Frank Carroll Skating Coach Obituary : Frank Carroll Death : Frank Carroll, Legendary Figure Skating Coach of Michelle Kwan and Others, Dead at 85

Legendary figure skater and coach Frank Carroll has passed away at the age of 85. The U.S. Figure Skating Association confirmed Carroll's death to PEOPLE and announced it on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday, June 9.

"U.S. Figure Skating mourns the loss of coaching legend Frank Carroll," the statement began. "A member of the World and U.S. Figure Skating Halls of Fame, Frank was instrumental in the careers of numerous Olympic and World champions and many future Hall of Famers."

Born in 1938 in Worcester, Massachusetts, Carroll was introduced to figure skating by his father. He earned three national-level medals before transitioning to coaching in the 1960s, according to NBC Sports. Carroll coached three world champions in women's and men's singles: Linda Fratianne, Michelle Kwan, and Evan Lysacek, all of whom went on to win Olympic medals. Lysacek, 39, became his only pupil to win a gold medal.

“This is just frosting on the cake for me,” Carroll said after Lysacek’s victory at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada. “It’s not something I coveted after a while. It was something I thought maybe would never happen.”

Fratianne earned a silver medal at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, in a competition Carroll believed was rigged in favor of an East German competitor. Carroll’s most renowned student, Kwan, won an Olympic silver medal at the 1998 Nagano Olympics under his guidance. During the 1990s, Kwan also secured four senior world titles and five of her nine national titles while training with Carroll.

Carroll also coached other prominent Olympians, including Gracie Gold, Denis Ten, and Timothy Goebel. Gold and Ten won bronze medals at the 2014 Olympics, while Goebel won bronze in 2002.

Before retiring in 2018, Carroll had a student competing in six consecutive Olympics, ending with PyeongChang. “I’m thankful to God that he’s given me the talent because there are many talented coaches in the world and some more talented than I,” Carroll said in 2010. "But I’ve always seemed to come up with the vehicle to do it, the talent they just sort of drift toward me.”

Carroll was inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating, World Figure Skating, Professional Skaters Association, and International Skating Institute Halls of Fame.