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Her family still made her come to Minnesota for a few weeks every summer, and she took empty sacks with her, filling them with sand for the numbing routine.
    She came in ninth her first year in the Senior Tournament. Officials at the United States Figure Skating Association noticed her and arranged for her to enter a small international competition in Vienna. Such invitations were usually limited to the top seven or eight skaters, and the mothers of girls who had finished ahead of Amy at the Nationals were incensed. Why was Miss Amy Legend suddenly the USFSA’s little pet? Their daughters deserved the organization’s support, not Amy.
    But those girls were the little robots, and at this level technique was no longer enough.
    Amy’s confidence increased. The next year she came in sixth, then third. Now the ice shows, the agents, and the management companies were sending her flowers, and the USFSA was determined to give her more international experience. She sparkled on the ice, skating with glowing warmth, and the year she was nineteen, she became National Champion. It was an Olympic year, and the USFSA named her to the Olympic team.
    Nineteen was a good age. Ladies’ figure skating had not yet gone the way of gymnastics, a sport dominated bytiny school girls whose rigorous training schedules had delayed their physical development. They were superb athletes, but they had little celebrity value. Only other schoolgirls were interested in them.
    But the general public could identify with a young woman almost in her twenties. People loved reading about Amy during the weeks before the Olympics. She was so pretty, she dressed so delightfully. She was a little shy, looking up and out at the world from beneath her bangs as the Princess of Wales had once done. The media made much of her music professor father and how the music majors at Lipton College in Lipton, Iowa, performed and recorded all her music for her. They took pictures of her mother’s grand ancestral homes in England and Ireland even though in some cases her mother had never laid eyes on the place.
    Yet there were those who wanted to find fault. People who paid no attention to figure skating at any other time were suddenly experts, announcing that footwork could never win the Olympics. “She may be the most watchable skater of the circuit,” proclaimed the network’s skating pundit, “but her jumps aren’t up to international standards.”
    â€œI think the American public is going to be in for a big disappointment,” announced a male former pairs champion. “Amy Legend is not going to win the Olympics. She can’t.”
    He was wrong.
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    The top women skaters usually don’t go to the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. Theirs is one of the last competitions, so any skater who comes to the opening has an extra week of sitting around in a cramped dorm, eating institutional food and waiting for inadequate ice time.
    But Amy had been watching the opening ceremonies since she turned seven. There was no way she was going to miss this one, no matter what it did to her training schedule.
    â€œLet her go,” her new advisers at the sports management agency told her coaches. “She’ll get some great camera time.”
    Both Amy’s parents had been involved in the selection of her management team. “No one on earth,” her father had said, “can see through smooth talk faster than your mother. She’ll have no patience for any of these people. If we find someone she can tolerate for twenty minutes, you’ll have a person you can trust with your life.”
    These new advisers were telling her that medals weren’t enough. “The American public has to love you,” they said.
    â€œAnd exactly how do I go about getting them to do that?” she laughed.
    â€œBy being yourself.”
    Be yourself . She was the only girl hearing that. The other top amateur girls were being