The story appeared in the Tribune more than nine years ago, on Jan. 20, 1993. The headline: “Ingenue takes to ice as U.S. nationals open.” It was about the youngest figure skater to compete in the national championships in 20 years, a kid who thought, “It’s kind of fun skating with the older people,” a 12-year-old who said of title contenders Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, “They’ve been around for a couple hundred years. I’m just starting to rise.”
Now it seems to the figure-skating world that Michelle Kwan, who is only 21, has been around a couple hundred years since she finished a remarkable sixth in Phoenix nine years ago. She has risen to the top of her sport, reaching the point where she is judged against her own brilliance and the achievements of legendary skaters of the past: Olympic gold medalists such as Sonja Henie, Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill, Carol Heiss and Katarina Witt.
Such comparisons often can be invidious. They come with the territory in which Kwan found herself after winning a world championship at 15 with a performance as Salome that stands as the most remarkable blend of convincing dramatic presentation, technical difficulty and raw will to win the sport ever has seen. They come from Kwan’s expressed desire to occupy a prominent place in figure skating’s pantheon.
“When I was younger,” Kwan said after winning her fourth world title a year ago, “I always wanted to be remembered as a legend. I wanted something to give the sport, to advance the sport. I wanted people to say, `That Michelle, she made skating a better sport.'”
What becomes a legend most? An Olympic gold medal, the one thing Kwan does not have, the objective that is most maddeningly elusive because it is awarded only every four years. The golden ring comes around again this week, beginning with Tuesday’s short program. For the second time in her career, Kwan seems to have it well within her grasp.
And yet, knowing that ice is slippery and judging is subjective, Kwan has been forced to develop some perspective on the subject, even if it sometimes reads like a defense mechanism.
“It might sound really dumb, but I’ve been dreaming since I was a little girl about having the gold medal,” Kwan said the day of the Opening Ceremony. “When that whole dream is so close to you . . . at this moment it’s the greatest thing in the world, but you have to move on like anything else. Will it complete me as a person? I wish I can say winning all these medals will complete me and make me a happy person. How come the richest and most famous people aren’t always the happiest?”
Witt, who won two gold medals for East Germany, believes Kwan needs at least one to fulfill her career, if not her life.
“The Olympics is the most important competition in an athlete’s life,” Witt said Monday. “This is what you work for, gear your whole hopes on. . . . There is no replacement for an Olympic gold medal. Winning it is the highlight of your career.”
To be blunt, it seems this simple: If Kwan wins the gold after Thursday night’s free skate, she is a legend. If she does not, she is the most decorated women’s skater never to win an Olympic gold medal, linked forever with Janet Lynn as the greatest women skaters never to do it.
“It’s been a goal since I was little to win, like, 700 gold medals,” Kwan said. “You know that’s not possible, but I’ve got one more chance.”
After a season of upheaval, in which she broke ties with her longtime choreographer, Lori Nichol, and her longtime coach, Frank Carroll, Kwan is the favorite in a competition in which her principal rival is Irina Slutskaya of Russia. Four years ago in Nagano, Japan, Kwan also was the favorite, only to skate an exceptional but passionless long program that lost to the technical wizardry and unfettered exuberance of Tara Lipinski.
“When Michelle lets it go, she’s in a complete class by herself,” Carroll said.
Since 1998 Kwan has won three more world titles, four more U.S. titles, made millions of dollars and dabbled in college, love and life. She is the artist she was four years ago, which has led to charges of sameness, and she hasn’t advanced as a jumper beyond the skater she was in winning the world title at 15, which raises other questions.
She is the best skater in the world, has been since 1996, and yet we want more, more, more. She struggled through parts of the 2000 and 2001 seasons, yet managed to get it together when it mattered most, at the world championships. What better measure of an athlete’s greatness than the ability to hit the game-winning shot, which we have seen from Kwan since she did the skating equivalent of a reverse 360 in the final second to win that first world title?
“What Michelle has already done establishes her among the very top in the sport’s history,” said Richard Callaghan, who coached Lipinski. “Hopefully, 10 years from now we’ll be talking about another best skater ever.”
The French coach, Annick Gailhaguet, last year called Kwan the greatest skater in history, yet wished she would expand her artistic vision to include more than the sometimes bland lyricism that has infused her presentation much of the last four years.
At a time when everything about figure-skating results is being questioned, there is no doubt Kwan has deserved to win her four world titles and six U.S. titles. The judging largesse accorded a champion, similar to that in boxing, seemed too great only at the Skate America Grand Prix event in October.
Event referee Jon Jackson of San Francisco was among those who believed Sarah Hughes of the U.S. skated better that night. He also believes people have come to ignore what makes Kwan’s skating so special.
“She is the only skater in the world who, when she glides across the ice, you can’t hear her,” Jackson said. “She is the only skater who leaves you with that feeling of purity.
“We’ve seen it for five years, so it’s not exciting to us anymore. But it’s still there. I think people just overlook it now.”
Judges have stopped giving Kwan the benefit of the doubt on her presentation marks, as evidenced by Slutskaya’s winning because of free-skate presentation scores at their two meetings this season, September’s Goodwill Games and December’s Grand Prix Final.
“People say, `You’re the best skater, but I want to see something new,'” Kwan said. “I wish I knew what they wanted. It’s hard.”
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For Kwan, something new oddly became both getting rid of the old, Nichol and Carroll, and trying to relive the past, by reviving the short program Nichol choreographed for the 1998 season. She has done the unthinkable in a tradition-steeped sport, coming to the Olympics with no coach, relying on her father, Danny, to support her at practices. Kwan says her father is only a cheerleader, even if he has been seen the last week talking with her about jump technique.
“I never thought [leaving Carroll] would be such a big deal to outsiders,” Kwan said. “Of course, now everyone’s trying to get inside my brain, and they can’t do it. It’s just like you always want to know what’s going on with Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise. I’m reading it too.”
That is somewhat disingenuous. The day Kwan publicly announced the split with Carroll, she first called an old friend, 1988 Olympic champion Brian Boitano, to tell him what she was about to say. When Boitano advised her the reaction was going to be tremendous, Kwan made it clear she already was aware of that.
Conventional wisdom now is that Kwan’s decision stemmed from her becoming a woman who wanted to manage more of her life, to which she alluded by saying, “You have to take control of your skating.” It may also be that the conservative Carroll did not encourage her to take choreographic risks. Neither has revealed what precipitated their breakup after 10 years of working together.
“People are still trying to come up with scenarios like Frank and I had a huge argument,” Kwan said. “We did have differences. That’s all I can say.”
Kwan has deserved to be questioned and applauded for making such a bold decision. No matter what happens at the Olympics, she has emerged as a self-confident athlete.
“It’s hard to say what confidence is,” she said. “Is it what you do on the ice? Is it experience?”
Experience taught her to treat this Olympics as a happening as much as a competition. In Nagano, she was cloistered with her parents and agent out of a desire not to change anything from the way she had handled previous competitions.
“People think I’ve been waiting around for the last four years,” Kwan said.
Fifteen months ago, at the 2000 Skate America, Kwan first mentioned she might stick around until the 2006 Olympics. By then she will have been around a couple hundred years and be all of 25 years old.
“People think I’m like 30,” she said. “Since 13, I’ve been on TV, and people have gotten to know me through TV.”
Kwan was asked recently if she thought people knew “the real you.”
“I guess I don’t really know the real me either,” she said.
There likely will be no clues in a gold medal.