Figure Skating and Stories

One of the things about being as into figure skating as I am is that it often makes me feel so out of touch with the rest of the world. For the next week, my entire life will be about the sport--about these Nationals--and if you look at what the world is talking about, you'd barely know that it was even happening.

I'm not talking about the Haitian earthquake, which should be covered and talked about. I'm talking about the other buzz that's going on--Conan/Leno, for example, and other things in the news that I just don't care all that much about. I've never been able to understand why certain things get attention--why people talk about one thing and not another. I've read "The Tipping Point," which tries to explain it, but it doesn't explain it completely, at least not to me. It seems that I care about things that, if you look at NBC News and The New York Times and even Fox News, that most people don't even think about.

Figure skating is one of those things. A few days ago, there was a New York Times piece on Nationals and the state of the sport, in which the writer actually stated that figure skating needed another Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan type of scandal. Sure, figure skating had all kinds of attention and cash back then, but it was hot way before that happened. I think that there are other explanations for its surge in popularity. I'm certain that helped, because there's nothing like a good scandal to get people to pay attention, but the million dollar contracts were already happening.

There has to be another explanation for the slump in the sport's popularity. I'm not sure what it is. As a normal fan, I don't have enough information to make a guess. I suspect, though, that it has to do with PR and promotion. ABC certainly failed to promote the sport like it should have. I also believe that U.S. Figure Skating made a lot of mistakes in promoting figure skating in the last several years.

Sports is all about stories. One of the things that struck me about coming to the Nationals in '07 was that as a spectator in the crowd, I was able to see and hear all these great stories--stories about the skaters, even about the other fans. If you depend upon just the broadcasts, which tends to show the top skaters, you miss that. Sitting through twenty skaters' performances is worth it to me because it allows me to witness a story of a certain long program, something I've never got when I only watched the broadcast.

I think that if figure skating was presented in this way, it would be a lot more popular here in the U.S. In Canada, for example, where figure skating is more popular, that's how it's presented. Perhaps I'm thinking about this because I'm a writer now, and I'm thinking about how I would present what I'm experiencing to a reader, in an interesting and engaging way.

There's plenty interesting and engaging about the sport of figure skating, and it's a shame that the rest of the world is getting exposed to that. I think that lots of people would eat it up, since there's nothing the world needs more than inspiration and hope. There are so many stories with that all around me in Spokane this week.