ESPN Olympic Sports

TURIN, Italy -- Another Olympics, another teenage skater from the Hughes family.

Emily Hughes, younger sister of 2002 Olympic champion Sarah Hughes, was added to the U.S. Olympic team on Sunday in place of Michelle Kwan, who dropped out of the Turin Games with a groin injury.

"If they call me, I'm ready," Hughes told WNBC-TV in New York in an interview Saturday before Kwan announced her withdrawal. "Just point me in the direction and I'm there."

Getting here could be a challenge, though.

The 17-year-old Hughes learned that Kwan had withdrawn at 8:45 p.m. EST Saturday, too late to catch a flight. And a major snowstorm was bearing down on the East Coast, with blizzard warnings posted for the New York City area, where she lives. Dozens of flights were canceled at the city's three major airports.

USOC spokesman Darryl Seibel said Hughes would be on her way to Turin "as soon as it's practical."

Hughes finished third at the national championships last month, but was bumped from the Olympic team when Kwan received a medical exemption. The five-time world and nine-time U.S. champion skipped nationals with a groin injury, but was declared fit enough to skate at a Jan. 27 monitoring session.

Hughes was named the first alternate, and also got a spot on the world championship team.

"Just representing the U.S. in any competition is such a great honor, and skating well for the country," Hughes said in the TV interview. "I think qualifying for the worlds was a big first step."

In 1994, after Nancy Kerrigan received a medical bye onto the team, Kwan was made an alternate and sent to Norway by U.S. officials. She didn't skate in the Lillehammer Games, though, and Kerrigan won a silver medal.

This time, skating officials decided not to bring Hughes to Europe, leaving her to train at home in Great Neck, N.Y.

"Emily's only been training for worlds," her father, John Hughes, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Saturday. "She'll skate anywhere, anytime. But we're not getting ahead of ourselves. All of our emphasis has been on preparing for the world championships, which will be Emily's first major international as a senior."

Though Hughes is best known as "Sarah's little sister," she's come into her own as a skater the last two years. After finishing sixth at the 2004 nationals, she won a bronze medal at the junior world championships last spring.

She was second after the short program at last month's nationals, but faltered in the free skate and dropped to third. Still, it was an impressive performance for the effervescent teenager. And she showed a maturity well beyond her years when she was left off the Olympic team, never pouting or expressing anything except support for Kwan.

"Right now, whatever happens with Torino, it's out of my hands," Emily Hughes said Saturday. "All I can control is how I can skate, and that's what I'm really focusing on, my skating."

Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press

This story is from ESPN.com's automated news wire. Wire index