Italy’s Kostner conquers jitters on way to gold-medal breakthrough

http://www.thestar.com/sports/article/1100231--italy-s-kostner-conquers-jitters-on-way-to-gold-medal-breakthrough

Published On Sat Dec 10 2011

By Rosie DiManno
Columnist
QUEBEC CITY—In her sexy, slinky catsuit, Carolina Kostner shimmered and glittered.

Unorthodox costume and perhaps more befitting a fetish-y pinup calendar than a figure skating competition.

Physiologically, the 24-year-old Italian is all wrong for the sport, too: Too tall, too long-limbed. Perhaps a tad too old for the game also, or at least heading rapidly in that direction.

But no doubt the lady is tenacious.

And now the lady is a champ.

A veteran of the skating circuit — and sad bust from the Turin Olympics, when put forward prematurely as home-country gold-medal material — Kostner at last has her elite international medal d’or.

On Saturday afternoon, the university art history student nailed down the women’s title at the Grand Prix of Figure Skating here, with an elegant and poised program performed to Mozart that kept Kostner comfortably clear of her challengers: Japan’s Akiko Suzuki, who earned silver, and bronze finisher Alena Leonova of Russia.

Kostner has been banging around the circuit for what seems like ages, twice bronze at the world championships and once silver, though plummeting to 12th the year after that. So, the utterly charming multilingual — Italian, French, German, English — has been all over the place over the arc of her career, if very much the biggest thing in her home country (six times a national champion) and quite nicely decorated on her home continent (thrice European champion).