Former Olympic gold medalist Angela Ruggiero was fired by Donald Trump on last night's episode of The Apprentice: LA.  Although Angela appeared to be in The Donald's favor for most of the season, she could not lead Team Kinetic to victory in last night's task, and Trump had no one else to blame.

Angela is currently training for the Hockey World Championships with the US National Team, but she took some time off practice to talk with us earlier today about her time on The Apprentice.


You were a star on the women’s USA hockey team, you won a gold medal, what made you want to transition from that into the business world and, more specifically, The Apprentice?

Well I’ve always had an entrepreneurial bug, I guess.  When I was a kid I used to make 75 cents on the dollar selling bubble gum and during the Olympics there was actually an online poll that America can vote for their favorite Olympic athletes and there were 12 of us on the ballot.  And I got a call right after the Olympics were over and they had said “you won, you got the most votes” and asked me if I wanted to be a contestant on the season 6 Apprentice and I definitely jumped at the opportunity.
   

Ever since the first episode it seemed like Trump was a big fan of yours, he always talked about the gold medal, etc.  What were your feelings about that, was that mostly a good thing or did that have any negative effect on you?

Well, I think it was a good thing, I felt like respected by Mr. Trump.  He has obviously been very, very successful in his own field and I think he respects me for being successful in my field of sports.  You know, all the contestants, I think for the most part...I brought my medals, they got to see them, they were respectful of me as well, if anything it helps.  I know some people, Aimee specifically, has said “Oh, she was favored,” but these tasks speak for themselves and if you don’t perform you definitely get fired.  Obviously, I was happy that Trump watched the Olympics and knew my sport to an extent.


You just mentioned it, but about Aimee Trottier.  In our interview with her, she claimed that Trump was showing blatant favoritism to you and that he wasn’t even considering firing you. Was there any validity to that or was that just sour grapes?

Aimee, I think, I have a lot of respect for Aimee, I think she’s a great person, but I think as you can tell she probably rips on every single person on that team, which im not surprised at.  During that specific task, she was asked "If you could bring back any two people who would that be?" and she did say me at first , but I had a clearly stated argument that my entire team had backed up and he questioned her and said "Are you sure you want to bring Angela in?"  Trump was basically saying that I had a really good defense on this and she back tracked and said "Oh, umm, well I’ll take Derek then instead."  So there was no validity to that.  Trump obviously respected me and I don’t know if she was envious of that or what, but I think she is a great person. On that specific task she was a project manager and she had to make some tough decisions .


Looking back on last night's task that you guys had at Universal Studios, what, specifically, do you think you should have done differently to try and get the win?

Well, I'm kind of disappointed. Right of the bat the executives told us that we couldn’t have a booth.  They flat out said no kiosk or booths, "We don’t want a carnival-like atmosphere in front of our amusement park ."  So, our team right of the bat nixed the idea of having a booth because we were told we couldn’t, so we had to come up with something more creative which I thought roller skates were a pretty good idea at first.  But, looking back on it, had we had a stationary setup or we had a sign that said discounted tickets we'd be more legitimate. 

And it was just frustrating when I got up and saw that the other team actually, in fact, went ahead and had a booth despite what they were told and then they were lowballing us the whole day, telling, claiming their tickets were cheaper and selling tickets to kids that were supposed to get in for free  (buy one get one free with the parents); we couldn’t sell tickets to them.  So, they were ruthless in their salesmanship and that ultimately led to their win.  I don’t think our team did that, I think we upheld the class of Universal Studios, but you know you can’t always win and as Project Manager there was no one I could specifically blame it on in the board room.  It was tough that I didn’t have concrete numbers.


We know that the boardrooms go on a lot longer than what we get to see on TV.  Was there anything notable that got edited out last night?

Well, I could say that they wanted me to attack someone.  I first started out with the concept, idea I wanted to go after.  I said Nicole came up with the concept, we were chasing people around and right away she knew that scent, because Tim told her (which I found out last night).  So, Mr. Trump obviously didn't buy into that and they kept saying "Who else, who looks like they sold the least?" Christine, specifically, was pointed out by James and they wanted me to bite on that but I didn’t feel that it was right to go after someone without the specific facts, so during the boardroom I kept saying tell me who sold the least, that obviously should be our weakest link or that would have contributed the most to this loss.   But they wouldn’t give me the numbers and so I was kind of just sitting there with nothing to go on. I mean, everyone agreed on this concept and everyone worked hard.  I didn’t want to attack someone’s character or who they were, that's just not me, I couldn’t.  I didn’t feel it was right to really attack anyone.


Anything big you have planned in the future that you’d like to tell us about?

Yeah.  Right now I’m still playing hockey.  I'm actually currently training for the World Championships.   We have April 3rd -10th up in Winnipeg, so I'm with the team right now in North Dakota, which is pretty exciting.  It's kind of ironic that I got fired on the same day that they named the 2007 women’s team. 

I'm also working for the New York Islanders.  I'm definitely going to pursue some other interests when The Apprentice is all over and my Hockey team is over, looking for different opportunities that are out there.  I have a website people can check out and it's AngelaRuggiero.com.  If it's hockey schools that I'll continue to do or speaking engagements, like motivational speaking, that’s definitely something I want to pursue.


(Interview Conducted by Oscar Dahl)