Michelle Kwan Makes Olympic Team

Michelle Kwan is a brilliant talent as a figure skater. At 25, though, this could be her last shot at the one championship that has eluded her throughout her career – the Winter Olympics. Had it not been for overt favoritism and a US Figure Skating Association dedicated to fixing the qualifying process, she would be watching the Turin Games from her home due to injuries earlier this year.

Mr. Kwan had a hip problem earlier this season and has been recovering from a groin injury. Her physical condition prevented her from skating at the US nationals in January. Those who skated at the nationals included Sasha Cohen, Kimmie Meissner and Emily Hughes (16-year-old sister of Olympian Sarah Hughes), who finished that competition first, second and third. Each nation at the Olympics is entitled to three spots. In a meritocracy, where one’s performance on the day matters, that should have been the team. Ms. Kwan, who didn’t compete, shouldn’t go to Italy.

Skating, however, is not a meritocracy – it is a popularity contest and an admiration society. So, she got a conditional spot on the US Olympic Team; she had to prove that her recovery had been complete. She did so by skating a long and short program before a five-member panel, who unanimously decided she should get a spot. Hughes is now the alternate – meaning if Ms. Kwan really can’t perform on the night, Ms. Hughes will.

The skating mafia defended the move by saying that it was honor and duty bound to put the best US skaters on the ice in Turin (and please, not Torino unless the nation is Italia. Can the US media get more pretentious?). “It is the opinion of this monitoring team that Michelle could win the Olympics,” Bob Horen, chairman of the USFSA international committee. told the press. “She is definitely qualified to win a medal, and we really believe it. She skated that way.” Not at nationals, she didn’t. And her fourth place finish at the World Championships last year, which used the new scoring system that focuses on technical factors rather than charm, doesn’t give much hope of a medal.

Now, if Ms. Kwan were to win Olympic gold and somehow defeat the odds-on favorite Irina Slutskaya of Russia, this journal would be delighted for her. But how many other skaters didn’t get their shot because of a bruised hip or a twisted ankle? Some say that there is some justice in this because a much younger Michelle Kwan was bumped from the 1994 US team to make room for Nancy Kerrigan (silver medalist) after Ms. Kerrigan was beaten up at rival Tonya Harding’s behest. Apparently, the skating mafia believes that if it did the wrong thing before, it should do the wrong thing again to make up for it.


© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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