‘Black Swan’ Triumphs

When he glided to the so-called “Kiss and Cry” area, where he was too numb to do either after reaching heights where only a few such as Boitano, Hamilton and Wylie had gone before, Rudy Galindo thought about for whom he had done it.

There were two coaches and a brother who died after contracting AIDS, a father who died of a heart attack, a mother with whom he still occasionally lives in an East San Jose mobile home park and a sister and coach who gave up her skating career so she could earn money to finance his.

It was only when Galindo looked at the scoreboard above the ice Saturday in the San Jose Arena and saw the nine judges’ marks, including two perfect 6.0s for presentation, that he remembered that he had also done it for himself.

“It felt like a dream,” he said.

Never has there been a more unlikely U.S. men’s figure skating champion. At 26, he is the oldest since 1926 and was considered at least two years beyond his peak, especially after he began suffering from exercise-induced asthma. After an eighth-place finish last year, he retired for eight months, and if this year’s nationals had not been staged in his hometown, he might not have returned.

Certainly no one within the U.S. Figure Skating Assn., he said Saturday, encouraged him to come back against a field that included three-time champion Todd Eldredge of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., and two-time champion Scott Davis of Colorado Springs, Colo.

But after he vanquished the second-place Eldredge and the fourth-place Davis with an astonishing freestyle performance, the USFSA officials who have seen him struggle for so many years led the 2 1/2-minute standing ovation from the crowd of 10,869.

“I’ve been in the sport for 30 years, and it’s not very often that I get tears in my eyes like I did today,” USFSA President Morry Stillwell said.

Galindo once was considered one of the sport’s golden boys, a world junior champion as an individual in 1987 and a senior national champion in pairs in 1989 and ’90 with Kristi Yamaguchi. But Galindo, who once changed the spelling of his first name to Rudi so that it would match Kristi, pouted for years after she left him in 1991 to concentrate on singles. While she won the Olympic gold medal in 1992, his best finish at nationals was fifth in ’93.

He admitted last week that he has been inconsistent, never putting short and long programs together that were worthy of his ability, but last year he put the blame for his low scores on the judges.

On a monument outside the San Jose Arena dedicated to prominent local skaters such as Peggy Fleming, Brian Boitano, Debi Thomas, Yamaguchi and Galindo, he asked that his portrait’s caption read that he could never be rewarded as a Mexican-American in a sport that preferred the All-American look. He later asked to submit a revision, and, even later, revealed in a book that he is gay and said judges prefer more macho skaters.

Stillwell denied that USFSA judges were biased against Galindo for anything other than his skating, and, on Saturday, they proved their president right. They could be forgiven if they were skeptical at first, when Galindo came out looking like a beatnik from a ‘50s San Francisco coffee house. Sporting a goatee, an earring and an all-black costume, except for a white collar, he then skated a jazz version of “Swan Lake.” It was no surprise that he was portraying the bad swan.

The surprise was that he did his 4 1/2-minute program more athletically than Eldredge or Davis. Not only was Galindo the only contender to perform a triple-triple combination, he did it twice. Eldredge lacked energy, and Davis, who has been suffering from vertigo, lacked everything while committing five major mistakes. The judges left him off the podium, awarding third place to unknown Dan Hollander of St. Clair Shores, Mich. He finished seventh last year, one place ahead of Galindo.

Galindo was also far superior to the others artistically, his forte. The two perfect scores he received in that area were the first for a man in the national championships since Paul Wylie in 1990.

Two judges somehow ranked Eldredge first, but the other seven were behind Galindo. “They too couldn’t believe what they were seeing,” said Stillwell of those judges’ reactions to Galindo’s performance.

Galindo thanked the judges and said the hometown crowd inspired him. “Before each jump, I would say, ‘OK, land it, because I want to hear the applause,’ ” he said.

He received a standing ovation after he skated and another when he was announced as the winner. He said he did not consider reappearing for a curtain call because “that would have been overdoing it.”

Now he will have decisions to make. Even before the gold medal was placed around his neck, promoters were approaching him about appearing in their shows and competitions in the weeks before the world championships in March at Edmonton, Canada. After years of just getting by, he can now count on a six-figure income.

“Obviously, I can pay for my training next year,” he said. “I don’t have to stand on the corner with a sign, ‘I’ll work for food.’ ”

He paid his bills in recent years by charging $50 a hour to give lessons to young skaters. His own lessons from his sister, known as The Bank of Laura, were free.

“Not anymore,” she said Saturday with a smile on her face almost as large as the one worn by her brother.