World Championships Tomorrow, 9 p.m.
TV: Ch. 7 (tape) Nice, France -"Guy walks into a bar," Sarah Hughes said, then paused for the punch line. "Ouch." She likes to tell jokes, she said. "If figure skating doesn't work out," she said, not sounding very serious, "I can be a comedian." She was cooling down after yesterday's practice session for tonight's World Championships short program, in which she has qualified with the elite final group of six among 30 competitors, a legitimate medal contender.
Two-time world champion Michelle Kwan will go first in the marquee group, the order of the qualifying round's top six scorers having been determined by a blind draw. Hughes will skate next-to-last, between Russian stars Irina Slutskaya and Maria Butyrskaya.
"I'm a caviar sandwich," Hughes said.
"Hey, that's my line," her coach, Robin Wagner, protested. "I called you a caviar sandwich because caviar is special." Get it? She has a Russian on each side. But so far, at 14, figure skating is working out fine.
Here is Hughes in the midst of the most significant event of her blooming career; she finished seventh in her first worlds a year ago and wants to do better. So far, "this is as much as I hoped for, to be in the last group, more than I expected," she said. For the first time in competition, she is sporting short hair for a more mature look. For yesterday's workout, she wore the new outfit, made by ballroom-dancing dress designer Tania Bass of Manhattan, that Hughes expects to debut in competition tonight. "Skin-tone," Wagner described it. "With a flower pattern and rhinestones." After Wednesday's qualifying round, which counted for 20 percent of the scoring, the intensity ratchets up with tonight's short program, worth 30 percent, followed by tomorrow's long-program finale. Yet there clearly is room for a little corniness amid the routine of business for this Great Neck North High School freshman.
For those who expect a week-long trip to the French Riviera to be all skating for Hughes, she noted slyly, "We also sleep and eat." A little shopping probably was in order soon, Wagner said. A visit to Nice's historic old town section already is in the bag of experience. Hughes' mother and three of Sarah's five siblings spent yesterday on a day trip to northern Italy, while her father opted to attend her practice.
On the immediate horizon for Hughes tonight is more of those fuzzy toys that skating fans love to shower onto the ice. A favorite lucky bear, tossed to her by a friend after an exhibition she skated two years ago, still travels with Hughes. Typically, after competitions, she gathers all of the toys in her hotel room for closer inspection. "People write notes on them sometimes," she said. "Some pretty funny things. Some things from little kids. Some others that are really touching." There have been events when Hughes was the object of such stuffed-animal appreciation that she had to box them up and ship them home to Kings Point, so that she and her mother could donate them to local Long Island hospitals upon her return.
"I like to keep some of them; they're cute," Hughes said. "And some others, my sisters take." "Take?" her father said.
"I was thinking whether to use that word," Hughes admitted.
"They 'select,'" offered her father, himself enjoying his first trip to the Cote d'Azur.
There are palm trees on Nice's famous strollway along the Mediterranean coast, where flags of many nations snap in the strong breezes that hardly deter endless streams of walkers, joggers and bikers. There are flowers everywhere as well as museums, shops and sidewalk cafes.
The place is a postcard, right down to the practice rink for the championships, one side open onto a gigantic window with a view of the scenic hills between Nice and Monte Carlo.
Of course, Hughes and Wagner have their skating competition routine, no matter the locale. Morning practice, rest, shower, eat, "maybe go out and take a walk," Hughes said. "I don't want to spend the whole day thinking about skating." For Wagner, meanwhile, "She relaxes; I worry. Well, not really worry. But I think about what I need to remind her of, what I need to say without using too many words to say it." "Sometimes, I do schoolwork," said Hughes, an A student. "But not the day of a competition; I don't want to tire my mind." Ouch.