High 5s Not Always Sign of Success

“Come on, Debi,” he said.

He gazed into her eyes.

“Come on. This is your moment,” he said.

He held her hands.

“Let’s make it count,” he said.

He cupped his palms. She slapped them.

She cupped her palms. He slapped them.

Alex McGowan gave Debi Thomas fives.

Then, so did the judges.

High fives.

Just not high enough.

By the time she skated back to the bench, four minutes later--four minutes that felt like forever--neither Thomas nor McGowan, her coach, knew exactly how high or how low the judges’ grades were going to be. It scarcely mattered. Debi knew enough. Debi knew she wasn’t going to see any 6.0s on that Saddledome scoreboard. Debi knew she hadn’t just become the Queen of Hearts. Debi knew she had not made her moment count.

You knew she knew.

You knew she knew, because you saw her skate back toward McGowan, joyless and breathless, and mouth the words: “I’m sorry.”

You knew she knew, because you saw him hug her the way you hug someone in need of consoling, in need of comforting, and not the way you would hug someone who had just conquered the world.

You knew she knew, because the next thing Debi did, after taking a seat, was turn to her coach and say: “Well, back to school.”

Maybe she said it in a defeated manner, but Debra Janine Thomas hardly was left defeated here Saturday night. She goes back to her hometown of San Jose to a heroine’s welcome--a bronze medalist at the Olympics, and the first black to win a medal in the Winter Games. She also goes back to her college campus in Palo Alto to a Princess Charming future--a Stanford medical degree on one horizon, a tour of lucrative skating exhibitions on the other.

If Thomas felt a little bit like a failure at the moment, she shouldn’t have.

Yet, you scarcely could blame her.

She slipped. She tripped. She did a move that she ordinarily could do flawlessly with a strait-jacket on, only to end up steadying herself with fingers on the ice, to keep from falling. She did another move that was supposed to supercharge her confidence, but a bad landing had just the opposite effect.

Get it out of the way early, Robin Cousins had counseled her. Do the back-to-back triple-toes bang , right off the bat. Wow the crowd. Get your blood circulating. Get pumped. Don’t save it, said Cousins, the Englishman who won the 1980 men’s figure skating at Lake Placid. If you do it properly, he told Thomas, you will feel invincible. And even if you do it poorly, he said, you’ll have plenty of time to recover.

Nice advice. Except, Debi Thomas got so accustomed to doing those triple-toes perfectly, she was unsettled Saturday when everything did not go well. She came down simultaneously on both feet, awkwardly, on this, her very first jump of the night. A second later, she was off and headed for her next move, a double flip, but the damage was done--not so much in the judges’ minds, but in her own.

Instead of impressing, she pressed.

Instead of an enchanted evening, it turned into one of the most frightful nights of her life.

All Debi Thomas wanted to do was go out with a wham. Make an impact. Homer in her last at-bat. Sock it to them. Leave ‘em screaming for more. Leave ‘em yelling, “Encore!” So often she talked about doing just that--making the last one count. Med school, a career as an orthopedist, was a reality; that was her destiny, no matter what happened at the Olympics. But, one big night, one absolute killer performance, and she could exchange her sequins for a white smock, without one minute’s remorse.

Didn’t work out that way.

“I tried,” she said. “I just couldn’t do it. It just wasn’t there. I just gave it away.

“What a nightmare. I knew it would be a long wait, and I knew it would be hard. I counted on making that first jump, and it’s hard when you don’t make the first one. I just wasn’t having fun.

“I know I can still do it, but I’m not ashamed. I’m still alive. I’m glad it’s over, so I can get on with my life. I’ll be fine.”

She was sorry for her coach, she said. Sorry for McGowan. It meant more to him than it did even to her.

It had been their moment, as well as her moment.

But it was gone now.

And, it would never be back.

Debra J. Thomas, Doctor to Be, was asked if she might try the Olympics again in four years.

“No way,” she said.

Physician, heal thyself.