Yu Na Kim of Korea performs in her figure skating training session during the 2010 Winter Olympics at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver on February 21, 2010. Getty Images/ VINCENZO PINTOVINCENZO PINTO/Getty Images
Olympic champion Kim Yu-Na has lashed out at Canadian skating legend Brian Orser, saying he wrongfully blamed her mother for the termination of their coaching relationship.
"Would you please stop to tell a lie, B? I know exactly what's going on now and this is what I've DECIDED," the 19-year-old posted on her Twitter account, before quickly erasing the message.
Mr. Orser, who coached the South Korean to a gold medal at the recent Vancouver Olympic Games, said that Ms. Kim's mother, Park Meehee, dismissed him as the skater's coach without any valid reason.
He said he was frozen out by Ms. Meehee and that the young skater herself "didn't really have a voice in this."
Ms. Kim, who came to Toronto four years ago to train with Mr. Orser at the Toronto Cricket, Skating and Curling Club, used a social networking site similar to Facebook on Wednesday to dispute those claims.
"Do you really believe that I've been completely happy training for those four years, just as it seems to the outside world?" she wrote. "I don't want to tell you all about what happened, and I don't have to. It's all between us."
"Do you think it's really true that my mother decided on her own to part ways with the coach? I'm no longer a child," she added. "He was my coach, and whether we stay on or part ways, it was my final decision."
Mr. Orser's agent, David Baden, said he is no longer commenting on the issue.
"Brian has moved on and is busy coaching his skaters," he said in an e-mail.
But the dispute is being discussed on rinks around the globe, where those involved in the world of elite figure skating say that skating moms have a well-deserved reputation for being tough on coaches.
"I think skating has a reputation of having overbearing parents," said Xan Norris, a skating coach from Chicago who runs a skating blog called Xan-boni. "Parents of elite skaters catch a lot of grief for being overly involved, but you're talking about young kids doing this really challenging thing. Those parents have to be such an anchor for those kids. You have to be super involved."
Ms. Norris said competitive skating rinks are a "girl zone" where mothers are dominant and screaming fits with coaches are not uncommon.
At many rinks, parents are not allowed to watch coaching sessions, she said.
"People don't like somebody else having that kind of influence over their child and they aren't prepared for the real intimacy of that relationship," she said. "You're outside that relationship, no matter how close you are to your child. And that's a very hard thing for a lot of parents to accept."
"It's an intense world," said Tanya Bingert, a skating coach in British Columbia who is a former junior national champion and Olympic alternate figure skater herself. With sponsors, coaches, and all the other high-stakes and high-cost factors at play for a young talented skater, parents feel they have to micromanage. "You have to monitor those things, but you also have to be able to put trust in the people you have handling your kids," she said.
Ms. Bingert added that when she became a coach, she purposely chose to work at a "quieter, happier environment. But even in that environment you come across the parent that thinks Suzy is going to be the Olympic champion," she said.
Ms. Norris said she herself was "the worst skating mom in the world" and that her daughter quickly dropped out of the competitive circuit.
Because skating is a solo sport, Ms. Norris believes athletes are under tremendous pressure to perform, and said there aren't other parents to encourage you to tone it down.
The sport is also expensive, she added, with parents shelling out at least $10,000 a year when their children start to compete at the national level.
When U.S. figure skater Michelle Kwan fired her coaching staff before the 2002 Olympics, many speculated that there had been demands for more money. Mr. Orser has denied that the split was caused by financial reasons.
On a Yu-Na chat forum online, some suggested the possibility that Ms. Kim is moving to the U.S., while others floated the idea that she is retiring from skating all together.
With a report from Kate Allen