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Three Times a Lady
[14 February 2006]
Michelle Kwan is a minimalist ice goddess with only one crooked tooth to remind us that she is human.
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by David Swerdlick
It's always been a dream to win the Olympics and it's always an honor to represent your country. My parents are here... and they always want me to be happy, for their baby to win the gold and make my dreams come true. I have no regrets. I tried my hardest. And if I don't win the gold, it's okay. I've had a great career. I've been very lucky. This is a sport, and it's beautiful.
— Michelle Kwan (12 February 2006)
On 20 August 2002, at the North Charleston Coliseum in South Carolina, my wife and I were part of something small but significant, something that we had never experienced before: a standing ovation, by far the largest of the night, for an athlete who hadn't won. The Southern, middle American, capacity crowd erupted for Michelle Kwan -- an Asian American woman from California -- with as much intensity as any I'd ever seen at a sporting event, only months after her bronze medal performance in Salt Lake City.
It is a testament to Kwan's popularity and longevity that the biggest American story of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino is that she won't be in the competition. Now what will NBC do to generate interest in this most lackluster Olympics? Kwan is tailor made for Olympic coverage in the mass media age. She is lovely, but not too sexy for a PG-13 audience. Her interviews convey only goodwill, poise, and charm. She tirelessly promotes herself, her sport, and her sponsors. In 1994, at age 13, she placed second at the U.S. nationals and gained a place on the Olympic team. But she selflessly stood aside as an alternate to make way for the injured Nancy Kerrigan to battle Tonya Harding in Lillehammer.
Given her charisma and sparkling image, it's easy to see why, a few weeks ago, the U.S. Figure Skating Association asked Emily Hughes to serve as an alternate so that it could grant the injured Kwan one more chance to win the gold medal in her third and final Olympics. Still, sports analysts and fans have been mixed on the issue of whether or not she should have taken the last spot on the Olympic team in favor of the up-and-coming Hughes. After she dropped out, Slate's Seth Stevenson wrote, "she whined and lawyered her way onto the Olympic team... She just wanted some spotlight." But, according to USA Today's Christine Brennan, "it's time for Kwan's sport to pay her back." As Brennan notes, Kwan went on to the World Championships in 1998 and 2002, just weeks after her respective Olympic let downs. Her presence there helped the U.S. gain additional spots for subsequent international competitions. And while it is certainly fair to say that Hughes earned a spot on the team, it would also be fair to say that Kwan, with nine U.S. championships, five world titles, and a record 54 scores of 6.0 in official competition, also deserved a place in these Olympics. Sasha Cohen and Kimmie Meissner will acquit themselves well, but it is the world's loss that Kwan will not be a part of the games this time around.
In a sport filled with judging controversies, nationalistic tantrums, prima donnas, and inexplicably awful wardrobes, Kwan has always risen above. Earnest in her preparation, gracious in both victory and defeat, dressed in understated costumes, somehow melancholy and energetic at the same time, in Kwan embodies figure skating in the U.S. and is national ambassador for the winter games. The essence of her sport is to make the incredibly difficult look effortless, and in this regard she has no equal. You have to go all the way back to Peggy Fleming to find a champion with the same breathtaking, untouchable elegance. She is more fluid on the ice than Dorothy Hamill or Katarina Witt. She reaches the crowd in a way that Oksana Baiul and Kristi Yamaguchi could not, gaining popularity with fans through the beauty and pathos that she brings to her performances. She is, in sum, a minimalist ice goddess with only one crooked tooth to remind us that she is human.
Kwan's routines have always been economical and elegant. The one intangible quality that separates figure skating from every other sport in the winter games is form. Unlike most athletic endeavors, in skating, grace, panache, and soul are judged alongside the strenuous execution of jumps, spins, and rapid ballet-like movements across the ice. And all of Kwan's movements convey emotion. She is lithe and stable, sad and sweet, all at the same time. In light of her unparalleled ability to communicate physically, it seems incredible to think that, though she has won everything there is to win in figure skating, she will not be taking home an Olympic gold medal.
There's no need to analyze what happened four years ago in Salt Lake City, where the veteran Kwan was simply overwhelmed by the novice, Sarah Hughes, who turned in one of the all-time great performances in the long program. Between Hughes' flawless execution and her 10,000-watt teenage smile, the rest of the field never had a chance. But Nagano in 1998 was different. Kwan was the favorite, having won two U.S. National Championships and one world title at that point. As in Salt Lake City, she led after the short program. Tara Lipinski, a pixie-ish technician, used her small frame to maximum advantage in executing a "triple-triple" jump in her long program. She skated furiously, as if she were completing maneuvers on an obstacle course rather than going through a routine. For her part, Kwan skated with her trademark soulful, spare movements, but did not complete a triple-triple -- a move that very likely would have clinched the competition. Partly based on the sequence in which they performed, and partly because she landed the triple-triple, the judges gave Lipinski the coveted first-place ordinal rank, and thereby handed her the gold medal. The 1998 Winter Olympics was not as much won by Lipinski as it was taken from Kwan.
