A Class Skater With Class Poise

Grace under pressure is one thing, but grace after you’ve had the gold medal you and the rest of the world assumed was yours suddenly snatched away, through no fault of your own, to ruin what should have been the greatest night of your 17 years on the planet?

Of all the losing locker rooms I have visited in two decades as a sportswriter, listening to grown men rationalize ninth-inning errors and airballs at the buzzer, I have never seen anyone cope with crushing defeat with more poise, dignity and maturity than a teenage girl named Michelle Kwan.

Kwan had just skated well enough to win any Olympic women’s figure skating competition held before this one. Her short program was the best of the field; her long program was clean and elegant, deserving of the nine 5.9 artistic scores it received.

In her mind, and in the minds of billions watching, she had just become the sixth American female to win an Olympic figure skating championship.

But then Tara Lipinski skated out of her mind, the judges changed theirs and Kwan was left--just like that--holding the silver medal instead.

Kwan wept, as well she should have. What had she done wrong, what had she done to lose? Wobble ever so slightly while landing a triple jump? Skate a tad cautiously with the 20-ton block of Olympic pressure weighing on her shoulders?

In the post-mortem interview session, Kwan listened politely as Lipinski giggled and gushed about being the gold medalist--how it felt great.

Eventually, reality started to dig in and uncontrollable tears began streaming down Kwan’s cheeks. She wiped them away with the back of her hand, swallowed hard and bravely answered questions about her own staggering disappointment.

She didn’t criticize the judging, as several writers had done among themselves.

She didn’t dodge a question with a weepy “no comment” or hand off to her coach, Frank Carroll.

Kwan acknowledged she didn’t skate as “loose” as she should have; that she wasn’t as good as her U.S. championship performance last month in Philadelphia; that she thought she trained hard enough to win and skated well enough to win but realized that “working hard is no guarantee that you’re going to win a gold medal.”

She said the silver medal “might not be the color medal that I wanted, but I’ll take it. . . . C’est la vie, right? That’s life.”

When Lipinski was asked how she felt about Kwan, Lipinski blurted something about “Michelle skating great tonight” but was at a stammering loss to come up with anything of real depth or empathy.

Turning quickly to face her rival, Kwan salvaged the awkward moment for Lipinski.

“I like you, Tara!” Kwan said, and a roomful of reporters broke out in relieved laughter.

Kwan may have rung up the 6.0s like a grocery market cashier with her brilliant skating in Philadelphia. But she never had a finer hour than the one immediately after the loss of her Olympic gold medal. Nor have most of us.