INTRO
I traveled to New York to meet up with my friend Lucinda Ruh a beautiful soul who is celebrated as the Queen of Spin the fastest spinner on ice ever. She’s the world Guinness record holder as the longest spinner on ice, two-time World Professional figure skating bronze medalist and a two-time national figure skating gold medalist. Lucinda is a mother, philanthropist and author of “Frozen Teardrop”, The Tragedy and Triumph of Figure Skating’s “Queen of Spin”.
BUMPER
TAJCI
So it’s wonderful to be here with your beautiful twins
LUCINDA
Thank you so much for having me
TAJCI
Yeah, this is amazing! I’m just so happy that we’re here in this setting with your beautiful twins Angelina and Angelica.
LUCINDA
Yea, they are two-and-a-half, almost gonna be three in a couple of months so and the joy and love in my life
TAJCI
Yeah absolutely you know it’s after you had that huge career and you know being so celebrated and just enjoying what you did because you really did … it was everything to you.
LUCINDA
The skating you mean? The skating was everything it was me it was who I was with me it was who I learned it was like as the skater Lucinda not Lucinda the skater and you know skating is a very young sport
TAJCI
Yes
LUCINDA
And I mean singing in this you can also start very young that’s skating especially I mean if you haven’t made it by 12, 13, 14 into those ranks it’s very hard to go further. So and I started skating at four and just became who I was.
TAJCI
Yes and you said it so beautifully in your book the “Frozen Teardrop”. When I read it, I mean I was just crying through the whole thing. I can identify with so much just from… the music point I guess. But what you said mostly it was Lucinda, the “Skater Lucinda” rather than “Lucinda, the Skater”.
LUCINDA
Yeah, it just becomes who you are because it’s such a big part of you and it’s… I mean, in the morning I used to skate an hour and a half before school an after-school I used to skate another four or five hours, and you just start identifying yourself what you do
TAJCI
I think that is normal for anybody.. whatever you do, whatever you love you start identifying yourself with.
LUCINDA
Because you have to start so young you have to change so much so I think it also then becomes your mother’s sport or whoever is with you
TAJCI
Yes, yes, as I was reading the book I really thought about your mother, how much she had to sacrifice in her life
LUCINDA
Yea, I mean she always says it’s not a sacrifice for her. It wasn’t a sacrifice because she loved it so much and she loved it probably even more than I did because she was an adult because she understood it more. Me as little kid four or five years old you don’t understand.
And I actually skated because my sister skated.
TAJCI
Right
LUCINDA
She is nine years older than I and my sister loved ice skating. I I think she loved it more than I did that’s for sure. She loved ice skating. And so as my mom would take her to the rink
I would just come along in the crib and that is how I started skating.
TAJCI
Yes
LUCINDA
She was like: hey we are already here, you might as well go on the ice too
TAJCI
And now that your a mother … let me just jump ahead and
you can see… you can now, I guess, understand the whole dynamic even better and deeper
LUCINDA
Yeah I think so. I mean they’re still young I’ve been skating with them a few times but they are a little bit too young to start skating they are only two-and-a-half almost three.
Yeah I can understand that, it’s gonna become mine as well. It’s going to become my love because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to support them.
TAJCI
Right
LUCINDA
In that way there’s no way, and I guess at skating they say takes a village to raise a child and to raise an athlete I guess it takes a country.
TAJCI
That’s a very good point and you know and that’s why I want to especially thank you for allowing us to do this with the kids because every time we have these interviews we used to, we like to, keep the kids at home…. Out of the sight
LUCINDA
Yes
TAJCI
So the people out there think that people, you know, who are on television and have families they have this perfect lives where everything is like, there’s no interruption
LUCINDA
Yeah unfortunately today they had to be with me so they are in the shoot so…
TAJCI
Absolutely, that’s the beauty of it because
LUCINDA
It’s real… we want to show who we are.
TAJCI
Exactly. One part… when you become so focused, and you, as an athlete had to be focused to achieve what you have achieved, to have that focus everything does end up being perfect right?
