Looking ahead to the her second national appearance at the junior level, 15-year-old Tamnhi Huynh is focused on power.
But not the kind earned from medals and trophies. At the 2021 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Las Vegas, Huynh's goal is to skate fast and look good.
"I want every step, every movement to feel very powerful," she said. "Each element should correspond with the music and build up the energy continuously."
Her first full season as a junior-level competitor has already proved successful — she placed sixth in the virtual 2021 U.S. Figure Skating Championship Series presented by Toyota. But she has high expectations for the U.S. Championships in Las Vegas next week, as nothing excites her more than an audience, even if that audience is mainly judges and fan cutouts.
"I love when fans feel the music with me," Huynh said. "But I need to stay consistent and stay in full control of my body, especially when it comes to expressing my feelings and interpreting the music."
This season, Huynh's free skate opens with the haunting notes of "Love Story" by Indila, but builds to a playful, syncopated Cirque de Soleil medley that, as promised, intensifies with every step of the program.
At her core, the junior dynamo is a well-seasoned athlete as her day-to-day regime revolves around consistency. As her career has progressed, however, she has learned to prioritize her mental training in tandem with her physical performances.
"Skating is an extremely mental sport, so I think about training my body at the same time as training my brain," Huynh said.
One of the ways she calms her mind is through repetition. That way when she takes the ice in The Orleans Arena, she'll have successfully practiced her program dozens — maybe even hundreds — of times.
"When I train three or four hours a day in Plano, I'm running programs to the point where I don't worry if something will go wrong," the Texas native said. "I think about how I'll look and how the audience will see me, instead of nailing the jumps."
As one of the youngest competitors in her division, Huynh said shifting her focus away from her technical elements and more toward her artistry has allowed her to feel calm and confident under pressure.
"I've learned to let things slide more easily," she said. "I can't dwell on something that happened a few seconds ago because there will be another jump three strokes ahead of me."
Huynh also relies on her parents, coaches and friends in the Dallas Figure Skating Club to maintain composure. The "sense of community" she built with coaches Aleksey Letov and Alexiev Boyko have made her feel at home in every rink she's ventured to during previous competition seasons.
And while the relationships she built throughout her blossoming career keep her grounded, the idea of attracting aspiring skaters to the sport keeps her motivated.
"I want to be like Jason Brown, Nathan Chen or Alysa Liu," she said. "They approach jumps like they're having fun, and they make the audience feel like they're involved in the programs — almost like we're performing with them."
But Huynh wants to add her own flair. She wants to make U.S. figure skating history by mastering, then inventing tricks.
"Skating needs to look even more fun and interesting and bizarre," she said. "Regardless of the sport, if you look from the outside and you see some person doing a cantilever — which is like a leaning spread eagle with bent knees — or another other cool trick, you're going to be confused and interested and want to watch more."
And in her own words, to reach her idols Huynh needs a triple Axel — and maybe a couple of quads.
"The way I see it, I'm decently young and my body is in pretty good condition," she said. "It'd be a shame not to try, and it seems like fun."
Watch Tamnhi Huynh skate this week on Peacock Premium and follow along with the backstage action on the 2021 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships Virtual Fan Experience.
