I Found My Inner Champion

The Chance of a Lifetime

I'm standing in the wings of the world-famous skating rink at Rockefeller Center waiting to perform. I've trained for this harder than for anything else in my life. Hours a day spent practicing on the ice with a demanding coach, ballet lessons, and constant visualization of my routine (going over the moves in my head on the subway, while waiting for the elevator and before I fell asleep at night) are culminating in this one exciting yet terrifying moment.

My cue comes and I move effortlessly to the center of the rink. I lift my head, extend my arms and smile at the 300 spectators in the stands. The music starts and I begin to skate, revving up for the first jump, a salchow. I land it cleanly. Next up is the toe loop. I glide backward on my right foot, dig the toe pick of my left skate into the ice and stretch out with my right leg. In the air, I make a mistake and boom, I'm on my butt. But I get up, smile and finish the routine, because that's what an Olympic skater does.

Except I'm not an Olympic skater; I'm a 40-year-old ad sales exec. Just three weeks before, I had replied to a mass e-mail from the producers of American Movie Classics' Into Character, a program in which everyday people have a chance to live out a favorite movie role. They were looking for a woman with at least five years' skating experience (I had 11) who wanted to re-create the part of Alexis, the skater who goes blind in the 1970s classic tearjerker Ice Castles, starring Tiger Beat heartthrob Robby Benson. I thought it would be a goof. Little did I know that being chosen would help me blow my comfort zone wide open.