VANCOUVER - Dressed in black, Joannie Rochette wiped her eyes and took a deep breath before stepping on the ice.
Early Sunday, Rochette's mother, Therese, died of a massive heart attack just a few hours after arriving in Vancouver to watch her daughter compete. The Canadian star still plans to skate, and was at practice in the afternoon after spending time at the Olympic village with her father, Normand.
"She's going to get through this," Canadian teammate Cynthia Phaneuf said. "She is just so strong. By being here and being able to compete after that happened, I'm just very impressed. I think she's doing the right thing. She won't get any stronger in her room."
The women's event begins Tuesday with the short program. Rochette will not speak publicly until she finishes competing, Skate Canada president Benoit Lavoie said.
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"She's so close to her mother, I think she doesn't even entertain not skating," said David Baden, Rochette's agent. "She's a tough fighter. It's got to be hard to switch gears and say no to (the Olympics). This is what she has been training for all these years. She'll be trying to fulfill the goal they had together."
The 24-year-old skater is the couple's only daughter. Therese Rochette was her daughter's "No. 1 fan," Lavoie said, and was always there for her.
It was her mom who shuttled her back and forth to the rink when Rochette was younger.
Nagasu's mother battling cancer
The mother of U.S. figure skater Mirai Nagasu is being treated for thyroid cancer.
Ikuko Nagasu is undergoing chemotherapy and, as her 16-year-old daughter says, taking "lots of pills." She was diagnosed last fall and has had two operations.
Ikuko Nagasu, 48, will begin radiation treatment after the Olympics and has been told the prognosis is very good, said Mirai Nagasu's publicist, Lynn Plage.
The skater from Arcadia, Calif., is campaigning for her mother to win the O.C. Tanner Inspiration Award, given to someone in the background who helped an athlete become an Olympian.
US women seeking sweet hockey revenge
In the relatively short history of women's hockey in the Olympics, the United States has enjoyed many more successes than failures.
An upset to Sweden in the semifinals of 2006 Games in Turin stands out as the low point. The Americans led 2-0 before the Swedes roared back for a 3-2 win that denied the Americans a chance to face archrival Canada for the gold. The U.S. settled for beating Finland 4-0 for the bronze.
The U.S. will have an opportunity to avenge that stunning defeat to Sweden today in the semifinals.
"It's a repeat of Torino," defenseman Angela Ruggiero, who is playing in her fourth Olympics, said Sunday. "We plan on bringing everything we've been working toward. We've been training just for this. We know how important the next game is. We know we're going to have to show up tomorrow to advance to the final."
Frost bites
Figure skater Evgeni Plushenko was appointed an ambassador for the 2014 Sochi Games.
He accepted the honor in Vancouver on Sunday from Dmitry Chernyshenko, president and CEO of the Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee. Plushenko did not rule out the possibility of skating in Sochi.
"I would like to compete. I would like to skate in 2014 in Sochi," he said. "I'm going to try. I'm really going to try."
Plushenko won the silver medal in Vancouver, runner-up to American Evan Lysacek.
Among the other ambassadors for Sochi are hockey players Sergei Fedorov and Alex Ovechkin.
Up next
• What: Women's figure skating
• When: Tuesday
• TV: 7 p.m. on Ch 4
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