Ice dreams

Feb. 18, 2010

Dear Leslie,

For a kid in Southeast Missouri in the middle of the 20th century, watching the Winter Olympics on TV was an opportunity to see what Austrians named Franz did for fun in the winter.

Franz liked skiing down a hill to see how far he could fly off a ramp and land without falling down.

Franz liked skiing long distances through the woods, intermittently stopping for target practice with his rifle.

Franz liked sliding a polished stone down the ice toward a target while teammates swept its path with brooms.

Hmm.

Cape Girardeau didn't have an ice skating rink. Even rarer than snow in Southeast Missouri was the occasion when many consecutive days of subfreezing temperatures hardened the surface of the Capaha Park lagoon sufficiently that the city allowed skating. Few people had skates. Most slid around in their shoes.

Then a pretty girl named Carol Heiss won the women's figure skating gold medal in a snow-shrouded Californian place called Squaw Valley. Suddenly the Winter Olympics didn't seem so foreign anymore. It had a certain romance.

Skating is romantic. The partner dance at the local roller skating rink was the first time I ever held a girl. I spot her sometimes in town and smile because she couldn't have known how thrilled I was. That was a rite of passage. I hope it still is.

Most anyone can roller skate, but skating on ice is a miracle requiring strong ankles and the gift of balance. Many American children who have both grew up idolizing Olympic skaters and dreamed of becoming another Brian Boitano or Kristi Yamaguchi.

The Englishman John Curry won the Olympic gold medal in 1976 and might have been the most graceful figure skater in history. He was a ballet dancer on blades. That same year Dorothy Hamill won the women's gold. Men fell in love with her. Women copied her haircut.

Ski runs are exciting, and snowboarding has brought a new level of creativity and daredeviltry to the games. But for drama, nothing at the Winter Olympics compares to figure skating. In pairs and as singles, these athletes are artists on ice, warriors, too, in those few minutes of performing, facing the existential terror of being examined by judges and the world for flaws.

Some of the pairs are love stories. For some, love got lost but they found a way to keep skating together. In this Olympics, a married Chinese couple won the country's first gold medal ever in the pairs. The finals of the men's competition are tonight. The ice dancers follow them into the rink, and the women figure skaters will provide the Olympics with their traditional climax.

The sport has become much more athletic since the days of Heiss and Curry. Skaters routinely spin four times in the air before landing, a feat those Olympians surely never imagined possible. But the romance and heroism and heartbreak remain as theatrically costumed figures twirl and leap on a white canvas as stirring movie themes play and millions hold their breath to see whose dream comes true.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a former reporter for the Southeast Missourian.