By KEITH GRANT
Chin had to wait nearly an hour for news of his victory after finishing his final routine on Saturday, and was floored to see his name at the top of the list.
"I was pretty much in shock," he said. "Everybody there was so good. They're all the same level as you. I just did the best I could."
Chin earned his trip to Colorado by winning the North Atlantic Figure Skating Championships in October. Next month, he will be one of two skaters representing the U.S. at the Young International Championships in Brussels, Belgium.
Both Chin and Weintraub train at the Long Beach Ice Arena. Weintraub is a student of Peter Burrows, who has coached 14 Olympic skaters, and Mary Lynn Gelderman. David's eighth-place finish came in the boys intermediate division. He finished ninth a year ago in the juvenile division, and in October took home the silver medal from Buffalo as an intermediate in the North Atlantic Regionals.
Chin now moves up into the intermediate division for the international championships, but is undaunted by the task. Skating has been in his blood from virtually the first time he tied his own laces. His mom, Apryl Chin, remembered that when Brady was 5, the pair went shopping together for skates for hockey, but Brady kept asking his mom for "toothpicks." Finally, a store clerk told Ms. Chin, "Your son wants toe-picks. He wants figure skates, not hockey skates."
Brady hasn't stopped skating since. Like Weintraub, three hours of practice per day sandwich his school day at the Long Beach Middle School, where he is a classmate of budding gymnastics star Nicole Harris, 12.
Chin's talent came to the fore last year, when he followed a silver medal at Regionals with a seventh-place performance at the Junior Olympics. Chin came away, he said, with a clear idea of what he needed to improve on. "I had to work on my speed ... a lot," he said. Improve he did, Ms. Chin said, though it has had a price for the Chins.
"It's a very expensive sport," Ms. Chin said. Landing a sponsor for Brady has been a help, but she noted, "He has talent, so whatever we have to do, we'll do."
The hardest part yet for the Chins was simply waiting for the results at nationals. The numbers are not posted until a half-hour after the final skater leaves the ice. When an official passed by with the results, he gave Ms. Chin a hint of what was to come.
"The guy winked at me, so I thought 'Okay, great, we got a medal!'" When her eyes reached the top of the posted list, Ms. Chin realized her son had won [ital]the[end ital] medal. The champ, himself, was too nervous to even look.
"I didn't want to look for myself," he said. "I wanted someone to tell me." The nervousness turned to euphoria when he saw his name at the top. "It was an amazing feeling. I ran around like a lunatic."
Brady's coaches, the husband-and-wife team of Dmitri Gromov and Svetlana Trofimova, were apparently a little more confident in their student. Brady laughed as he remembered, "For some reason, they weren't even surprised."
Chin didn't rest on the laurels of victory for long, though. After getting back home Sunday, he took Monday morning off from practice but was back on the ice that afternoon. With plans to work on a few triple jumps, Brady has his sights now set on international gold in Brussels.
