When Jenni Meno and Todd Sand skated their way to three U.S. titles, three world medals and two Olympics, they could answer in two short words who was on their coaching team.
“Oh, it was Mr. Nicks,” Sand said with a slight chuckle. “It wasn’t a team. No, no.”
The venerable John Nicks, now 91, coached many of U.S. figure skating’s top pairs, including Meno and Sand, JoJo Starbuck and Ken Shelley, and Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner, the only U.S pair to ever win a world title, a feat they accomplished in 1979.