LUCINDA
I mean… in what way?
TAJCI
Well you have everything structured right?
LUCINDA
Everything is structured. I think it never becomes perfect at least I that’s my experience.
You always are, like, training to be perfect. You are always trying to reach that perfection in a way it’s like, you don’t really know what that perfection is. You’re just trying to be better, better, better all the time and it’s never good enough.
TAJCI
Right.
LUCINDA
That’s kind of how I was, I wouldn’t say raised, but that’s kind of how the sport was and I’m from Switzerland, so I have the German side of the discipline. Then I grew up in Tokyo, Japan so then there is even the Japanese discipline on top of it.
I think there was in the way… I grew up was no room for excuses for anything than work, work, work, work from a very young age and so I think, I mean, you know, you can never say if it would have been this way then… you don’t know.
You don’t know how it would have been better or how it would have been worse. It is what it is and I appreciate living in that world and having experiences I’ve had.
I was talking to my Mom the other day and she’s like, are you happy with your career? And yeah, and actually my mother and I could have not done anything more or my Father, like our family, we could have not done anything more to be better than I was. We just really gave it, I know you can’t say 1,000% but we gave it a 100% at the maximum.
TAJCI
Yes
LUCINDA
And what I do regret is we didn’t enjoy it enough. I feel like we didn’t enjoy the process enough and we didn’t enjoy when did have the fastest spins like really be proud of it. Like I said maybe the German/Japanese influence of never being too arrogant, of never being too proud… I think the Americans have more… a little bit of more that freedom and independence and that like I really good
TAJCI
Yes
LUCINDA
You are brought up with that. I remember, in Japan, going to international school, the American kids always seemed the best for some reason.
The American group, they were like… because they spoke so well, and they had this confidence and air about them that the Europeans and Asian don’t quite have from a very young [age]. The Americans have this easiness about them, it’s the lifestyle as well.
TAJCI
I think it’s also part of the American spirit of being brave and courageous to just be who you are.
LUCINDA
Exactly. And that was so wonderful about them. And so I told my Mom that’s the only thing I regret.
Like, we didn’t enjoy it enough. We weren’t, in a humble way, proud of ourselves enough, you know like, just like, ‘we can do it’ and ‘it’s fine’ and we are good enough.
TAJCI
And you were born in Switzerland
LUCINDA
Yes, it’s a little bit complicated.
TAJCI
But then you you lived in Japan, and in China and in San Francisco.
LUCINDA
Well, I was born in Switzerland only because my parents were living in Iran, and it was during the revolution I was conceived.
And then they had to flee to Switzerland that’s why I was born there.
And then we moved to Paris right away and at four we moved to Japan and then then we moved to Canada and the States for the skating career.
TAJCI
I watched a lot of your videos cause I just love it…I love I love figure skating… if I… if there is one sport… that’s the one I love
LUCINDA
Really
TAJCI
And tennis. But I can’t do anything. I can only skate a little bit!
But this one (is it) World Championship?
LUCINDA
Yes
TAJCI
In ’99?
LUCINDA
Yes
TAJCI
And you did this amazing performance. So deeply moving… okay it moves my soul and then even the commentator says: “she uplifts my spirits” and that is so beautiful and then you get [marks]… what do you mean these, you know it like that’s all …
LUCINDA
Yea
TAJCI
That’s like so… yea so I was like mad… That to me would be so crushing because here you are, you give not a 100% you give a 1,000% you’re obviously so great but just because they like jumps better than spins… Yeah, I don’t really understand
LUCINDA
Yeah
TAJCI
Please tell me, but what did that do to you, your spirit?
LUCINDA
I think… I think that was kinda the struggle for me. Being a skater and I, as a child I kept saying I was never one that really wanted to win. I never thought ‘I’m gonna be an Olympic champion. I want to be world champion.’ And I know that there are a lot of kids say from very young [when] they have little video tapes [of them saying]: I’m going to be Olympic champion one day.
