One reason I loved the Mountain Goats\u2019 new album Beat the Champ<\/em> so much is that it speaks about a kid projecting his own emotional turmoil onto the storytelling sport of pro wrestling, in a way which deeply resonated with my experience projecting my own emotional turmoil onto the storytelling sport of figure skating. If I made my own sports concept album it would be Toller Cranston Skates for Mexico<\/em>, and it would be about, mostly, the Lillehammer Olympics, which allowed skaters who had left competition and turned pro to reinstate to amateur status: to come back. I can\u2019t make concept albums so this is what you get instead. I don\u2019t promise that it will be \u201cgood\u201d or make what the philosophers call \u201csense\u201d but I mean, who only does what they do well? Not me, that\u2019s who.<\/p>\n In the liner notes for BTC<\/em> John Darnielle talks about discovering pro wrestling at a time when his family life was falling apart under the pressure of his stepfather\u2019s violence. He\u2019s pretty clear about what he needed from these ringbound narratives of masked heroes and villains.<\/p>\n I fell in love with figure skating in 2010, a few months after the Vancouver Olympics. I quit drinking in January 2012, so about a year and a half later. It\u2019s hard to say what kind of mental and emotional state I was in when I first got into skating. My memories of 2010 are not great, by which I mean both that I don\u2019t remember much and that the whole year is wrapped in this miasma of self-deceit and shame. I don\u2019t know that I can easily describe what skating did for me. I fell in love with this video<\/a> first: the lovelorn, adolescent swoon, a Dear John letter to the judges. Eventually I found my way to the skater who would become my favorite, my \u201cwatch literally everything on YouTube, including medal ceremonies and interview clips\u201d obsession.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not hard to watch every video of Christopher Bowman on YouTube. (I mean, it\u2019s not hard if you\u2019re underemployed, steadily shedding friends, and gripped by obsession.) His senior competitive career was relatively short, 1984 \u2013 1992, and I haven\u2019t found a full video of anything before \u201986. He placed sixth at the Calgary Olympics in 1988\u2013where the men\u2019s event was about as good as I\u2019ve ever seen, with stellar performances from Brian Boitano, Brian Orser, and Viktor Petrenko as well as Bowman\u2013and fourth at Albertville in \u201992 against a significantly weaker field. He at one point said he\u2019d reinstate for Lillehammer and in fact submitted the paperwork to do so, but when the time came he didn\u2019t compete, I think to few people\u2019s surprise.<\/p>\n I had heard pretty early about his drug problems, maybe even before I saw any of his programs, and I don\u2019t deny that there was some major prurient solidarity<\/a> going on. I hope it\u2019s obvious that this post is not my attempt to do actual psychoanalysis or spiritual insight via YouTube but rather me telling stories, sometimes fairly crass ones, about a performer\u2019s public persona. Also, I\u2019ll give you some links if you want to keep track of what\u2019s where (\u201cWho could tell anymore where was what? Liars controlled the locks<\/a>\u201c), but one of the things I find most endearing about Bowman is that his skating persona just did not ever change, so don\u2019t expect a coherent timeline.<\/p>\n And anyway on YouTube you can rewatch videos endlessly. You can revisit that ecstasy, losing yourself in the music and the dance. An endless replay which forestalls any need for regret or for redemption. Time stands still.<\/p>\n \u201cAnother Very Gritty Display\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n 1987, your senior Worlds debut<\/a>. Lifts his chin to face the camera and the clip cuts in just as the commentators ask if he looks\u2014<\/p>\n \u201cScared?\u201d<\/p>\n But the music starts and it\u2019s easy to get inside it. Those soft landings, the arms coming up in curves and the leg stretched out (you can point your toe if you have to), setting the tone for your career. Always looking up, not horizontal. The thing I love about this guy is that he can\u2019t help but look upward. Flirtation and appeal are basically submissive stances. Entreaty, pleading, sometimes ruefulness and regret\u2013that one weird exhibition where he kept covering his face. Which he started by getting down on his knees, head down and hands clasped behind his back, and somebody in the crowd gave the wolf whistle he was waiting for. \u201cHe\u2019s a very giving skater,\u201d I think Dick Button once said, and that\u2019s one word for it: yielding, yearning. Needy, but what he needs is to be pleasing. (What he needs is the camera, is what everybody says.)<\/p>\n Fling up a gallant hand: the courtier scamp, the elegant scapegrace\u2014the ham. Maybe already beyond all natural help.<\/p>\n Swoon<\/a> your way at high speed down the whole length of the rink. Lines<\/a> as elegant as brushstrokes. The long reach back for the Lutz as time stands still. Find the cameras, make sure they get a kiss and a quick wink. There\u2019s a flowing grace even in those kitschy<\/a> short programs. He can\u2019t do it differently: Even the Swan Lake<\/em> villain<\/a> becomes a longing romantic hero, tragically heterosexual, a beautiful loser.<\/p>\n Here<\/a> you see he\u2019s two separate people hinged by catastrophic gift of self. That poignant glide, that pelvic thrust: same person, held together with a certain need to give oneself away<\/a>. To the cameras, meaning, to whoever.