Just Call Her the Golden Girl Next Door

A baseball person would call her a pepper pot. Or a little scrapper. Girls like her often get branded for life as “perky,” remembered even in womanhood not so much for being queen of the prom but as the one who was just as happy putting up the decorations.

Bonnie Blair, our girl of winter, our Greatest American Woman Winter Olympian Ever, has that quality. You could picture her blowing up the balloons, filling the punch bowl, handing out the name tags, telling everybody how super their formals looked. Then bounding onto the stage to emcee the coronation and thank the band. Her date wouldn’t get to dance with her all night.

She has one of those personalities that inspire Madison Avenue types to name a new shampoo--bright ‘n’ bouncy, short ‘n’ sassy. It’s her. It suits her, as snugly as the Lycra membrane she wears when she skates.

So does the voice, the one that keeps a 27-year-old woman sounding as though she is still 17, the same voice she undoubtedly will have at 37, when she is plotting a comeback, and probably continue to have at 87, when she is dragging the grandkids up into the attic to brush the cobwebs off the trunk with all the Olympic medals inside.

The name’s a keeper, too. She definitely is a Bonnie, and always will be. Certain names would never do, in her case. No way you could see her as a Monique, as an Elizabeth, as an Anne. She’s a Holly, a Debbie, an Annie. This is no Patty who eventually will evolve into Patricia. She’s regular old Bonnie. She wins the big game single-handedly, then raises more money for the team chairing the bake sale.

Real or imagined, you could see that side of Bonnie Blair here Friday. Not when she won another Olympic gold medal, giving her more cold golds (three) than any other of our winter women has won. Not during her 1,000-meter speedskating spin, but afterward.

She was the one out on the oval, cheerleading for Moira D’Andrea and Peggy Clasen when their turns came, remaining visible and audible, cupping a hand to her mouth and hollering “Let’s go, Moira!” even though the only chance either of her American sisters had of winning an Olympic medal was if 20 or 25 other women withdrew.

She was still busy being Bonnie.

Still perking away.

Uncomplicated. Not insulated by an entourage. Not lost in deep thought. Not overburdened by the significance of it all. Just good old, good-natured, gum-snapping, girl-next-door Bonnie Blair, pride of Champaign (Ill.) Centennial High, class of ‘82, sponsored by the local cops, the kind of kid who grew up with a state university in her back yard and 10 years later still talks about getting over there for an education one of these days.

It’s not a tomboy thing, because such characterizations are insulting and passe, but you hang around Bonnie Blair and you wonder if there’s more than one dress hanging inside her closet. Sneakers and T-shirts, Spandex and ice skates, that’s what’s in there. Big floppy socks. Scuba flippers, maybe. Sixteen racquetball cans and a softball bat.

Everything is “really” this and “really” that. She sits after a race alongside a Chinese opponent of 28 named Ye Qiaobo and a mature adversary from Berlin named Monique Garbrecht and alludes to them as “these guys here.” And they both really gave her a run for her money, they really, really did.

Hey, that’s what makes her Bonnie. What her four Olympic medals have done is given her the inspiration to go for more Olympic medals. After that, she thinks that she would enjoy teaching younger skaters how to go after Olympic medals. Or maybe buy a new bicycle and take a whack at winning some Summer Olympic medals.

Keep busy being Bonnie.

A name that will go down in Olympic ore.

When she won a couple of medals at Calgary in 1988, hey, that was really neat. It got her some really cool stuff. The White Sox invited her to toss out a ceremonial first ball at the new Comiskey Park. A cookbook publisher asked for her favorite recipe. A local company recruited the Champaign lady to advertise their bottled water.

And what about now, two more medals later, four altogether, hanging from her neck like charms from a bracelet, bedecking her statistically as one of the golden girls of all time?

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t really aware of my stats,” Bonnie said, “but it’s really a nice honor to have!”

And you knew, somehow you just knew, that what Bonnie Blair couldn’t wait to do was hurry back home so she could tell everybody about France and stuff and maybe ask everybody what was new with them.