I never really wanted to win. That wasn’t something I was striving for. I wanted to do something that nobody else had done in the world.
And actually when I was 7 years old my father came to me said: I don’t mind if you win. He actually said it, so maybe it was an influence there as well…
He was like I don’t mind if you win anything, I don’t care I want you to do something that keeps you in the history books forever. You do something no one else has ever done. That’s what he told me when I was seven. So I think maybe that was the influence there as well.
But I’m not competitive by nature, so I was like ‘okay.’ So that’s how I chose the spinning.
So for me, every performance was really like a painting. Like I was painting a story and I think I had behind-the-scenes… I had so much pain being bullied in Japan being the only foreigner. There was so much bullying at the ice rink.
It was just like attacking me all day from the coaches and from the students and there was so much pain and with that struggle, with that. I wanted to be an artist and yet the teachers and my mother wanted me to fight more and win and do the jumps
TAJCI
Yes, yes, yes
LUCINDA
And I wasn’t comfortable with the jumps so there was that inner struggle. So I was kinda like, this is my outlet and the spinning was kinda like my meditation, and I was like giving the story and painting a story on the ice with my body. So for me, it was disappointing in a way that I wasn’t getting the marks. But in a way I knew I was doing something that no one else ever had done before.
So for me I was like, it’s okay, I never really was upset I didn’t win I know it sounds weird but
TAJCI
No, no it doesn’t…
LUCINDA
I really just wanted to be an artist and I just wanted to do my art on the ice.
TAJCI
Oh that’s so…
LUCINDA
So that’s really what it was. And I was ok, kind of with my marks on the ice. I couldn’t have done more for me. I could not have done more and so I was just…
What was the hardest for me I think was when I was older and I got very sick from the spinning and I couldn’t do the spinning anymore. Because that was kinda like my outlet. And, like I said, my meditation. That was tougher.
But I think there was that struggle still because as a child, and you’re young, you know, like I said you start skating so young, it’s almost like you’re trying to make your parents ..you know you wanna make your parents proud.
And like I said skating is such a sport that it’s a team you don’t do it yourself. So it was like my mother and I skating.
TAJCI
Yeah
LUCINDA
So yes, there was a struggle that I wasn’t making them happy enough. I wasn’t doing the jumps, I wasn’t getting those marks so yes there was still that struggle, but deep inside me I kinda was okay with it. But I knew that it wasn’t really okay with everyone else.
TAJCI
Yes. That’s one thing… we do want to, all of us like you said, be a team player and fit the expectation that people invest in us.
LUCINDA
Yeah I mean, how much money and time my parents invested in me, and then I’m not doing the jumps. So that felt extremely… like that… I felt like, oh my gosh I’m not good enough for them. That I did feel a lot.
TAJCI
And that’s what you know I really… with these shows I want to send
that message just be who you are because they love you anyway.
LUCINDA
And that’s the part that I was saying to my mom, if only we could have enjoyed it, and be just like: I am doing the spins, I am doing something that’s different.
And this is who I am and just leave it, not push something that’s not there.
TAJCI
And it comes across in your book and that’s why I encourage everyone to read it, and just be really inspired by it.
So now tell me about the waking up moment.
LUCINDA
I think I had different waking up moments within my skating career.
That was like the different waking up moments, more like with the spins. It was my thing, kind of my escape, my meditations. I was kind of waking up within myself not really trying to… not changing completely… waking up within myself.
TAJCI
Yes
LUCINDA
But definitely waking up when I got very sick and it was found out because of the spins.
‘Cause I was spinning so fast, at six rotations a second that it was giving me mini concussions. It’s a long process, but basically I was bedridden for at least five years.
The waking up for me was like: is it worth it to do… to sacrifice my body so much or something, you know, for something that’s maybe not quite appreciated anyway at this moment and being so sick and not being able to have like a life and I think for me it was just coming to the realization that I needed to be Lucinda before the skater and I had been so long even not just skater, I’ve been the ‘Spinner Lucinda’, you know, the ‘Fastest Spinner.’
