Kwanathon

A quick note on the latest drama in the Olympics -- one that will be entirely too prominent and overplayed in the coming weeks.

Yesterday, Michelle Kwan pulled out of the Olympic women's figure skating. She should never have entered.

Thankfully, Emily Hughes will get her chance to compete, even though her chance to win a medal is minimal, at best.

The Kwan saga is one for TV, but not for realists. Kwan is a nine-time US champion, a five-time World champion and a zero-time Olympic champion. Her record of accomplishments is longer than Tookie Williams' rap sheet. She's 25, that means she's "old" for her sport. She sought to win the Olympic gold for the first time ever after the US Olympic Committee inexplicably allowed Tonya Harding to retain her spot in 1994 after the Kerrigan assault (Kerrigan's medical waiver was entirely justified -- Harding's thugs had whacked her in the knee); after Kwan lost to super-pixie Tara Lipinski in 1998; and after Kwan simply choked in 2002, opening the door for Sarah Hughes to win gold after the skate of her life.

Kwan wanted another chance, but a groin injury forced her to miss the US championships, which normally determine the three US representatives at the Olympics. So she applied for a medical waiver and a spot on the team. Despite a groin pull that made her incapable of completing the jumps she normally could complete, the USOC thought she was a good chance for a US medal and let her on the team. Poor work all around.

The fact is that Kwan does NOT do the triple jumps that have become staples of the best women's figure skaters' programs -- and she never has (that's part of why Lipinski beat her in '98). She cannot complete the triple-triple combinations that set Sasha Cohen and the next wave of top competitors apart. And Kwan's program is "less difficult" than her competitors' -- thereby knocking down her score under a new scoring system that will be used in the Olympics. Kwan's best finish under the new system was 4th-place in last year's world championships -- a dismal result for someone who had won a medal nine consecutive years in that event.

The Monk has minimal affection for Kwan, and perhaps unjustifiably so, primarily because the media has fixated on her. First, it continually harped on her "surprise" in 1998 when Lipinski simply outperformed her. Then, it banged its drum about her sadness and "disappointment" in 2002, when she choked horribly while Hughes shocked the world with an exceptional performance (which was scored too low thanks to the judges' practice of reserving higher marks for medal favorites -- nonetheless, she won). This year, Kwan acted selfishly, although understandably. But the diva act wore thin quickly. And the USOC failed to choose the right action -- it credulously thought she could win when she could barely compete.

The media has fixated on Kwan because she is a champion, but also because it failed the nation's lone Asian-American ice queen so badly. Historically, US gold medal women's figure skaters have won stardom and adulation (and often fortune) after becoming an Olympic champion -- [Dr.] Carol Heiss, Tenley Albright, Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill. The tale of Kristi Yamaguchi, who in 1992 became the US's first Olympic gold medal winner in women's figure skating since Dorothy Hamill, is a simple one -- she FINALLY won the ice queen competition to become America's first gold medalist in the event in 16 years, but failed to gain the endorsements, accolades and prominence that awaited the ladies who failed to succeed Hamill before Yamaguchi won (Linda Frattiani, 1980; Rosalyn Sumners, 1984; Debi Thomas, 1988). Kerrigan received more endorsements and more accolades than Yamaguchi, and she only won silver (like Sumners and Frattiani). Kwan was the chance for the media to redeem itself for its failure in 1992. But Kwan did not adhere to the script. Perhaps some additional accolades for Yamaguchi, the most anonymous of American ice queens, are in order.