page_title: Kimmie Meissner
section_title: 2005–2006 season
hierarchical_section_title: Kimmie Meissner / Competitive career / 2005–2006 season
caption_attribution_description: Kimmie Meissner and her coach Pam Gregory at the 2007-2008 ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final.
context_page_description: Kimberly Claire "Kimmie" Meissner is an American former competitive figure skater. She is the 2006 World champion, the 2007 Four Continents champion, and the 2007 U.S. national champion. She is the first American and the first woman to simultaneously hold the World, Four Continents, and national titles. In 2005, Meissner became the second American woman to land the triple Axel jump in national competition. She was the youngest American athlete to compete at the 2006 Olympics, coming in sixth place. She won the World Championships the following month, and the U.S. Nationals the following season. She was inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2020.
  Meissner was one of the best technical figure skaters of her time, but was an inconsistent skater, especially towards the end of her career. She was compared to Olympic skater and U.S. champion Michelle Kwan, who called her "the new face of figure skating". By 2020, she worked in the medical field and coached young skaters in Maryland. Meissner was the spokesperson for the "Cool Kids Campaign", a pediatric oncology charity.
context_section_description: Meissner's focus, going into the 2005–2006 season, was the Olympics, and making her routines more mature, with more difficult and intricate spins and footwork.  She abandoned her triple Axel, working on it from time to time during the season, to focus on her combination jumps and because the Axel was not consistent for her.  Despite her successes during the previous season, Meissner received little attention from the media for most of the season, struggling through most of her competitions and according to ESPN, was "outshone" by fellow American skater Alissa Czisny.
  Meissner started off the season with a third-place win at the 2005 Campbell's Classic.  She did not include her triple Axel, but earned 109.08 points overall, a personal best.  At Trophée Éric Bompard in Paris, her first senior Grand Prix competition, she had a "disastrous" short program.  She stepped out of her triple Lutz, which prevented her from completing a planned combination jump, and had a fall, earning 44.92 points.  She came back to perform a "sparkling and difficult" free skating program that included two triple-triple combinations and two triple Lutzes.  She opened with a triple flip-triple toe loop combination, followed up by a double Axel, a triple Lutz-triple toe loop, and a triple loop, which was downgraded, but she did not fall.  She ended the routine with a double Axel-double toe loop-double loop jump.  Both Meissner and Gregory, although they were pleased with Meissner's Lutzes, agreed that attempting a triple Axel was not worth the risk because she had not been landing them consistently.  She came in fourth place after the free skate, and in fifth place overall.
  At NHK Trophy, where she was more comfortable and less nervous, she again came in fifth place.  She came in third place after the short program, earning 56.10 points, which were higher scores than she earned at Paris.  Unlike her short program in Paris, she was able to complete her triple Lutz-triple loop combination, which was the highest-scoring jump combination (10.0 points) of the evening.  Her spins were the weakest of the program; she was not centered on her spins and was afraid she would fall, but was in good position for a medal.  She came in fifth place after the free skating program, earning 96.08 points and 152.18 points overall.
  At the 2006 U.S. Nationals, Meissner won the silver medal and was named to the U.S. Olympic team.  She was in fourth place after the short program, but after "a stellar performance" in her free skating program, overcame Emily Hughes, who came in third place.  Sasha Cohen won her first U.S. Nationals title.  It was the first time the IJS scoring system was used at a U.S. Nationals.  Most of the media's focus during Nationals was on U.S. Figure Skating's decision about the U.S. Olympics women's team and on Cohen's potential to win the title, so despite Meissner's successes of the past season and her second-place finish at Nationals, the media paid little attention to her.  Michelle Kwan, who withdrew from Nationals due to injury, petitioned to be named to the team.  Eventually, U.S. Figure Skating chose to send Kwan, instead of Emily Hughes, as well as Cohen and Meissner.  Kwan had to withdraw from the Olympics due to an injury that occurred during a practice session in Turin; Hughes took her place.
  Meissner trained in Courmayeur, a town 150 kilometers north of Turin, the week before the Olympics.  She spent most of her time in an apartment with her family instead of staying at the Olympic Village, which kept her calm and focused for the competition.  She was one of the youngest competitors in the Games, and the youngest American athlete in Turin.  Her short program, which had a base value of 31.7 points, was competitive compared to the strongest skaters in the field.  Meissner came in fifth place after the short program with 59.40 points, 7.33 points behind Cohen, who came in first place.  Meissner's presentation was clean, with some of the highest technical scores of the competition.  Her component scores were weak, ranking eleventh-best, but s
caption: Meissner and her coach, Pam Gregory.
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