Figure Skating - Part A - by Anne Shier (a.k.a. "Annie")

(Based on the book, “Winter Olympics:  An Insider’s Guide to the Legends, the Lore, and the Games”, Vancouver Edition, copyright 2008 by Ron C. Judd)

Olympic figure skating is not, thank goodness, what it often appears on the surface.

At first, second, or even tenth glance, the casual observer is probably caught up in, and distracted by, the sheer sequin-and-mousse frivolity of it all.

Seriously:  What other sport in the world has a designated “kiss-and-cry” area for competitors?  For what other competition do hard-as-nails athletes spend hours donning makeup and linked-doily gowns designed by the likes of Vera Wang?  What other sport makes and breaks careers – and in some cases, even lives – with competitions decided not by measurable results, but the by the fly-by-night opinions of anonymous judges, some of whom may or may not have been paid to look the other way?

And – let’s cut right to the chase here – what other sports puts up what it calls a “ladies” competition and still invites a notorious figure skater like Tonya Harding?

The point:  It’s easy to look at figure skating’s sequined fringe and consider the entire affair a joke.  And some parts of it are.  But when you see it enough times live, up close, and witness the grimaces and feel the pain and bask in the joy of the athletes on and off the ice, the TV channel in your brain changes from Looney Tunes to True Grit.

Then, you spend a lot of time watching it and you learn.  You talk to people who know and love the sport, and you learn more.  You sit down for coffee with someone like Dick Button, a master skater before becoming king of the commentators, and you soak up even more.

Figure skating, you eventually decide, for its foibles, is the showcase event of any Winter Olympics for good reason.  At its highest level, artistic skating is perhaps the greatest melding of power and grace in all of competitive sport.  Top skaters have ballet liquidity and distance-runner stamina.  They can make a quadruple-triple-triple combination look as effortless as a wink, then literally turn around and strike a spiral pose so profound it appears to have been sketched by Picasso.  And then fall flat on their butts.

No other sport provides that eye-popping symmetry, that impossible contradiction, that she’s-this-close-to-the-gold-medal-and-OH!-that’s-a-shame fragility.  And no other stage for this play is as dramatic and fitting as the ice arena at a Winter Olympic Games.

This is a high-wire act with no nets.  You’re out there by yourself, with an entire world watching, banking your future on a four-minute free-skate program in which a jump launched a fraction of a second too soon or too late will send you crashing to the ice – and prompt some guy at a bar in Iowa to wince at the TV screen and wisecrack, “Wow, that’s gonna leave a mark!”

It is not for the meek.  Watching America’s Michelle Kwan skate a near-perfect short program in Nagano, my first up-close experience with the sport, I was struck between the eyes by the cool precision and gritty eloquence of what could only be called high art on ice.

Later, at subsequent national championships and Winter Games, I found myself drawn, more and more, to the ice arenas for what we in the press box refer to as “the figs”.  Each trip provided a highlight that marked my reluctant education as a figure skating watcher and – I’ve finally been forced to admit – figure skating fan:

Like the drama of watching America’s Tara Lipinski – at age 15, one of the youngest Winter Games competitors ever – leap over the field to steal a gold medal from the favoured Kwan in Nagano.  Something about her bugged me.  Still does.  But, you couldn’t help appreciating the grit.

Or watching the dramatic ladies’ final “redux” in Salt Lake City in 2002, when unheralded 16-year-old Sara Hughes claimed gold over the stunned also-rans:  Irina Slutskaya, who took silver, and the apparently Olympic-cursed Kwan, the five-time world champion, who settled for bronze.

copyright 2014, Anne Shier.  All rights reserved.