Skate Today : Doctor Defeats Disease to Gain Adult Skating Gold

Doctor Defeats Disease to Gain Adult Skating Gold

Karen Guenette

Lake Placid physician Karen Guenette didn't start out as a youngster trying to be the next Olympic ladies champion. She didn't even start skating until she was in her late 20s, long past the time when many Olympic champions have already hung up their skates. "I never skated at all," Guenette remembered. "I was kind of a wimpy kid. But in April 1995, after I had a car accident I decided to sign up for skating lessons in Lake Placid since I always wanted to learn how to skate and thought it would be good therapy. I wanted to quit after two weeks because I was the worst skater in the class, but stuck it out because I was convinced that I ought to do something in my spare time that wasn't work related."

"I was wearing a helmet and knee pads and skating with all these little kids," she continued. "I was kind of embarrassed, but I decided it was OK for me not to be good at everything. I wore a helmet for over a year and kneepads for two years. I finally took them off because two-time Olympic pairs champion, Oleg Protopopov, kept bugging me, saying that they ruined my beautiful 'lines'. After watching the first Adult National Figure Skating Championships held in Lake Placid, I was inspired to improve. I did my bronze test the day before they changed the rules because the new rules said you had to have a back spin and I didn't have one."

Guenette was scheduled to compete at U. S. Adult Nationals in Lake Placid in 1997, but a question of her eligibility came up, as she was a Canadian citizen so she only skated an exhibition. Later she won a gold medal in adult interpretive in 2004. But then she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, which causes severe fatigue, chronic muscle pain and sleep disturbances. Although barely able to move without pain, Guenette continued to skate when she could. "Skating was my therapy," she said. Eventually, through a combination of conventional and alternative medicine, she was strong enough to compete at Adult Nationals again in 2005.

"Getting to the point where I could compete again was pretty amazing," she said. "I had my free skate program for years before I was well enough to skate it in competition. My goal when I went into the competition was just to make the final round, but I skated phenomenally in the qualifying round and won. Then I went into the final and had a brain fart. I went wonky out of my axel and fell out of my combination spin and finished eighth out of 32 in silver ladies. That was disappointing but I realized that I had only wished to be in the final and I got my wish."

"I wanted to go to Germany for the World Adult Championships," she continued. "I had missed the Mountain Cup and I thought it would be special to be in the first ISU-sanctioned Adult Figure Skating Competition, often referred to as the 'Adult Worlds'. And part of me wanted to redeem myself for my lack-luster finals performance at Nationals. I asked myself what I learned from Nationals. First and foremost, I had to honestly admit that I wanted to win and to risk actually wishing for it. There's a whole bunch of adult skaters who think that it's good to go out and challenge yourself but that wanting to win is bad. Sometimes people get upset if someone they think isn't a nice person wins. I realized that I had judged other people like that and I needed to let go of those feelings because they were blocking me from doing well."

"There's no available training ice in Lake Placid in May, so to practice I had to travel 2 hours to Burlington, Vermont and Clifton Park, New York," Guenette said. "I also skated in Orlando and San Diego when I had to go on trips for work. I think I got in about twelve hours in May - hardly considered adequate preparation for Worlds. When I got to Germany, I was pretty exhausted from the plane trip and I purposely rested the day before competition, much to the shock of some of my fellow competitors.

"When I saw the roster of competitors in Silver Ladies I, I saw that I'd be competing against Century Lee, who I consider one of the best in my division, and wins almost everything," she noted. "I have great respect for Century's skating. My immediate reaction was, 'Oh, no. How are you ever gonna compete with her?' But then I said to myself, 'No, wait a minute. Be thankful she is here! It will test you and your mental focus. If you win, and you skated with the best, it will feel even better!"

"So I decided to let go of all of my pre-conceived judgments and negative thoughts, and meditated on appreciating every moment of the experience," she continued. "When I saw the big crowd and the flags and my name in lights, it was a Zen moment. I felt, 'Wow, I'll have a good day.' I felt the energy from the audience and was just in the moment. I was very calm and did all my elements except I under-rotated my axel. I skated from my heart and gave the audience everything I had."

"Then Century Lee skated and strangely, I wanted badly for her to skate well. With every jump and spin, I was drawn to energetically focus on helping her! She did, in fact, skate a perfect program with huge jumps, but as we waited patiently for the announcement, a sense of calm and "rightness" came over me, and I knew I won. Technically, she beat me by a couple of points, but my second mark was what made the difference. In fact, based on the CoP I would have beaten all the skaters in the level above me (Gold level)!" Thus Guenette became the first Adult World Champion in Silver Ladies I. "What an honor it was to have my trophy handed to me by ISU President, Ottavio Cinquanta," she said.

Guenette skated to "Scene D'Amour" by Sarah Brightman, a program choreographed for her by Carole Fortini. Guenette is coached by Jack Devitt, with whom she has worked for the past ten years. She has also worked with Karen Courtland-Kelly, Tammy Lalande and Lorna Aldridge. Now Guenette is looking for a new challenge. "My next big thing is to do pairs," she said. "I need to find a pairs partner. I want to work on the technical aspects of pairs this year and maybe compete in the future." She is working with Jack Devitt, Karen Cortland-Kelly and Peter Biver on her pairs skating. She has passed her preliminary and juvenile pair skating tests thus far.

Guenette has also been working with some of Kelly's other skating students. "I've been doing a seminar on translating meditation into skating," she said. "The mental part of the process is as important as the physical and I'm am I prime example of that. You have to harness the energy and bring yourself into the zone on cue. My motto is skating is meditation in motion. Skating is the only thing I can manage to do without excessive thinking!"

The 38-year-old physician currently practices as an integrative medicine doctor. "I use holistic medicine, acupuncture, sound therapy, nutrition counseling, personal growth and relationship counseling and other new therapies and other ways of helping people," she explained. "I used to be in family practice, but now I see about a third as many patients as most doctors see, and work with them more intensively. It's much more rewarding."

Guenette got another big surprise on Valentine's Day weekend last February when she was returning home from a weekend of skating in Central Park and Rockefeller Center. "It was a beautiful night and I was driving home on my birthday," she noted. "It started to snow so I pulled off the road for a break. Celine Dion's 'You and I' was playing on the radio and I was dancing to it in the snow. Then I saw a poster advertising the 25th anniversary of the 1980 Olympics and noticed the figure skater on it."

"I went and looked at it and said, 'Oh my God, it's me.' I had gone on to an audition for Allsport Photography years before when I lived in Los Angeles, California, where they were just taking stock photos of figure skating moves. I said to myself, 'What are the chances that out of hundreds of photos, the Olympic Regional Development Authority would happen to choose a Lake Placid resident?" Guenette jokingly said that she fully expected her picture to be advertising laxatives in Japan, but was most honored when she realized she was advertising the Olympics! And to witness it on her birthday was truly "a gift from God!"