Figure Skating Is A Cut Above the Frills

TURIN, Italy -- It's time for our quadrennial Olympic debate: Can anything involving so much costume jewelry really be called an athletic pursuit? Let's get straight to the answer. Figure skating is definitely a sport. It requires more practice than golf. It's more strenuous than tennis. How many athletes have to do a quadruple jump and land on one butcher knife?

One half of America is tuning in to watch the figure skating at the Winter Games with dedicated enthusiasm, and the other half is jeering at it with shock-jock humor. At this very moment, some of my favorite colleagues are flying into their usual uproar over the judging, the crying, the feathers. I can hear Mike Wilbon, all the way from his television studio. "Dinner mints," he scoffs at figure skaters. Someone else, Norman Chad I think, once said, "It's not a sport, it's dinner theatre on ice." Funny lines, but not true.

The blade of a figure skate is a quarter inch of steel, with sharpened edges.

There. That's a quarter inch. Now let's see LeBron James land on it.

On Thursday night, Evgeni Plushenko and Johnny Weir will skate for the gold medal in the men's long program. As you watch them, keep in mind that quarter inch. They will zip along a glaring sheet of ice at 30 mph, jump several feet in the air, spin four times and land in time for a tight turn to avoid the boards. And if they weren't wearing spangly suits made of mauve taffeta, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

The skate is the toughest competitive shoe in sports. You can't find a more precarious piece of equipment, or a more precarious playing surface. The combination is deadly, and that's what makes it fascinating, and why people watch it by the millions, including yours truly, not because we have some fascination with bad music and campy outfits.

Furthermore, skaters push athletic boundaries in their sport as hard as athletes in any Olympic endeavor. Think for a moment about how the sport has progressed, how the jumping bar has been raised just in the past decade. It seems like only yesterday that the throw triple axel in pairs ranked right up there in danger with the balance beam in gymnastics. The throw triple axel was going to give somebody brain damage. "Oh, my God," we'd scream. "Here comes the throw triple axel." Now they're going after quads.

There is another possible answer to this question, one that will drive Wilbon crazy: Maybe figure skating is part art. If the most powerful moments in skating are the blends of skill, strength and beauty in interpreting a piece of music, then at it's best, perhaps it's not sport but ballet.

The trouble with this explanation is that it doesn't take into account that quarter inch. The skate. Or the consequences of falling.

As my friend Christine Brennan says, no other sport has a more non-negotiable moment of decision. A water shot in the final round at Augusta is nothing compared with what a figure skater faces when he or she attempts a triple axel in the Olympics. There's no next tee. No third strike. No fourth down. You either land cleanly on that quarter inch, or you lose it all -- and you don't get to try again for four more years.

There is only one reason why we keep having this discussion, because the sport has been badly corrupted over the decades by a cabal of rich drama queens. The campy Liberace outfits, the canned music, the crooked judging. These things make skating an anachronism. But you know what? I like anachronisms. I even wish we had more of them. And even the beads and feathers have a purpose in skating: They are there to make it look easy. The whole point is to deceive, to make it look artful, to disguise the effort.

Those of you who don't think it's a sport should visit the rink during a practice session and check out how much tape, Icy Hot and ibuprofen is involved. See the crunches and the hours on the elliptical trainers.

Finally, let's do a little thought experiment: Suppose there was a rule that figure skaters had to wear nondescript national team uniforms, just as gymnasts do (instead of their little costumes) and had to skate a timed program without music, in which certain jumps, spins and other displays of controlled agility had to be included.

Suppose that, instead of some crackling rendition of "Bolero," what you heard were the sounds of their takeoffs and landings, that quarter inch impacting and carving through the ice, punctuated by incredible physical exertion.

Strip skating of the camp, and what's left is the strength, the speed and the daring. Everyone would instantly recognize it for what it is. A sport.