Harbin, China, August 13, 2025: It’s a homecoming to savour for Chrisha Gossard, Thailand’s first international figure skater who has returned to Harbin after almost 30 years in a role as an expert skating coach.
“It is wonderful to be back after so long to Harbin which I first visited in 1996 representing Thailand at the Asian Winter Games,” says the ebullient Chrisha.
The Thai-American – her mum is Thai – is one of four international coaching instructors handling the 47 children at the inaugural OCA-ISU-CAIC Asian Figure Skating Youth Camp in Harbin.
It is day four of the nine-day camp, but it didn’t take even 24 hours for Chrisha to make a mark with her lively approach focusing a lot of the attention on her energetic attitude to life.
“I really love teaching the fundamentals of figure skating to young kids. It is so important that they learn the right way from the beginning. If they learn improper techniques at the start, it makes it so much more difficult. I’m having a ball of a time,” says Chrisha.
Born in the USA in 1978, Chrisha dreamed of being a ballerina as a little girl. “The experts said I had the wrong body type so I focused on skating which I already loved.”
She soon caught the eye of the powers-that-be and she was an integral part of the US National team from 1991 to 1995. But it was a case of wrong time, wrong place for Chrisha as her peers were Michelle Kwan – the most decorated figure skater in the US – and Tara Lipinski.
“My coaches suggested that if I wanted to take part in the 1998 Winter Olympics (Nagano, Japan), the best route would be to represent Thailand which had no figure skaters of note. So, I returned to Thailand and represented my country at the Asian Winter Games,” Chrisha reveals.
A lucrative modelling contract coupled with injury, saw Chrisha’s Olympic goals being side-tracked. But she still continued to skate and became the principal performer with ‘Holiday on Ice’ and ‘The Next Ice Age’ where she understudied Olympic champion Dorothy Hamill. Her career blossomed and she was soon performing in made for television shows alongside Olympic silver medallist Nancy Kerrigan.
At the same time, her coaching career also took off, and she has taught multiple national and international skaters from all around the world for more than 20 years.
“I’m enjoying what I’m doing and working with young children. The head instructor at this camp, Julian (Yee) was formerly a student of mine, and he went on to be the first Olympic skater from Malaysia. It makes me so proud to see what he has achieved,” says Chrisha as she shows the ropes to her newest class in Harbin.
One day, they will make Chrisha proud, probably.
