Michelle Wing Kwan, a native of Lake Arrowhead, California, was born on July 7, 1980, the youngest of three children. After sitting on the sideline watching her older brother play hockey, Kwan caught the skating bug and began taking lessons at the age of five.

Two years later, she won her first figure skating competition and by the age of twelve, had improved enough to attract the attention of the famed coach, Frank Carroll. For the first few years of her senior amateur career, Kwan competed in the shadow of other skaters, such as Tonya Harding, whom she finished second to at the US national competition in 1994, after the infamous attack on Nancy Kerrigan.

That year Kerrigan took the spot Kwan had earned on the Olympic squad and as an alternate, Kwan was lost in the Harding-Kerrigan scandal and the requisite media scrum. In 1995, Kwan matured in appearance, shedding her ponytail and wearing makeup for once during her routines. Of more importance however, was the transformation of her performances.

The judges now recognized her as a young woman with prodigious talent and as a result of her growth, Kwan placed second at the nationals and fourth at the world championship. The next year, she took home both titles and proved that she had indeed arrived. The following season, Kwan lost a good friend to a heart attack before the nationals. Her courageous performance made her a crowd favorite and although she finished behind Tara Lipinski in both major competitions that year, she was a victor in every sense of the word.

At the 1998 Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan, Kwan skated a beautiful long program, where she began in first place, but was victimized by having to start first and was denied several crucial points by the judges. As a result, Lipinski won yet again and Kwan was relegated to the silver medal. Yet the best was to come for Kwan.

Since Nagano, she has blazed a trail of spectacular performances, including several national and world titles, not to mention gold medals at tournaments such as Skate America and Skate Canada. Kwan achieved all of this while taking classes at UCLA, in her native state.

Today, Kwan is the most decorated female figure skater of the modern era, with more 6.0 marks in competition than anyone else, five US titles and four world championships. Her athletic celebrity is unique in that it has transcended the sport in which she has dominated. She has been named one of the "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" by People magazine and signed an exclusive deal with Electronic Arts (EA Sports) to create the first interactive figure skating video game (Michelle Kwan Figure Skating).

--AskMen.com