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Monday, February 13, 2006

Oh, lay the hell off Michelle Kwan already
Posted by Jill | 1:29 PM

I just finished plowing through one article after another bludgeoning Michelle Kwan with her failure to ever win an Olympic gold medal over at at MSNBC's site, and all I can say, is lay the hell off her already.

I used to follow figure skating in a major way back in the late 1980's and early 1990's. I still remember how upset I was when the 1988 U.S. Champion, Debi Thomas, two-footed a then-unheard-of triple-triple combination in the opening seconds of her freeskate and then, knowing the gold was out of reach, fumbled her way through a Carmen program to which she was ill-suited and into a bronze medal. It wasn't that Thomas had faltered that was upsetting. That she did as well as she did against the sex goddess that was Katarina Witt is achievement enough. No, it was the way the press treated her as if she'd sold nuclear secrets to the Russians that was so galling. Thomas never really recovered, and the lucrative post-Olympic career that Olympic gold offered was out of reach. She skated in a few pro competitions, retired from skating entirely, and is now a sports physician.

The one positive aspect to the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan knee whacking incident that took place a few years later is that it brought skating into the public consciousness in a way it never had been before, and so there were openings on the pro exhibition and competitive circuit for some of the lesser competitive lights of figure skating -- those quirky and original skaters who skated to a different beat than the norm. For a precious few years, we were able to watch the extraordinary physics-defying and snarky edge work of Canadian Gary Beacom; the amazing Russian splits and flexibility of Rory Flack; the athleticism of Robert Wagenhoffer; the originality of Jozef Sabovcik; the sheer goofiness of Gregorz Filipowski; the time-stopping athleticism and sexiness of Denise Bielmann. Then, like all fads, skating faded back to its hard-core skating fan roots, and in 1998 and 2002, we saw the Olympic gold once again become, well, okay, the gold standard.

From the ashes of the aborted coronation of Nancy Kerrigan as the new America's sweetheart came this adorable pipsqueak of a Chinese-American girl, Michelle Kwan, who still showed us what it looked like when someone skated for the love of it. And for the next 12 years, Kwan made it look easy.

While she never had the sheer athleticism of some of the competitors she outlasted, Kwan had that certain something that made her magical on the ice. She always knew her style, she knew what worked, and while she wasn't always perfect, she could always be counted on to produce a work of staggering beauty.

Then came the new scoring system, with its attempts to quantify figure skating judging by counting athletic elements, and suddenly the sport had moved beyond its most prominent ambassador. Add to those changes the fact that twelve years of jumping and spinning and those gorgeous spirals had taken a toll on even this most disciplined and trained of bodies, and it is Michelle Kwan's turn to parry the barbs of the press and be treated like a traitor -- simplybecause she dared to try again when unable to.

"Missed golds will define Kwan's brilliant career", trumpets Tim Dahlberg of AP. "You can keep naming names, all you want, because the U.S. had captured 69 gold medals in the Winter Olympics before Turin, and Kwan won none of them," notes Filip Bondy, belaboring the obvious. MSNBC asks you to vote on whether nine World Titles, five US titles, and two Olympic medals qualifies her to be one of the greatest figure skaters ever. Fortunately, 87% of the people who have responded can appreciate the impressive acheivement of this distance runner of skaters, present on the scene long after the sprinters and the one-shots are off doing ice shows in Vegas (Tara Lipinski, I'm talking to you).

This weekend we saw the other two members of the Holy Trinity of American Olympic Hype, skiier and bad boy Bode Miller and speed skater Apolo Ohno, falter in their own attempts at gold -- and suddenly the ratings for Olympic coverage in the U.S. was in serious jeopardy. Ohno's sport makes him, like Kwan, one slip away from being out of the medals. Miller has no one but himself to blame, after staying out late drinking the night before his big race.

But if Kwan is guilty of anything, it isn't in letting her country down, and it isn't selfishness in wanting this one last chance. It's in her seeming inability to let go of competitive skating and look at the big, vast world that awaits a 25-year-old who carries herself with impeccable manners, class, intelligence and grace.

It's just too bad that the members of the sports press and the media, who had hoped to build their careers on the toe-picks of Michelle Kwan's skate blades only to find those hopes dashed, can't conduct themselves in the same way.
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