Recovery and Return To Skating
Bobek admitted that she is a former drug addict, and said on NBC's Today Show that she wants to help other addicts beat their addictions and would like to do ice show charity benefits. She began taking classes toward a high school equivalency diploma, and working at Palm Beach Skate Zone in Lake Worth, Florida, after having been away from skating for about six years. She did various jobs around the rink, initially unpaid but later officially hired, with the manager saying she was very professional. In 2010, she began teaching power skating and edge skills to junior hockey players at the rink. Her friend Todd Eldredge invited her to a Stars on Ice show, where she reconnected with her old coach Richard Callaghan and began visiting him once a week to get back in shape.
Bobek returned to performing at the Skate for Love benefit for Susan G. Komen for the Cure in April 2011, hosted by her friend JoJo Starbuck. Bobek said, "I've been back on the ice about a year now. It took me a long time to get my balance again after six years; you really lose the rotation and all of those things. It took three months to do a single Axel again." By January 2012, she had recovered all of her double jumps except the axel. In November 2011, Bobek said: "I'm blessed that I've been given a second chance in life. Life is so much better now. I think I was in a dark place and now I believe that I have God on my side. I'm very positive about things and very focused. I truly believe that I've bloomed into a different kind of person.” Steve Disson gave her a contract to appear in his skating shows which are aired on NBC. She has appeared in the Caesars Palace Tribute II: A Salute to the Ladies of the Ice and other skating shows.
Bobek has also trained on trapeze and aerial hoops at the South Florida Circus Arts School.
Read more about this topic: Nicole Bobek
Famous quotes containing the words recovery, return and/or skating:
“It’s even pleasant to be sick when you know that there are people who await your recovery as they might await a holiday.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Yet I shall never return to the past, that attic.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go, and is only right admirable when to all its beauty and speed a subserviency to the will, like that of walking, is added.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)