And to really be able to become Lucinda first. I think that was the waking up moment with my body collapsing.
It was almost like my body was saying I can’t anymore. It was speaking instead of my words because I couldn’t.
Growing up especially in Japan, you’re not allowed to speak to your coaches, and European discipline, you’re not allowed to talk… which is great. I mean, you don’t talk back to your parents, you don’t… but you also in the Japanese culture, you don’t speak your mind… you don’t…
TAJCI
Or your feelings.
LUCINDA
Your feelings. You kind of hide everything. So, I think everything was so stuck inside.
When I was spinning I was showing it through my body. But once couldn’t spin, my body collapsing, it was like my body showing that, look, you can’t do this anymore and not be Lucinda. You’re not living the life of Lucinda.
TAJCI
Honor who you are
LUCINDA
It was time for me to do a drastic change and become me.
TAJCI
When I was reading your book I was at the time of my life when I really needed to hear that.
I was also going through the change, through the awakening that music doesn’t define me. I am from within.
LUCINDA
For young performers… you started very young… we start very young… we actually I have a feeling, we develop that more than we develop ourselves because that’s what we do and then that’s what we’re training to do and then we have that persona, so you gotta keep that up before you’re, like, you know like the other kids going to school they’re developing themselves.
But we never get the chance ’cause school was kind of…I mean school is very important but it was aside to the who you were as a skater.
So, the skating, or the art, whatever we do evolves so much and you just kind of gets left behind and once… that’s I think what happens to a lot of the athletes
TAJCI
And celebrities, and musicians.
LUCINDA
All these artists in their own way. When you’re so extreme in one way
TAJCI
And focused.
LUCINDA
And focused you lose all the other side. And that’s what I think…
and then when you can’t do that or when you suddenly have that waking or something happens with that… You are just like, oh my gosh, who am I?
(little girl saying something)
LUCINDA
Okay…
TAJCI
Okay, so you wake up and everything that you know about yourself, now you have to push aside. How was that for you?
LUCINDA
Spinning was my love, It was like the thing that I knew and that associated myself with and it’s that’s who you are. You wake up and you’re the spinner, you wake up and you are the singer…
And so to suddenly let go of that and not have some kind of an identity or like a world that’s different than that world, it was like it was incredibly scary in one way and in one way was incredibly like exhilarating and like a pressure kind of lifting off…
So, it was kind of, it’s always like that kind of see-saw, emotionally and physically.
I had to heal physically as well. So that was a huge component because I was basically bedridden. So that was a huge component of it as well. I had to… you know, I had to be able to live a normal life and that really was important to me suddenly, I was like, Oh my gosh, I want a life after this.
But definitely scary, of course, to leave something you associate yourself with. And I think the hardest thing was I loved it. The spinning I really, really loved.
The skating… just skating not as much, but the spinning was something that was just me, you know… And I don’t think I think I came to a point where I am like, I don’t have to leave it, I don’t have to I don’t have to let it go, I don’t change.
I’m always going to be the spinner: and I think you have to be okay with that and I think you have to embrace that.
And once embrace that, I’m like okay now… you know, I’m gonna be someone who was that and maybe who still…you still are.
You can’t just like leave it in the past, oh it was that! or not anymore… I think it’s just… It’ll carry you through your whole life
TAJCI
Yes
LUCINDA
But you just see it in a different way you carry it in a different way, and you start letting your spirit and yourself evolve and then you become a whole person. I think I wasn’t a whole person.
TAJCI
Yeah so it sounds like, ok so your body kind of forced you into this healing process and allowed you the time to heal.
LUCINDA
Definitely.
TAJCI
And I have to say that your message is so important to send out to all the young people who… and all the not so young people who… we are all so focused and we forget to really understand who we are. I’m so glad you said it was hard because it is very hard.
LUCINDA
It is very hard.
