Boitano Wins but His High Scores Draw Boos

Seldom, perhaps never, has anyone been asked to apologize after winning a fourth consecutive national championship, but basically, that was the situation in the wee hours Saturday morning at the national figure skating championships.

Not even stepping onto the ice until 12:36 a.m., MST, Brian Boitano of Sunnyvale, Calif., tired and short of breath due to the mile-high altitude, skated a long program that, by his standards, was off-center and uninspired.

Twice, he had to balance himself with his hand on the ice to prevent falls on triple jumps.

Yet, all nine judges gave him 5.9s, on a scale of 1 to 6, for technical merit, and all but two gave him 5.9s for composition and style. One gave him a 5.7, and the other gave him a 6.0.

A McNichols Arena crowd that was announced as a sellout at 15,869, most of whom were still in their seats when Boitano skated, booed when the 6.0 was flashed on the scoreboard. A majority of the spectators probably are not figure skating experts, but they know perfect, and they hadn’t seen it. So they booed.

Boitano’s first-place in the long program, along with his earlier victories in the compulsory figures and the short program, gave him the overall championship and a berth on the Olympic team, along with second-place Paul Wylie of Denver and Christopher Bowman of Van Nuys.

Boitano deserves all of that. What he did not deserve, many figure skating experts said afterward, were the remarkably high scores for his long program.

Boitano admitted as much at a Saturday afternoon news conference.

“I take pride when I do deserve a 6.0,” Boitano said. “It really isn’t embarrassing when you get something like this. It’s more like it doesn’t mean anything to you.”

That perhaps is the reason there was a noticeable lack of elation, even though Boitano, 24, had won his fourth straight national title, the same number as 1984 Olympic champion Scott Hamilton. Where’s the champagne? someone asked.

“There would never be that,” Leaver said. “We react to how he skates, not the titles that he wins.”

Why were Boitano’s scores so high?

One expert, who asked that he not be identified, said the judges had no choice because they earlier overscored Wylie, who skated an almost clean but not particularly demanding long program, for which he received seven 5.8s for technical merit and eight 5.8s and one 5.9 for composition and style.

The judges, the expert said, wanted to send a message to the Olympic judges in Calgary that Wylie is worthy of their attention and also wanted to give the skater, relatively inexperienced in international competition, a confidence boost.

The expert said that the judges, who had been watching Boitano skate his long program near flawlessly all week in practices, assumed he would be as good in the competition.

Despite his mistakes, Boitano was better than Wylie. The defending champion has the world’s most technically difficult long program, and the triple lutz with his hand in the air that he did cleanly may be an even harder move to master than the quadruple spin, which no one has ever done in competition.

So the judges forced themselves to give Boitano 5.9s.

But the 6.0 not even the expert could explain. Perhaps no one could other than the judge who gave it to him, Sherie Grimson of Santa Ana.

Unfortunately, all the long program perfect score did was devalue the eight he received, and probably deserved, Thursday night for his astounding short program.

“There’s pressure on the judges,” said one judge, Gale Tanger of Wauwatosa, Wis. “They want so badly to see the 6.0. They also want the skaters to leave the country (for the Olympics) in the best possible shape.”

If the skaters, however, can be excused for their subpar performances because of the lateness of the hour, so can the judges. There is no excuse for the local organizers, who scheduled the men’s long program for 9 p.m., late enough, and then were an hour late in starting. That was not fair to the judges, the spectators or, most importantly, the skaters.

Moments before Boitano stepped onto the ice, ABC’s cameras captured him yawning.

“It was awfully late, and we were awfully tired,” Boitano said Saturday afternoon. “I’m pretty good at sorting things out and not making excuses. But I really think my performance had a lot to do with the time. The joke in the dressing room was that we’re all going out to breakfast afterward.”

Said Wylie: “It was like prom night.”