School Gives Polina Edmunds Warm Send-Off To Olympics

Polina Edmunds was just 20 months old when she first put on a pair of ice skates. It was the first step she made in her journey to the Olympic Winter Games, which will be achieved next month in Russia, fittingly where her mother, Nina, got her start in skating.

The two will be at the Winter Games together since Nina is one of Polina’s coaches. And it will be quite a homecoming for the Edmunds family when Polina competes in Sochi. Polina, now 15, was the surprise silver medalist at the 2014 Prudential U.S. Figure Skating Championships this past week in Boston, which helped her earn a spot on the U.S. Olympic Team.



“My mom’s brother and her uncle live in Tver,” said Polina of the Russian town located about 100 miles northwest of Moscow where Nina also grew up. “I’m sure they are very excited. They’re probably contacting my mom right now.”

Although it is quite a jump for Edmunds — the Olympic Winter Games will mark her first senior-level international competition; the U.S. championships were her first senior event of any kind — she would not be the first teen to dazzle on the Olympic stage. After all, Edmunds’ idol is Tara Lipinski, who became the youngest Olympic figure skating champion at 15 when she upset Michelle Kwan for the gold medal in Nagano in 1998. Sarah Hughes went on to win the gold medal four years later in 2002 when she was 16.



Perhaps what is of the most surprising to many in the figure skating community is that Edmunds hardly seems surprised at all. She came to Boston with some of the most technically demanding routines in the women’s field (her short program featured a more difficult triple jump compared to that of eventual champion Gracie Gold). Edmunds also came to Boston with the luxury of no expectations. Although she had made a name for herself in the junior ranks, few expected her to reach the podium, much less finish higher than two-time defending U.S. champion Ashley Wagner, who placed fourth overall.

But Edmunds and her coaches all continually said they expected her to make the U.S. Olympic Team. Although many had her pegged as an Olympic hopeful for 2018, Edmunds said she always had 2014 in the front of her mind. She said she remembers receiving a red Team USA jacket with the year “2014” marked on it when she came to nationals in 2010 and had already calculated years ago that she would be age-eligible to compete when the Winter Games came to Sochi.



“This year, when I turned 15 I thought, ‘Oh this is it,’” said Edmunds, who was wearing a gold necklace with an ice skate on it.