MILAN — Late in 2025, as she was preparing for her Winter Olympic debut in Italy, South Korean figure skater Hannah Lim decided to write a short story based on her free dance program with her partner, Quan Ye, set to “Adagio for Strings” by Samuel Barber and “Adagio” by Lara Fabian.
A voracious reader who enjoys fantasy novels by Sarah J. Maas, Lim at first wasn’t writing for any audience but herself. But as the story kept developing, Lim began sending it out to some people around her to see if they could offer suggestions for improvement.
Following her practice at Milano Ice Skating Arena on Tuesday, Lim told Yonhap News Agency that her story “starts before our free dance happens and then continues throughout until the end of our free dance.”
“It’s like I put our skating into words,” the 21-year-old Canadian Korean said. “I made us into characters and I set us in that period.”
Quan, a Canadian Chinese who obtained his Korean citizenship in 2024 so he could represent South Korea at the Olympics, was among the very first readers of Lim’s work. In fact, Quan saw five different drafts of the story — “He read all five versions,” Lim said with a smile — and came away duly impressed.
“It’s very sensory detailed,” Quan, 24, said. “She describes the smell, the air, the taste of stuff.”
Lim said she tried to make her story “super descriptive so you can visualize it, which is how I like to read books.”
Lim said she wanted to publish the story before the Olympics, but time is running out while her manager is still checking for any grammar or spelling errors. The ice dance team’s first competition will be the team event, which starts with the rhythm dance on Friday followed by the free dance the next day. Their individual event will have the rhythm dance next Monday and then the free dance two days later.
“I feel like if you read it and then watch the program, it adds special something,” Lim said. “I feel like what would be exciting would be people trying to see which part is which in the story and in our skating.”
While their storytelling will surely touch people, Lim and Quan aren’t considered medal contenders in Milan. Both were realistic when discussing their goals here this month.
“We want to be memorable. We want to show what we’ve got and we want to make people feel the storytelling that we’re trying to show,” Quan said. “Hannah and I tend not to think too much about (placements) because we feel like we need to focus more on being memorable.”
Lim said she wants to “leave a really good impression on the audience” and have her programs resonate with the people, so that they will want to dance with the skaters after seeing the rhythm dance, featuring a Will Smith megahit “Gettin’ Jiggy wit It,” and that they will want to cry after the more somber free dance.
“There will probably be so many non-skating people watching as well, so kind of introduce them to ice dance and figure skating in general,” Lim added.
Lim also noted that development in ice dance requires a great deal of patience. She cited the example of her favorite team, Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the United States. The Americans made their Olympic debut in 2014 and finished eighth in Sochi, Russia. They ended up in ninth place four years later at the PyeongChang Games in South Korea. At the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Chock and Bates contributed to the U.S. victory in the team event by winning the ice dance competition, while finishing fourth in the individual ice dance event.
“I think ice dance is such a stepping-stone kind of sport where you have to grow and with experience, you get the points and you get the rankings,” she said. “I think we’re starting to climb. So I’m excited to see where we end up here but the placement is not in the front of my brain.”
And no matter where she and her partner finish, Lim knows her family will be proud of her.
“My mom and my aunt are coming. They’re really excited,” said Lim, who was born in Toronto. “After we found out (we were going to the Olympics), everyone was super excited, especially my family in Korea. They helped us a lot when we were in Korea trying to at first represent Korea. They’ve seen how far we’ve come and they’re super proud.”
BY: The Times Union