<\/p>\n Reputation Judging<\/b><\/p>\n Every year seems to be a comeback year for<\/a> this guy. Even his NBC fluff pieces go from merely ridiculous to sort of darkly, increasingly dubious: \u201cwhat he claimed was a mugging.\u201d \u201cWithdrew with what he called \u2018back spasms.'\u201d Everybody gives a lot of flat denials of the things they\u2019d later admit were clearly true. I have personally drug-tested this man and coincidentally I do not plan on revealing the results, but we have every confidence.<\/p>\n Pull your program apart at Worlds<\/a>. Skate through the last thirty seconds just gutting out jumps; they\u2019d written you out of the medals but you took bronze. Talk to the skies, get down on your knees and cross yourself. (\u201cI was an altar boy,\u201d as all the bad boys<\/a> say.) Do an interview in the kiss-and-cry that\u2019s like a clinic on how to sound like a subordinate in the face of authority. And a trainwreck<\/a> exhibition, why not? Why would you ever not? That campy, abandoned Ina Bauer, that Boitano impression, a little obscene mime, some giant Russian split jumps, some crawling\u2013why not?<\/p>\n Show up without your coach, \u201coverweight and out of shape\u201d which is words that have other truer words hidden behind them like the extra teeth of a shark, and with this punchy little grin knock out two gutsy<\/a> programs for the gold. Hoot for yourself in the kiss-and-cry and tell the cameras, \u201cSomebody\u2019s looking out for me upstairs!\u201d<\/p>\n You know, credit-card theft and knocking over ATMs are crimes that are hard to romanticize, even when romanticizing crime is practically your day job. But it\u2019s hard to get enough money. Enough for what? (Some crawling, why not?) I think it helped me to know that somebody had been able to touch beauty, create something sublime, and give joy, even when his life was falling apart.<\/p>\n Surely for just two more years you can hold it together. Two years\u2014might as well be never. Wake up every morning saying, \u201cToday I can choose differently.\u201d Maybe there were days when it was true. Eventually accept that you\u2019ll never figure out when you skidded beyond all natural help.<\/span><\/p>\n (I was haunted by the thing Toller Cranston says here<\/a>, that open acknowledgment that nobody can trust you: \u201cWhat can he say, \u2018I\u2019m like a changed person\u2019?\u201d)<\/p>\n Everything you can see is a camera; everything you can see is a judge. Everything you can see is a journalist<\/a>, holding something that would be cleaner if it were a grudge.<\/span><\/p>\n Other people pay for their gifts in blood, sweat and tears. You pay in all of that and shame. The one thing nobody could ever make you do was say that you deserved to win. The last great gallant loser; well, a lot of us have problems guessing where humility stops and self-hatred begins.<\/span><\/p>\n I do pray for the repose of his soul. Pretty frequently. I don\u2019t know that he intended to help me out in the way that he did, but I think he loved his audience in the only ways anybody really can. There\u2019s a helplessness in prayer. In order to pray\u2013as vs. just talking to God like He\u2019s somebody you\u2019re trying to convince\u2013you have to accept that you don\u2019t control what happens and you don\u2019t even know the story. You don\u2019t know who this person is or what you should pray for. A denim jacket thrown over the camera<\/a>: You don\u2019t get to know what you\u2019re doing. Just that it\u2019s the next right thing to do. April 1, 1993<\/b><\/p>\n By the deadline for reinstatement the rumors were flying<\/a>. The Protopopovs will return! U.S. Figure Skating confirmed that Bowman had submitted for reinstatement as an amateur. Boitano, Petrenko; Gordeeva and Grinkov, Torvill and Dean; Katarina Witt, with two Olympic gold medals and the knowledge that she would not be skating for a third. <\/span><\/p>\n And the greatest rumor of them all: Toller Cranston will reinstate to represent Mexico. Toller Cranston, the Canadian expat, bronze at the \u201976 Olympics in Innsbruck, who skates<\/a> like a Calder<\/a> mobile at a disco<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n When they talk about it you can hear them looking back at their careers. Some people with regrets, chagrin; the Protopopovs with a glorious insouciance. But then, the Protopopovs never believed Lillehammer was their one last chance.<\/p>\n Toller Cranston didn\u2019t love figure skating by the end. He was a great individualist in a sport that attracts them: a hermit, a hieroglyph<\/a>, kooky to the point of sublimity<\/a>. Unhappy. I want to talk about my painting<\/em>.<\/p>\n Hear the blades as you\u2019re trying to fall asleep. The memory of those glorious jumps and spins, your crooked limbs<\/a>.<\/p>\n Katarina Witt<\/b><\/p>\n Pampered and spied on. At the boards giving the witch-eye. The steel-veined showgirl<\/a>. I admit I did not respect her for that second gold, for jumping and posing in an appeal to the lowest Carmen denominator<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n All through the Cold War her parents couldn\u2019t come to her competitions. Lillehammer was their first chance to see her on Olympic ice. There was no such thing as an East German defector anymore. She could take her Iron Curtain call and she gave it to them.<\/p>\n
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