was doing them over and over again. After studying me for a few days he came to a conclusion. It was July by now and he told my mother and me that he would allow me to do only doubles for three months! Not one triple. He said my timing, rhythm, and coordination were completely off, and my falling repeatedly and landing one out of ten jumps was not going to do me any good. He said that we would see that after three months, when my doubles were performed to perfection, I would land all the five triples in just one day. My mother and I were dumbfounded. We couldn’t fathom not working like a donkey, even if that meant falling over and over again. But I trusted this coach more than I ever had, and to finally have a coach that understood, and for someone to finally step up to my defense and not push me, was such a God-given gift that I knew I needed to follow his teachings. It was pleasing to me that he calmed down my mother; it wasn’t my job anymore. He took care of everything. Everyone was living so close together that it was impossible for my mother to lash out. Since she and I were tightly watched, she no longer had the freedom she had previously. It was so good for both of us. My father having so much trust in this coach also helped my mother to relax. It started to feel like my skating life might finally come together in peace at last.
My coach believed in me. I felt it and he knew that I had to be excited again about skating and that falling time and again would only put me more in despair. He later told me that all the other coaches had told him that I would never ever be able to land my triples. That is how much negativity goes on in an ice rink. No one except your mother or father (whoever is there), and your coach (and sometimes not even your coach), believes in you. The rest are all against you. Lo and behold, the other coaches would be wrong.
For three months I was only allowed to do doubles and that also allowed time for my injuries to be healed. But I needed to do the doubles with such care that each and every one of them could have been a triple if I had pulled in. He made sure I felt no pressure and that skating was fun again. He made sure and worked with me tirelessly until the timing was just perfect ten out of ten times. I did program run-throughs with doubles. When I started to enjoy skating again I was getting back to my center in life, too. I skated with all the top Chinese pairs-skaters and single skaters and it was a joy. We were not really friends but were training companions, and because there were no other good single-lady skaters, they saw me not as a threat, but as a treat. I could live with the bare living conditions while the skating was going so wonderfully. I loved it.
One day in September of 1998, after the three months were up, my coach felt i
n his bones that I was ready, and he told me on that day, that we would do triples. He gave me permission to fall and make mistakes and not to worry at all about the outcome. To all our amazement I went on the ice and after a few doubles I landed every single triple in the book! All five triples and just like that. Not one fall or mistake. They were so easy! I felt like I wasn’t even trying. It just happened.
For the first time in my skating life I loved to jump. I was landing each and every one and was even going for triple–triple combinations! It was wonderful, exciting, and freeing. It was purely a slice of heaven. My coach was not surprised since he had felt I was ready, but he was so proud of me! He never ceased to be my guru. Whatever he did he was never in a rush. He was as if in slow motion soaking up every second within every second. He was always living in the moment and like a true teacher he had formed a champion. I felt like one for the very first time in my life, exceeding any happiness I had felt earning a gold medal. I was happier than ever. I could have stopped skating then and there and know I had accomplished it all. My mother and father were elated. My triples would stay with me, but unfortunately only as long as I was under his watchful eye.
Skating would be bountiful for me for some time but the living conditions would catch up to me physically. Either because I lost a lot of weight or my immune system had never been exposed to what I was eating and drinking, I became incredibly sick. It felt like whenever one part of my life was getting better everything else would collapse into heaps in front of me. I truly did not know what God was trying to tell me. All I knew was I had to fight on. I would start feeling nauseous, losing my appetite, and dizzy with a headache. Then my stomach would inflate until it looked like I was nine months pregnant. I could not see my toes. I would not be able to eat for a few days and just lie in bed, not able to train. Then on about the third day I would explode in both directions with extreme diarrhea and vomiting. This would continue for a few days and then a few more days of feeling better and then back to training. The whole cycle took a little more than a week.
When it first happened during the summer, we went straight to the hospital. Unfortunately the hospital was not a hospital with Western standards. There were people lying all over the floor, in the hallways, and in every room all huddled together. The doctors had more holes in their white gowns and more missing teeth and hair than their patients. It reeked and was filthy. The doctor wanted to inject me with something and I firmly declined, not knowing what they were going to inject me with and not sure if all their needles and equipment was even clean. Having received no treatment we went back to the camp. The secretary who had come up to help us in the beginning called a few places and found a good doctor nearby who spoke a few words of English. We paid a visit and all I received was a dose of antibiotics and those cute pink tablets that you can suck for stomach discomfort. Now, compared to how I was feeling this treatment seemed more suitable for a little stomach ache than what I was going through, but we had no other option at that time. My Chinese coach had never experienced this before so he did not know what to do either.
To my dismay this cycle started happening once every single month! Instead of the monthly women’s cycle I experienced this kind of monthly cycle. I can tell you I would have rather have had the other one! Luckily my training and its method was going so well that it did not really disturb my skating, but I was getting weaker from it. Feeling this unwell and not knowing why, was exceedingly scary. My mother was fine. Always was. Lucky her. God had sent her to me because he knew she would take care of me best. I was thankful. I do not know what I would have done without her.
