What does a princess do after happily-ever-after? Oksana Baiul of Ukraine was Cinderella. The poor little orphan who slept at a run-down rink, practicing on uneven ice to qualify for the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. There she defeated the sport's two dueling ice queens and was suddenly royalty herself. Baiul, at 16, was embraced by a worldwide audience hungry for miracles and was beloved by Americans who were willing to pay handsomely to see success stories. Baiul went to America to become perhaps the most highly paid newcomer in professional figure skating (with a $1.5 million contract, excluding endorsements and tours). "We've been trying to Americanize her as much as possible, and the U.S. public has responded very well," one of her agents, Michael Carlisle, told TIME last year. Baiul drove a green Mercedes-Benz and bought herself a $450,000 house in Simsbury, Connecticut. She posed for sexy fashion shoots, learned to go clubbing in Manhattan, and exhibited an aversion to seat belts. Baiul is just 19.
Her leap into adulthood has become increasingly troubled. Baiul was arrested in Connecticut last week for driving under the influence of alcohol and reckless driving after she swerved off the road and hit some small trees. She was admitted to a local hospital, where doctors put 12 stitches in her scalp and treated her for a concussion. Her blood-alcohol level was 0.168%, well above the state's limit of 0.10%. JoJo Starbuck, a two-time world bronze medalist in pairs skating who has choreographed Baiul a number of times, said, "Watching her recently, I've been concerned that her lack of discipline would catch up with her. Her head has been turned by so many things since she's come to America." Says her Americanizing agent Carlisle: "This is an unfortunate slip in the process."
When she first arrived in the U.S., Baiul stuck close to her coach and surrogate mother Galina Zmievskaya and to Ukrainian Olympic champion Viktor Petrenko, who has always acted as a kind of older brother to Baiul. But they have been drifting apart. "She had kind of stepped away from the real hard work on the ice," Petrenko told TIME. "She's just enjoying her life." That included adding a new layer of friends, like Ari Zakarian, 30, the Russian-trained skater who was a passenger in her car the night of the accident. In the days after the crash, he slipped away to Switzerland. Reached by TIME, he said, "The accident, in my opinion, was not because she was drunk, but because she got very emotional. There was a Madonna song playing, and she loves Madonna; she was like performing, she was getting into it. So I don't think it was exactly the alcohol."