Figure skating star coach Frank Carroll has died at the age of 85

Frank Carroll, who coached figure skaters such as Michelle Kwan and Linda Fratianne to silver medals at the Olympics but had to wait until the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver to see one of his students, Evan Lysacek, win gold, died Sunday at his home in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 85.

The cause was complications from colon cancer, his personal assistant Ann Jensen said in an email.

No immediate family members survive.

As he approached 60, Carroll expressed amazement at the path he had taken to become one of the top figure skating coaches in the United States.

“When I stand on top of the Eiffel Tower at the Jules Verne restaurant, I think, ‘What am I doing here?'” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1998. “In my mind, I’m still a kid from Worcester, Massachusetts, skating on a frozen pond.”

Carroll has come a long way from that pond. Over the course of his decades-long career, he became known for his tactical prowess, his outspokenness and his well-groomed appearance.

In total, he trained one Olympic champion, six Olympic medalists, three world champions, three junior world champions and six US champions.

When Michelle Kwan entered the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, she was the reigning national champion and favorite.

But she skated cautiously and won the silver medal, while Tara Lipinski took gold. Carroll blamed Kwan’s father for an approach he felt should have been more aggressive. In an interview with The New York Times in 2010, he said, “Her father told her, ‘Go slow, take your time, stay on your feet and you’ll win.’ She stayed on her feet and didn’t win.”

Then, in the fall of 2001 – months after Kwan won gold at the 2001 World Figure Skating Championships – she abruptly split from Carroll, even though the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City were only four months away.

“I thought there was nothing we couldn’t work through,” Carroll told the Times a few days later. “I think she’s having a lot of trouble in her own head. I think right now she doesn’t understand herself and doesn’t know what’s going on.”

In a conference call announcing the split, Kwan said, “This has to be earth-shattering news, but for me, it’s the right decision at this time. I think the person who knows best is me.”

Carroll soon found herself competing against another figure skater, Angela Nikodinov, who did not make the 2002 Olympic team. And after a disappointing finish, Kwan won a bronze medal in Salt Lake City.

When Carroll announced her retirement in 2018, longtime figure skating reporter Philip Hersh wrote on his blog Globetrotting: “Whether she would have won gold had Carroll still been by her side remains a nagging question.”

“Finally,” he added, “as Kwan noted this week, among her most vivid memories of the 10 years she worked with Carroll was how he would break the tension before she stepped on the ice in a competition by talking about books or playing a game to see whose hands were calmer – and therefore less nervous. ‘He made those moments very easy and relaxed,’ she said.”

Francis Michael Carroll was born on July 11, 1938, in Worcester, Massachusetts. His father, Thomas, was an industrial design teacher and his mother, Agnes (Mulvahill) Carroll, was a town clerk.

When Frank was a teenager, his passion for ice skating led him to a local rink—he had somehow gotten a key—where he regularly took to the ice at dawn, before the College of the Holy Cross hockey team arrived.

“The hockey players had to wait until I came off the ice,” he told the Baltimore Sun in 1998. “If I left something out of my routine, they would hiss at me, ‘Carroll, you’re a lousy guy.’ And if they liked what I did, they would bang their sticks on the board and applaud.”

Carroll won bronze medals in junior singles at the national level in 1959 and 1960. His coach, Maribel Vinson-Owen, their two daughters, and the entire U.S. figure skating team died in a plane crash in Belgium in 1961 en route to the World Figure Skating Championships.

After graduating from Holy Cross University in 1960 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology, Carroll performed with the Ice Follies for four years. He then moved to Los Angeles, where he appeared in small, uncredited roles in beach movies. In 1965, he began working as a trainer in Van Nuys, California.

In 1972, he coached U.S. Olympic alternate Robert Bradshaw, and four years later, he coached his first Olympian, Linda Fratianne. She was considered the favorite at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, but left the team with a silver medal.

Carroll believed that the results had been manipulated to Fratianne’s disadvantage and that the five German-speaking judges had conspired to award the women’s gold medal to East German Anett Pötzsch instead.

“I thought about withdrawing Linda from the competition,” he told the Times in 2010. “I wish I had.”

Carroll’s other top students included Tiffany Chin, Gracie Gold, Denis Ten, Timothy Goebel and Christopher Bowman. He believed Bowman was the most gifted figure skater he had ever coached until his career was derailed by substance abuse.

Bowman, who died of an accidental overdose in 2008, won a national title and two world championship medals with Carroll as his coach, according to U.S. Figure Skating, the sport’s governing body.

“He could break all the rules, put too much strain on his body, have no discipline and still skate fantastically,” Carroll said.

Carroll, who was inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 1996 and the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2007, had a better experience with Lysacek, who rewarded his decades of work as a coach by winning the gold medal in Vancouver.

“This is his moment, not mine,” Carroll said, “but I’m happy for myself, too.”

In an email to NBC Sports after Carroll’s death, Lysacek wrote, “I was NOT one of the best or most talented figure skaters Frank ever coached, but he hardly ever talked to me about how to be great… he only talked to me about how to win.”