In my book I even said you know I’ve never done drugs I’ve never done anything like that but I would think it’s almost the same as like addiction because the spinning was like the more, more, more… I used to spin and spin and spin, more and more… You get like a high… like a certain kind of high from it.
TAJCI
You said it was like a trance.
LUCINDA
It was like a trance for me, yea. And so to let go of something that strong, that big, it was… and I think that’s why my body also just collapsed, my mind was collapsed just to, like let go that high it was incredibly hard. I was only like 20, 22, 23…
You’ve got to start all over, and it’s… that was incredibly hard.
Not saying it was easy. Not sugar-coating it. But I think in my case especially there was no other way. It was almost like I was forced to just … otherwise… I literally felt like I was dying and I was very sick, in that I was fainting couple of times a day, I was in almost like a comatose state, so it was that or you know…
TAJCI
So, tell me now
LUCINDA
So once…
TAJCI
You obviously have this beautiful, beautiful, beautiful family!
LUCINDA
Yeah, they were a wonderful surprise. I have twins in my family but I never thought I would have… I don’t know, I just never thought I would have twins…
And here… many people now, when they see them like, oh I want twins. I never thought about them, maybe that’s why I was like blessed with them, but…
I worked on myself after, you know… I grew as Lucinda, as the person I grew and then I found, you know, the man, and I have now my love of my life, my two little angels, my two little girls.
TAJCI
It’s wonderful! I’m not gonna ask you what are you doing, what are you working on because this, I know how much work… And you are doing such a beautiful job as a mother to be that involved…
And I don’t want anybody to ever think that there is such thing as “just a mother.” Being a mother…
LUCINDA
Yeah, it’s very frustrating when they… because you have that skating world, and they are like, now what are you doing, now what are you doing?
I just, you know, they are only two and a half and they are only going to be young once and I just wanna be… I wanna a part of them as much as I can not just leave them with… you know, I mean I understand if you have to work, I understand you have to have to give them to a nanny…
But fortunately I can take care of them and I just wanna be a part of this miracle and I want to see every little step and being a mother… and twins it’s like 24/7 job.
But it’s very rewarding. It’s, I mean, there are the tough times but then the beautiful times to see these through.
I mean, sometimes I think, wow! we actually create humans, we are actually creating those.
TAJCI
And they are these little people on own.
LUCINDA
Yeah.
(little girl saying something)
Then why you are all yellow here? You have paint on your nose.
LITTLE GIRL
No…
LUCINDA
Yea, you have paint on your nose.
And then… and I want to open the world up to them.. to whatever they want… I do a lot of activities with them just I want them to be open and they chose whatever actually want. But I definitely want their spirits to grow into.
TAJCI
Yeah! Do you ever take them up for a spin?
LUCINDA
Yeah, we’ve been skating already, with them. So they’ve been on the ice already many times. They swim… they swim on their own very well.
LITTLE GIRL:
Mama… (little girl)
LUCINDA
And yea, maybe some more, hopefully.
TAJCI
Yes!
LUCINDA
I would like some more, we’ll see!
LITTLE GIRL:
No
LUCINDA
Yea? You want a little brother?
LITTLE GIRL
No
(laughs, kisses)
TAJCI
Oh, what a beautiful, beautiful story I think this is! This is what success is really. To… to come to this… to be who you
are and just really be joyful and have such a beautiful purpose in life, realize you know that there’s more to you.
LUCINDA
Yeah I think realizing… and that’s what I had hoped, and that’s what I was saying, with the the spins, it was… it was beautiful the spins… it wasn’t something… And your singing was so beautiful and I think we can’t throw that away. We should have just been able… if we only knew what we know now then and just have been enjoying it, and being ourselves within that.
Grateful for every step of the way. And this is totally different and it’s own miracle in it’s own way, you know? Everything I think is a miracle in it’s own way and we got to appreciate it…
TAJCI
Yes, thank you so much Lucinda… Thank you for being such a beautiful, strong, amazing light in our world.
LUCINDA
Thank you! You starting it all, so thank you for having me on.
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