As the winter approached it was quite freezing and people were dressed like Eskimos to keep the warmth in their body. The grounds were frozen over and at least I was happy that the insects and rats might have been frozen too! My stomach sickness was continuing every month and to top it off I got a terrible flu. I had an extremely high fever, over one hundred and five degrees for two days. I did not feel anything, actually. I was feeling completely fine. That’s when you know it’s dangerous. I just remember going in and out of consciousness and seeing many people huddled over my bed trying to give me all sorts of medicine. My coach’s wife came with bowlfuls off watermelon (I do not know where she found it in the middle of winter) to lower my fever. My coach poured gallons of vinegar on the floor of my room and wrapped my feet in towels soaked in vinegar as well. They were all trying to get my fever down. They really thought I wasn’t going to make it, but my mother’s prayers were answered, and after a few worrisome days my fever settled down. I stayed confined in bed for another week before I could start skating again.
There was another incredibly important situation going on at the same time. The main national training center was in Beijing, but since the Olympics were over, my coach did not think that the federation would call the skaters to live, skate, and train there to prepare themselves for the season. I, of course, wanted to go there because I wanted to experience Beijing as well, but for some reason whenever I brought it up, my coach dismissed the conversation and said he did not want to go to Beijing. My mother and I had no understanding of why, and of course we thought if there was something he was hiding he would most likely not admit to it anyway.
Unfortunately for him the athletes were called in, and we were told we all had to go to Beijing to train for a while. There was a change in my coach’s demeanor and he became uncannily tense. We were to all go by train to Beijing on an overnight trip. It was thrilling when my mother and I and all the other top skaters and their coaches were together on the train. The other skaters and I played cards and finally fell asleep in the bunk beds all lined up, one after another. My mother and I had contemplated flying to Beijing but we thought the experience of the team and the train was more valuable than the luxury of flying. It was fun, Chinese style! Oblivious to it all I was thrilled to be going to train in Beijing!
The training grounds there were similar to Harbin but a little more upper class in terms of conditions and much cleaner. At least, inside the buildings it was cleaner. Outside the people still spat and threw things everywhere. There was to be an international junior competition held in Beijing at the facility. I remember for that one week when all the international skaters were there, not one Chinese spat on the ground. It was a rule for that one week. The second they were gone it started all over again! It was remarkable to observe. You can change a man but never the culture within him!
I had some competitions I would have to attend in Europe. The Chinese skater who had organized our training stay had promised my coach would be able to travel with me to them, but as life would have it he was not able to leave. The Chinese government and federation had him on a tight leash and muzzle. So I went to the competitions alone, phoning in every day to my coach to ask how I should train that day and calling him with results right after I got off the ice. He coached me on the phone.
Even with no coach physically there, I never was more confident. I had to do a qualifying competition for Swiss Nationals in December of 1998 and I was excited to show my new jumps and amazing skating to the judges. The competition was in an ice rink as cold as Harbin had been! It was so freezing that I would have loved to compete with a ski suit on. It was in the Swiss Alps and in an open ice rink! For the six minutes warm up, I did just doubles. I felt the whispers of people talking to each other remarking coyly that “now Lucinda could not even master one triple!”
As my turn came I completed every single triple in the program, even with numb toes and fingers and cold air steaming out of my mouth! I was a huge success and judges came up to me afterward, saying they were puzzled as to why I only did doubles in the warm up and they wanted to know why. I felt I did not owe anything to them and pretended not to understand their question and walked away. These were the same people who denied me my Olympic spot. I did not feel I needed to explain anything to them nor did I wish to speak to them. Whatever the result, I just wanted the skating to speak for itself.
After this competition on our return to China there was more drama than I could have expected. I was still getting very sick every month and it got so bad sometimes that my mother and I honestly thought I was going to die. Really die. My mother was very scared and so was I. I was that sick and felt that horrible, and no one could help me. On the other hand, my coach had the other male skater and he was extraordinarily talented, doing quads left and right. He was the first skater ever to land two quads in one program. He was so talented and he was also so lazy. Whereas I was a workaholic, he never wanted to work. He was a very good kid, funny, and so kind hearted. He liked me more than a friend and we had a great relationship. He would sneak out of the campgrounds in the middle of the night and not return until sunrise. He would go to the game centers and play arcades all night long, have a couple of smokes, and maybe some alcohol. Nothing really bad. He just wanted to play all day.
We all longed to have his talent, but sometimes your greatest strength becomes your greatest weakness. My coach had hoped that my being there would motivate him and make him work, but my dedication did not influence him and his bad results at competitions were an indication of lack of practice. He was even starting to lose to his Chinese teammates. My mother and I knew if he did not skate well the federation would blame my presence for hindering him and taking time away from his coach. It would be my fault, so we always tried to help and support and push him to skate and train but he just wouldn’t. He was so happy with his life and himself that he did not see the need to push himself. We were two opposite people and I think in the long run he taught me more valuable lessons than I could have ever taught him. He put life and enjoyment first and unfortunately it was at my expense.
