For as long as he can remember, Dinh Tran has been on the ice.

As a youngster growing up in San Francisco, he was just 4 years old the first time he put on a pair of skates. At age 5, he began taking figure skating more seriously, and it’s been the through-line of his life ever since.

Today, more than a decade-and-a-half later, Tran is in his third year as a mechanical engineering student at Cal State Long Beach, and he also happens to be one of the top figure skaters in America.

“For any athlete in an Olympic sport, I think the ultimate goal is to compete in the Olympics,” said Tran, 21, of his goals in figure skating. “That’s my major goal right now, is to be able to compete in the Olympics in three years. I’m getting to the point where I’m not going to be skating forever, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a rink. Hopefully, I can make it to the Olympics. That’s the goal.”

He recently competed at the FISU World University Games in Lake Placid, New York, also home to the 2026 Winter Olympic Games which will be held in exactly three years’ time. It’s a goal that Tran hopes to achieve, but it’s by no means a be-all, end-all. He says that skating has already shown him so much of the world, and he’s grateful for the lifelong friends he’s made throughout his career.

Tran has competed everywhere from Italy to Finland to Austria, but his visit to Poland is perhaps his fondest memory. There, a young woman working the skating competition caught his eye, and similar to many modern romances, the two began exchanging messages online after the event. They stayed in contact from opposite ends of the world, and years later, Dinh and Hania remain a couple, though they aren’t able to see one another as often as they’d like.

“Obviously the long distance is extremely difficult,” Tran admitted. “We actually started talking right before COVID and I wasn’t able to see her until two years later. That was really difficult, but we kept it together.”

Back home in Southern California, Tran trains regularly at rinks in Lake Forest, Artesia, and Irvine, where he’s currently living. He remembers the 5 a.m. wake-up calls from when he was growing up, which allowed him to train before going to school. But Tran admits that he’s not much of a morning person, and now he’s able to get ice time in the afternoons when he’s able to be more focused and productive.

He’s effectively balanced his classwork with his training and travel schedule, and Tran believes that’s due in large part to the lessons he’s learned on the ice.

“Just the ability to focus, and the discipline you have to learn when you’re skating,” Tran said. “Each practice session, you try to accomplish all the elements you can and do the difficult stuff. You need perseverance and you need courage.

“That’s something that applies in my schoolwork, where there’s a specific time I need to focus, it’s just like a practice session, but it’s a study session,” Tran added. “So it really helps with anything I do off the ice. You just have to apply yourself. Whether you have to study or you have to train, it’s just a mindset that you work on. And you can use it for everything.”

After college, Tran has big plans for his life away from a skating rink. It may not be the most obvious path, but he plans to transition from figure skating to auto racing, where he dreams of one day being an engineer in Formula 1.

Tran actually started out as a computer engineering major at CSULB, but after developing an affinity for F1 and doing some research into that world, he realized he’d need to switch to mechanical engineering if he hoped to end up working in a garage one day.

“I’m not sure what type of engineer, because there’s so many different types of engineering in F1,” said Tran. “But that’s the plan—is to end up in F1.”

Before he tackles the largest auto racing league in the world, Tran hopes to put a storybook ending on his life as a figure skater. During last month’s World University Games, he finished in the top 10 of the competition and was the top American finisher in his event. He wasn’t at his best during the short program, but he re-focused himself in the free skate portion of the competition, allowing him to shoot up the leaderboard.

It wasn’t just a solid showing on the ice, but the atmosphere of the games reignited his competitive fire to make it to the Olympic stage.

“Overall, the competition was super fun. I think it’s pretty much the best competition experience I’ve had in my whole career,” Tran said. “It’s sort of like a mini Olympics, where there’s all different kinds of sports, and there’s an opening ceremony, and you get to meet people from all different countries. Just to represent the U.S. is such an amazing experience. That almost never happens in a figure skating competition, so to have that experience was super fun.”

The traditional figure skating season ends in January and will pick back up again in June. That gives Tran some time to focus on his studies and work on adding more skills and elements to his routines. Hour after hour, fall after fall, with a return trip to Lake Placid in the back of his mind.

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