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Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Michelle Kwan, figure skating, and racism
Posted by Jill | 7:58 AM

Yesterday I blogged on the drumbeat of attacks on Michelle Kwan for her failure to win an Olympic gold medal in three tries. While there are those who understand what a class act Kwan is, the sports press has been having a field day branding her as a failure.

I wrote yesterday that the last time we saw this kind of verbal attack on a figure skater who failed to win the coveted gold was 1988 and the skater's name was Debi Thomas.

Funny....in 1994, when another American skaters suffered an injury (albeit one caused by an attack) but received a bye to the Olympics and failed to win gold, she was hailed as a hero.

Debi Thomas was black. Michelle Kwan is of Chinese heritage. The skater in 1994 was Nancy Kerrigan -- a nice, marketable, white girl.

Race was never talked about in the 1988 "Battle of the Carmens", but when you had a black American skater competing for gold against not just a product of the Eastern Bloc, but a GERMAN one at that, it always seemed simmering under the surface. I remember in 1994 seeing some Nancy Kerrigan fan on TV screeching about "She's our all-American girl!!" The message was clear.

When Michelle Kwan became America's Sweetheart, I was hopeful that this whitest of sports was finally escaping the subtle racism that had always been there, but was never discussed. The Sarah Hughes upset of 2002 didn't topple Kwan from her throne, though it wasn't for lack of trying on the part of the marketers and the sports press. It was Hughes herself who took herself out of the running, choosing instead, to her credit, a normal life of college and whatever comes afterward. With Sasha Cohen's less-than-press-friendly persona and tendency to fall at the Big Moment, she wasn't ready to assume that role.

It isn't just the sports press that's rubbing salt in Kwan's wound; the business world feels betrayed as well:

And unless Ms. Kwan's bubbly personality keeps endorsement deals coming, her early departure could also be bad news for her pocketbook. The 25-year-old figure skater's lucrative contracts with Coca-Cola and Visa are near an end — and marketing experts say it is now less likely she will be landing big new deals anytime soon. Coca-Cola and Visa say they had no plans to use her beyond the Olympics.

"I think the problem now is that instead of people looking at her as a gold medal winner, they're looking at her with a little, 'oh, I'm so sorry for her,' " said Bob Dorfman, the executive vice president and creative director for Pickett Advertising in San Francisco and the author of The Sports Marketers' Scouting Report, a quarterly analysis of athletes' endorsement potential. "You want to feel good when you look at her, but instead you're feeling bad. So I can see some marketers turning away from her because of that."

Coca-Cola and Visa would not disclose how much Ms. Kwan has been paid for her services; marketing executives say such deals are usually in the low seven-figure range.


It could be as simple as Kwan's inability to compete making her less marketable. Though somehow I have this nagging suspicion that if her name were "Nancy Kerrigan" or even "Emily Hughes", and she had to withdraw because of injury, the tone of the press would be less betrayal and more compassion.
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