The enduring image of that night, however, is that of Kwan's father jumping up from his seat and pumping his fist after the completion of her long program. It said everything it needed to -- the years of family sacrifice, private coaches, logging miles, and keeping up appearances had all finally paid off. Because she led after the short program, Mr. Kwan had every reason to believe that her excellent performance in the long program would be enough to win.
But she didn't. In a forensic sense, it is impossible to pinpoint exactly what went wrong for Kwan in 1998. Although she is far too regal to protest (unlike Mike Holmgren in the aftermath of this year's Super Bowl), there clearly seemed to be a certain injustice in the outcome. Lipinski seemed to benefit from her role as underdog, as well as from the politics of perception. Only six years earlier, Kristi Yamaguchi, another Asian American woman, had won the gold medal for figure skating. Perhaps that was all there was room for. This possibility was illustrated by a headline that appeared on MSNBC the next day: "American Beats Out Kwan." The implication, even if accidental, was that Kwan was somehow less "American" than Lipinski. Despite the fact that the Olympic judges were an international panel, the possibility lingers that, because of her ethnic background, her personality did not resonate with the judges as much as that of her counterparts. She may have been seen as more of an over-achieving prodigy than as a human being.
The confluence of events in Nagano placed Kwan in a difficult situation. There is tremendous cultural significance for a Chinese American (whose parents were immigrants from Hong Kong) in competing in Japan, a mere two Olympic cycles after a Japanese American (whose family had been established in the U.S. for several generations) won Olympic gold in the same sport. It wasn't talked about much then or now, but this competitive cultural dynamic only added to Kwan's burden of being both a representative of the U.S., and having the hopes of the Chinese American community weighing on her. Being a "first," like Surya Bonaly or Rudy Galindo is both an honor and a burden. Sometimes that burden can be too heavy, as was the case for Debi Thomas in 1988, the first African American woman to represent the U.S. in figure skating. When Thomas won the bronze, she seemed utterly uncomfortable as a representative of the African American community, immediately disappearing from the spotlight.
Interviewed on national television after the Nagano competition, Kwan heartbreakingly said "I'm sorry" to her friends and family back home. In that moment, she became an emblem for everyone who travails to make their parents proud, who prioritizes "success" above other personal goals, and who competes, even if it isn't in the fierce, zero-sum arena of athletic competition. Asian American culture in particular places a premium on establishing, maintaining, and saving face. Family and community members are attuned to how the outward accomplishment of one reflects upon the group as a whole. In this context, it is no wonder that Michelle Kwan, at 24, past her prime and financially secure after a lucrative endorsement career, still battled injury for one last try at becoming an Olympic champion.
Indeed, with the exception of Tiger Woods (whose ethnicity is subject to frequent debate), Michelle Kwan has been the most prominent Asian American athlete of the past few decades. Unlike Woods, who seems to thrive on an insider/outsider construct to fuel himself to victory, Kwan is not an aggressor. She plays for the love of the game. In the high stakes Olympics, charged with nationalism, favoritism, and egoism, she has twice wound up a few tenths of a point shy. Regardless, her success, absent the Olympic gold, is unmatched in her sport, both in terms of championships and financial success. There hasn't been as prominent a face in competitive U.S. figure skating other than Kwan since Scott Hamilton. And so Michelle Kwan has essentially carried the sport in this country across a decade.
Still, even without the injury, the odds would have been against her this time. Like rival Irina Slutskaya, Kwan has defied the odds by even appearing in more than one Olympics. In figure skating, the women's side has higher stakes than the men's side of the sport. Part of this is because the sport is built around the anti-feminist construct of delicateness that skaters must use to mask what would otherwise be sweaty exertion. In this context, the advantage surely goes to the "girls" and not the "grown" women. In the end, figure skating always comes down to a young woman, alone, on the ice, under a spotlight, barely dressed and moving to music as millions watch. The gossamer bearing that usually wins the gold is much easier for a teenager to convey than someone in their mid-twenties. We'll never know what would have happened if Kwan had competed in 1994, when she was younger and unburdened, and the similarly young and unfettered Baiul beat the older, harried Kerrigan.
A few weeks ago, ESPN's Michael Wilbon affirmed "I'm rooting for Michelle Kwan, who's got nothing but dignity. She's served her country -- I hope she wins." To me it isn't important that Michelle Kwan won't skate in the 2006 Olympics. If she can't win Olympic gold, I'd just as soon see her do exactly what she did this week: bow out serenely, rather than come tantalizingly close, but just short, in battling girls ten years her junior. Regardless of how these Olympics turn out for her, to me Michelle Kwan is the greatest American figure skating champion. I hope she leaves Torino, not with the sadness that she displays on the ice, but with the smile of a woman and a warrior who has given everything she has to her sport, content that silver, bronze, a noble third try, the adoration of her country, and the rest of her life ahead are more than enough.
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