Designer Vera Wang, a U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Famer, revealed a painful moment from when she was a serious competitor.
Wang, who’s been at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, said she was training with her pairs partner for a competition at the Philadelphia Spectrum in the 1960s when he dropped her, causing her to bleed.
“We were going for a kick, cartwheel lift,” Wang told 1988 Olympic champ Brian Boitano on the “Milan Magic” podcast Wednesday, per USA Today. “I was in the air … at about 25 mph, and he tripped going forward. I fell, flew across the ice and landed on my left side, kicked my blade into my rear.”
Wang said she blacked out as coaches rushed in to get her.
Wang competed at the 1968 U.S. Figure Skating Championships with pairs partner James Stuart. She never qualified for the Olympics.
“I was devastated,” she told Olympics.com in 2020.
But she struck gold designing outfits for ice luminaries, including American Olympic champs Evan Lysacek and Nathan Chen and medalists Nancy Kerrigan and Michelle Kwan.
“I never, ever made it and I skated for so many years, but my clothes did,” she told Boitano.
Wang was inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame as a designer in 2009.
Check out the podcast interview here: