Key contributor leaves skating

At a time when figure skating needs all the help it can get to restore flagging popularity, it will be without a man who made the sport a captivating show.

Whether capturing the golden moment that is his most vivid memory, Brian Boitano’s 1988 Olympic triumph, or making the best of competitions tarnished by the dross the sport has produced in the last several years, Doug Wilson managed to convey the beauty, difficulty and passion of skating to TV audiences for nearly half a century.

The Wilson era ended Sunday, when he directed the exhibition telecast from the World Figure Skating Championships for ESPN/ABC. After 50 years of work for ABC, in which he directed or produced 40 sports, Wilson has promised his wife this is the finale, even if NBC were to come calling for help with its coverage of U.S. skating and the 2010 Olympics.

Speaking from Sweden, where he also directed the women’s and dance competitions, Wilson, 72, was quick to credit all the others who helped him, especially the people behind cameras who provided the memorable shots from which he chose.

That includes Boitano’s dramatic head snap at the start of his Olympic free skate and his look skyward at the end, the shot of Michelle Kwan’s head coming up “almost reverentially” as she began the free skate for what would be her first world title in 1996, and, last week, the look of perplexity and delight on Mao Asada’s face after she recovered from a fall in the opening seconds of her free skate to win the world title.

Every time you see a piece of historic footage on a skating telecast – even many not aired by ESPN/ABC – assume Wilson had something to do with it. His was the rarest alchemy, able to balance finding the best image without distorting the truth of the picture.

Wilson first did a U.S. Figure Skating Championship in 1964 and a worlds in 1969. He called the 1988 Calgary Olympics a “real highlight,” remembering how much fun it was to have compelling stories like the “Battle of the Brians” (Boitano vs. Canada’s Brian Orser) and the “Battle of the Carmens” (Katarina Witt of East Germany and Debi Thomas of the United States, both of whom chose excerpts from Bizet’s opera as their free skate music.)

“Brian did what defines a great champion,” Wilson said. “When the pressure was at its peak, he skated his greatest.”

When he talks of those moments, you hear a fan’s enthusiasm, the attitude that has led Wilson to give the sport’s fans the same feeling as they watched.

Wilson covered Kwan more than any other skater, so long was her tenure among the sport’s elite. A few years ago, when he gave his granddaughter an autographed picture of Kwan, Wilson asked the little girl if she knew why Kwan was special.

“Because she was a great champion,” she replied.

“She was,” Wilson said, “but what made her special was how she conducted herself in victory and defeat.”

He would not reveal his favorite skater, saying only “my favorite knows who it is.”

Wilson is far from a Pollyanna about skating. He knows the sport is in decline, and while refusing to blame anyone, he has a few ideas about why it has happened.

One is the current lack of stars, which he thinks is more a cyclical than intrinsic problem. Two is a different kind of cyclical issue, the post-1992 switch of the Winter Games to the mid-year of the Olympic quadrennium.

“It made sense from a business standpoint,” he said, “but some of the magic and the special quality went away when the Olympics were divided. The four-year wait created anticipation for the Games to roll around, and the Winter Olympics, which came first, benefited from that anticipation.”

I told Wilson I feel the sport’s future as a TV property could depend on generating interest for the 2009 worlds in Los Angeles and the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, which will put the sport live in prime time. He was less pessimistic.

“Skating is a star-oriented sport, but today things are so complex,” Wilson said, taking an indirect swipe at the scoring system, which has reduced skaters to mathematicians as they try to calculate which charmless maneuver will earn the most points.

“There will always be an audience to appreciate what these athletes are able to create with their bodies. Skating definitely has a future, because of what it is.”

But ESPN/ABC has no immediate future in the sport, ending 40-odd years of being associated with either U.S. or world events after these world championships. That was as good a time as any for Doug Wilson to call it quits.

He leaves behind thousands of images so brilliant they are timeless.

Philip Hersh covers Olympic sports for The Times and the Chicago Tribune.