When Ron Hershberger was elected president of U.S. Figure Skating in early May, he didn’t feel as if he was heading an organization on thin ice.
“I’d rather look forward,” he said this past week.
That’s because no one in the organization likes what they see when they look back. In the past four months, the USFS president and executive director have resigned. TV ratings are falling, and the elite program faces a bigger gap behind the Russians than ever before.
When Hershberger’s predecessor, Chuck Foster, resigned in January, he called the USFS a “dysfunctional” governing body plagued by “backbiting and bickering.”
Welcome to the political world of American figure skating, where the grace of its skaters belies the turmoil below the surface.
“The recent elections and governing council meeting had great energy in respect to members of the executive committee,” Hershberger said from his law office in Palo Alto, Calif. “I’m looking forward to carrying out the goals as described.”
Hershberger, who spent 15 of the past 16 years on the USFS board of directors, has his work cut out for him. In a move that shocked few inside figure skating, executive director Val Belmonte resigned May 2 after only seven months on the job.
There had been speculation Belmonte would not last a year because of an inability to deal with the volunteer organization’s board. Belmonte remains with USFS as a consultant. USFS bans its workers from discussing the organization publicly, but Foster did not back off his comments from four months ago.
Contacted last week at his home in Duxbury, Mass., where he has retired, Foster said of the USFS, “It’s a dysfunctional organization and proved it by chasing out Val Belmonte.”
In March, Belmonte attended the World Figure Skating Championships in Moscow and saw Russia win three of four titles. Russia or the old Soviet Union has won the past four men’s Olympic gold medals, the past 11 Olympic pairs golds and four of the past five Olympic ice dancing golds.
Still, a year from Turin 2006, the United States has gold-medal candidates in Michelle Kwan and Sasha Cohen, plus men’s medal candidates in Evan Lysacek and Johnny Weir.
Foster said the organizational problems don’t affect the nation’s elite. At least it hasn’t yet.
“Athletes excel despite the leadership,” Foster said.
The effects, he said, are at the developmental stage.
“We need leadership,” Foster said. “This isn’t just an organization of elite Olympic skaters. There are 150,000-160,000 in the organization, from beginners to competitors to synchronized skating to adult skating to recreational skating. The tip of the iceberg is just the elite.
“Without the programs, where will we get the stars of tomorrow?”
Foster wouldn’t discuss specific incidents of backbiting but did say the makeup of the volunteers is a bad fit.
“It’s a volunteer-driven organization, and a lot of the people don’t have a business sense,” Foster said. “I think they care more about their own personal agendas than the greater good. It’s complex.”
Developmental programs are split into two groups. The Dallas-based Ice Skating Institute emphasizes early development and feeds into USFS programs, both of which have different rules for competition. Matt Smith, the 1993 Canadian junior national champion, runs the Ice Town Skating School with 500 kids in San Diego.
“As a coach, you just want one system at the rudimentary level,” Smith said. “You don’t need to learn two.”
While numbers of skating participants are not down, TV numbers of skating viewers are. ABC’s numbers for the U.S. Figure Skating Championships have dropped from a high of a 14.1 rating (percentage of all TVs turned to the program) in 1994, the year of the Tonya Harding- Nancy Kerrigan rivalry, to a low of 4.5 last year and 4.6 this year.
ABC ended its contract with the World Figure Skating Championships, which went from a high of 6.6 in 1999 to 5.2 in 2003. ESPN picked up this year’s worlds and recorded a 1.2 for the Saturday night prime-time slot.
ABC spokesman Mark Mandel pointed to the growing glut of TV sports, saying, “It’s the nature of television nowadays.”
The ratings will certainly pick up in the 2006 Olympic year, but Hershberger was hired to fix figure skating before any blades fall off.
“We think we’re an outstanding national governing body in the sports world, and we want to continue that image,” he said.
John Henderson can be reached at 303-820-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
