Turin – Melodrama is what makes the world of Olympic figure skating go ’round. Stop the world. Michelle Kwan wants to get off.
In a sport with more similarities to Disney on Ice than anybody wants to admit, sometimes you’re Snow White. And sometimes you’re Goofy.
Kwan withdrew from the Winter Games on Sunday with uncommon grace for a five-time world champion stuck in a ridiculously goofy situation.
“It’s one of the toughest decisions I’ve made, but I know it’s the right one,” Kwan said.
She reluctantly chose to pack her bags and go home at 2:15 a.m.
Closing time.
Although the face of American skating for nearly a decade, Kwan never had Olympic gold hung from her neck. Fighting back tears, the 25-year-old Californian, however, left with something more precious.
Her dignity.
And that’s no small feat for a dancer on the slippery ethical ice of this sport.
In figure skating, doing the right thing is harder than a triple axel. Judging scandals. Tonya and Nancy. You know the history. It reads like a soap-opera script.
Kwan’s ticket to Italy was punched as a lifetime-achievement award, rather than on merit. Physically unable to compete last month at the official trials for the team, she was handed a stage pass for the Olympic show in a process cheesier than anything staged by “American Idol.”
It was left to the injured skater, too hurt to jump in practice or go on with this charade, to save the television audience back home from the embarrassment of watching Kwan fall down and go boom.
With Kwan gone, the starmakers at U.S. Figure Skating had to scramble and put out a casting call for an understudy during the thin hours of the night in the Italian Alps. They needed a Sleeping Beauty. Pronto.
They found 17-year-old Emily Hughes eating sushi with her family back in the States. The family immediately bolted the restaurant “so we could go home to jump up and down,” Hughes said.
Fair and square, Hughes had earned an Olympic bid at the U.S. nationals, only to be shoved aside when Kwan slipped under the velvet rope and got here through the VIP door.
Americans, who find Jessica Simpson so hot we also gave her sister Ashlee a singing career, should find Hughes huggable. Her big sister won gold at the 2002 Winter Games. With some slick needlework by a seamstress and a few minor alterations to that pale-periwinkle number worn at the grand finale in Salt Lake City four years ago, the judges might not be able to tell the difference.
A cynical viewpoint? I plead guilty of being cynical to the nth degree, although I should also confess the over-the-top emotions make figure skating a guilty pleasure. The same melodrama that causes Dick Button to bust his buttons makes it the must-see TV of the Winter Games.
But, sometimes, the competition all comes off as so choreographed that the lone difference between this sport and pro wrestling seems to be Mozart rather than Metallica blaring from the arena speakers.
There’s no business like the skating business because stage smiles are painted on and hide the nastiness that can be involved in climbing to the top of the Olympic podium.
As American skater Johnny Weir bluntly described the business: “You never know who has your back in figure skating. You can never know who wants you to do well, who pretends they want you to do well and who just outright hates you.”
Although thin, blades are cold and sharp. They carve up careers and shred the hearts of competitors before teenagers get a chance to grow up. The problem with melodrama is it requires an endless faucet of tears.
Kwan won silver and bronze at the Winter Games, yet was forever cast as the tragic heroine who never took home the big prize.
“I have no regrets,” Kwan said. “I tried my hardest. And if I didn’t win gold, that’s OK.”
But most remarkable was how she stuck jumps and stuck through the politics of this dirty business until age 25.
Then, on the day when a fading athlete had no choice but to hang up the skates, dressed in black and with eyes puffy, Kwan tried her best to go out as Snow White. In character, until the end.
Denver Post columnist Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-820-5438 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
