Kwan DiveAmerica's top figure skater fails again.
Posted Monday, Feb. 13, 2006, at 2:12 PM ET
When Michelle Kwan left the Winter Olympics with an injured groin, I thought of Dan Marino. The legendary Dolphins quarterback retired in 1999 with countless NFL records. But any conversation about Marino starts and ends with the fact that he never won a Super Bowl. Despite all those big numbers, he'll always be perceived as a loser.
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StumbleUponThank God Michelle Kwan doesn't play football. Her professional accomplishments are without peer: She has five world championships, nine U.S. titles, and has even appeared on The Simpsons. But those numbers are like gaudy passing-yardage totals: completely meaningless without the big prize. For all her successes, Kwan has failed to win gold in the only figure-skating event the world even pretends to care about. She is still beloved by her fans and regarded by skating experts as perhaps the most talented American skater ever. It is difficult to find anyone to speak an ill word of her. Which is impressive, considering that if she competed in any other sport, she'd be known for what she is: a gigantic choker.
Her first gag job came in Nagano in 1998. After winning both the world's and U.S. championships, she came to Japan expecting a coronation. But from the beginning, Kwan, then 17, had problems with her nerves. Where challenger Tara Lipinski charmed her fellow competitors by prancing around the Olympic Village, Kwan brooded in her room. After taking the lead in the short program, Kwan skated a safe, conservative program that implied the gold medal was a foregone conclusion. Her scores were just good enough until Lipinski dazzled the judges and spectators with everything Kwan lacked: risk, energy, and, most of all, joy. "It seemed like I was in my own little world. I didn't open up; I didn't really let go," Kwan said after taking home the silver.
It got worse in Salt Lake City. After firing both her choreographer and her coach a year before the Olympics, Kwan came into the Games heavily favored; in a sport where reputation is so important, it seemed like the judges were begging her to win. And she collapsed again. This time it wasn't a matter of being too cautious; it was a matter of falling down. (Sarah Hughes' blissful performance didn't help either.) For the second straight time, the sport's most talented, revered skater came to the Games with everything in her favor ... and left without the gold medal.
So, why isn't Michelle Kwan known as Peyton Manning, Scott Norwood, and Grady Little rolled into one? For one thing, we root for individual athletes differently than we root for teams. The only fans Michelle Kwan has really let down with her Olympic losses are hardcore Michelle Kwan fans … and those people are the freakish exceptions. For the rest of us, Kwan's collapses were cushioned by the fact that the winners, Lipinski and Hughes, were both apple-cheeked Americans. Who really cares who won? They're still from the good old USA!
There's also the fact that Kwan is a figure skater. For all the talk of her legendary "competitive spirit" and her desire to become "the Michael Jordan of my sport," she is an athlete in a sport that rewards victory but does not punish defeat. This has something to do with skating's primarily female fan base, generally a more forgiving lot than your average bunch of NFL fans. Also, like everything else in the Olympics, we only care about skating once every four years. Sure, that puts a lot of pressure on athletes like Kwan, who have, at most, three chances to succeed per lifetime. But it also means that her failures inspire sympathy rather than ridicule. For years, speed-skater Dan Jansen repeatedly missed out on gold when he was heavily favored. Once he finally won, it was as if none of the failures ever happened.
The Olympics, unlike every other sport, are set up only for positive stories. (Blood doping excluded, of course.) Jansen's career was nothing but losses … until he finally won. Immediately, those "losses" were transformed into "preparation for victory."
Kwan's injured groin will make her a winner, too. If she had actually competed in Turin—injury or no—Kwan had little chance of winning. Most likely she would have come across as slightly pathetic, an athlete past her prime, trying desperately to keep up with women half her age. Instead, she goes out as a semitragic story, an athlete denied her final opportunity at gold. A depressing storyline is transformed into an uplifting one, preferably one shot in soft focus and with roses being tossed in from just off-frame. Welcome to the Olympics, where there are no losers, only heroes.
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Remarks from the Fray:
Leitch manages in this piece to condescend to both the sport and its largely female audience. He doesn't know what he's talking about, but then most commentators on figure skating don't know, either. They pay attention to figure skating every four years, when the Olympics roll around, and that's it. Kwan not known as "a gigantic choker"? Most of the sportswriters of the type I've mentioned do nothing but call her just that.
Kwan did not choke in Nagano. She skated a program that would have won gold in any other Olympics, and if she had skated after Lipinski instead of before, she might very well have won. Odd, I know, but that's skating. Many informed commentators thought she should have won. Yes, she did not perform up to par in the long program at Salt Lake City – and neither did her chief rivals, which is why Hughes wound up winning the event
For the record, the top contenders in Torino are young women in their twenties. Irina Slutskaya, who is favored to win the event, is two years older and has recovered from a debilitating illness. To say that Kwan would have been competing against girls "half her age" is ridiculous.
--AReader-2
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All the US & "World" Championships are fine, but clearly, the Olympics are the only thing that matters. Twice she went in as the prohibitive favorite and twice she blew it.
In 1976, Franz Klammer went into the downhill as the big favorite on his home course, with far more pressure than Kwan's ever had, and he won with a near-miraculous run. Same with Eric Heiden in 1980, Katarina Witt(twice), and on and on.
In these types of sports the Oly's are beyond anything else. Shaun White was gagging early in the half-pipe and he got it together.
Kwan's a great skater and a class act, but she blew it twice in the clutch. And she also cheated Emily Hughes out of the thrill of being in the Opening Ceremonies by not withdrawing in the first place. She should know how that feels as the same thing happened to her in '94.
And what's with this crap from Ueberroth about how she means more to the USOC than any other athlete? More than Jesse Owens, for starters? Let's not get hysterical, folks.
--BillM75
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(2/13)