Not all of Group USA is presently in Milan for the Winter Olympics. Some athletes are again dwelling, telephones shut, baggage packed, ready for the decision that would ship them internationally in a matter of hours. Amongst them is 24-year-old determine skater Starr Andrews.
Being an Olympic alternate comes with no much less preparation, strain, or pleasure. For Andrews, it means staying prepared.
“It’s my first time ever being an alternate for the Olympics,” she informed theGrio throughout a latest sitdown. “I’m simply taking it the identical method I all the time do. Nonetheless figuring out, nonetheless in form. In the event that they want me, I’ll be able to hop on a airplane and recover from there.”
Lengthy earlier than she was an Olympic alternate, Andrews was the little Black lady who went viral on the age of 9 in 2010, skating to Willow Smith’s “Whip My Hair,” flipping her ponytail mid-routine, and radiating pleasure and her enthusiasm. The clip went viral and launched many to a skater whose fashion would come to be marked by musicality, emotional connection, elegant poise, and, properly, enjoyable.
Even earlier than she doubtlessly steps onto Olympic ice, the Los Angeles native has already secured her place in historical past. In 2022, she grew to become the primary Black American girl to medal on the Worldwide Skating Union Grand Prix collection, incomes silver at Skate Canada, a milestone that also feels surreal.
“Typically I’ve to pinch myself,” she admitted, including, “As athletes, we get so wrapped up in coaching and desirous to do higher that we overlook to absorb what we’ve already finished. To listen to ‘you’re a historical past maker’ remains to be so bizarre! You see different folks do it and suppose, ‘That’s so cool.’ So to say I’ve finished that? It’s loopy.”
Her presence in a sport lengthy criticized for its lack of variety indicators how far determine skating has advanced and the way far it nonetheless has to go. Rising up, Andrews not often noticed skaters who appeared like her. Now, she’s serving to improve illustration on the rink for the subsequent technology.
“In comparison with after I was little, it’s grown a lot,” she mentioned. “We simply should maintain placing it on the market that skating is for everyone.”
Her journey is much more outstanding when you think about what she’s been managing behind the scenes. At 12 years previous, whereas in skating observe, Andrews skilled her first tachycardic episode, a sudden spike in coronary heart price that left her lightheaded and terrified.
“I assumed I used to be dying,” she recalled. “The whole lot in my imaginative and prescient turned white. I bought actually lightheaded. I didn’t faint, however I bear in mind calling my mother like, ‘Mother, I believe I’m dying.’”
She was ultimately identified with Supraventricular Tachycardia, a coronary heart situation that causes sudden will increase in coronary heart price and excessive fatigue, per the Mayo Clinic. After years of being informed it was simply doubtlessly emotional nerves or hormones, a second opinion revealed two additional electrical pathways (or literal nerves) in her coronary heart. One was eliminated by way of ablation; the opposite was deemed too dangerous to function on.
“It’s nothing that may kill me,” she defined. “However for an athlete, it’s positively exhausting having one thing you possibly can’t management occur.”
In a sport that calls for precision over each edge, spin, and breath, that lack of management could possibly be destabilizing. As an alternative, it’s sharpened her self-discipline and self-awareness.
A part of that management exhibits up in her ritual earlier than competitors. Determine skating could look glamorous, but it surely’s grueling. For Andrews, preparing is a psychological reset as a lot as it’s preparation.
“It has to begin with a bathe, clear slate,” she says. “Face washed. Cleanly shaved. No hair anyplace as a result of we’re simply out within the open.”
A longtime Gillette Venus person earlier than formally partnering with the model, she values that easy end earlier than entering into costume. Then comes the armor: gel and edge management robust sufficient to face up to sweat and velocity, make-up locked in with setting spray, fragrance, lip gloss (almost certainly from Black Radiance Magnificence).
“Ensure the lips look good. Ensure the face seems good. Hair, physique, all the things is nice,” she continued. “I really feel good strolling out that door. I’m like, let’s go slay.”
That confidence has been constructing since she was three years previous, when she first stepped onto the ice impressed by her mom, who had taken up the game herself. What started as a childhood curiosity has change into nationwide titles, worldwide assignments, a Grand Prix podium, a social media platform of greater than 50K followers, and now an Olympic alternate spot.
And after greater than 20 years on the ice, the enjoyment stays.
“It’s nonetheless enjoyable,” she gushed. “After 21 years, I nonetheless look ahead to going to the rink and being like, ‘I can’t wait to go and do that spin once more.’”
Now, Andrews is exploring associate skating, one thing she as soon as resisted as a fiercely unbiased teen however feels able to embrace. It’s not a pivot away from her Olympic desires. It’s an enlargement of them.
“I nonetheless very a lot wish to go to the Olympics and be the primary African American to win gold [in figure skating],” she declared. “Whether or not that’s in singles or pairs. That’s nonetheless my purpose.”
