Reflecting on Ice Skating’s Greatest Scandal

I went to Canada after Christmas and it seems like I brought the weather back home with me! The weather here was awful on Monday and Tuesday! Considering that we rarely see the low teens or single digits, -4 felt a little bit surreal to be perfectly honest. I thought I had come home so that I wouldn’t freeze to death!

Since Hell didn’t freeze over, they still had Learn to Skate classes as usual on Monday! The school system was even closed both Monday and Tuesday so the fact that I left the house at all made me feel like we should probably all ‘be committed.’ The most shocking thing was how many people were there considering the extreme cold! Why were the kids out in full force? The Winter Olympics at coming!!

While 2014 has started out significantly better than my 2013 did what with having a broken foot and all last year, I found myself subconsciously guarding my knee caps on Monday.  Why? January 6th marked the 20th Anniversary of the infamous “whack heard around the world.” Whether you were involved in Figure Skating at the time or not, it was hard to miss the images of Nancy Kerrigan in what I think was a white dress holding her knee and crying; and the absolute media circus in the days that followed!

I know I was only 8 years old back in ’94 but I don’t really remember watching a lot of skating prior to that point. I just don’t think they showed it on the television. I know figures weren’t nearly as fun to watch as the high flying jumps or the fast moving spins but I don’t think it was doing away with those in competition that got the attention of the television stations. After all, the time period following figures and before Nancy vs. Tonya seemed rather stagnant in terms of Figure Skating coverage. The attention that was all of a sudden focused on Figure Skating really had to do with exposing the ugliness that can be hidden underneath all that can seem to only shimmer with perfection.  It wasn’t pretty.

While I hope that nothing quite that eventful happens at this week’s U.S. Nationals, I wonder what it would take to capture the media’s attention once more for something positive. I for one don’t want the soap operas that can go on behind the scenes to ever detract from the beauty of what happens on the ice!