Hamilton Fighting Time, Injuries

Scott Hamilton sinks into the cushy sofa in his dressing room. It’s a welcome chance to rest a body that no longer bounces back as it once did.

Before the day ends, figure skating’s most popular performer will have taped the “Donny & Marie” talk show and hustled down to San Diego to practice and perform in that night’s stop on the Target Stars on Ice tour.

“It’s more challenging every year,” he said. “Physically, it’s getting tougher.”

Pain in his right ankle and foot has dogged him since he returned from a successful battle with testicular cancer two years ago. The 41-year-old Hamilton had the ankle surgically repaired in August 1998, but it didn’t help.

“I can’t train like I want to, so triples are really inconsistent and it drives me crazy,” he said.

“The energy is there as far as the performance, but technically, when I go into some of these triple jumps I just sort of back in just enough so that they may or may not happen.”

And there’s no time to rest. Hamilton skated three consecutive nights when the 63-city tour stopped in Southern California, where he’s renovating a house.

“If the pain’s that bad, I won’t be able to bring to the ice what I have to and I shouldn’t skate anymore, but so far, I’m doing OK,” he said.

“I know what I’m good at, I know what I bring to the ice and I have to respect that and not compare myself with 22-, 25- or 33-year-olds,” he said. “If I try to do the same technically that these guys that perform in the ‘90s are doing, it’s going to be a tough road.”

Hamilton, who co-founded Stars on Ice, shows his comic side in the show’s first half skating with Steven Cousins, Kurt Browning and Ekaterina Gordeeva to a medley of Paul Simon songs.

In the second half, his solo number receives a standing ovation and he flashes a thumbs-up to the crowd that delights in his multiple backflips.

“Each performance is as if it’s his last. He gives that much and the audience knows,” said Sandra Bezic, the show’s producer-director and choreographer.

“Maybe he’s valuing each second more, each standing ovation more and maybe that’s what changed the most because it was almost gone,” said Bezic, who has known Hamilton for 20 years.

Hamilton remains cancer-free two years after having a tumor and his right testicle removed during a seven-month ordeal.

“I really look at it like a blessing, an odd blessing,” he said. “My cancer was treatable and that’s through research.”

Hamilton isn’t able, as he puts it, to “deliver the goods” every performance. After 16 years as a professional skater, some nights he dreads psyching himself up. At the Oakland show, he struggled in the first half and then couldn’t put one skate in front of the other for his solo number.

“I was mortified,” he said. “To have a night like that, it was devastating.”

Hamilton’s life isn’t always as funny or sunny as it appears when he’s on the ice. He admits to carrying a lot of stress, and at one point recently, he thought he was having heart problems.

“I went in and found out that’s not going to be a problem for me,” he said. “Two hundred other things will get me before heart disease. Just watch out for city buses.”

Typical of Hamilton’s hard-charging ways, he slowed down only long enough to conquer cancer. Then it was back to work with a vengeance. Instead of doing his usual 3 1/2-minute routine, Hamilton skated for 6 1/2 minutes in his first post-cancer tour.

“It was like I had this chip on my shoulder, saying it’s not going to knock me down,” he said. “If it came out of ego or if it came out of, ‘I can beat cancer.’ Whatever it came out of, I dipped into some reserves that I really needed and I took four months off after that.”

One of his few concessions to having cancer was to stop competing. He also hasn’t skated the last three summers, hoping the rest would benefit the foot that he lands on.

“If it comes around this year, I’ll definitely tour next year, but I’m not going to make that decision until probably April,” he said.

Other than his cancer, Hamilton is reluctant to divulge much about his life off the ice. His constant traveling was a factor in the end of a 10-year relationship with a girlfriend.

“If I’m having problems or if I’m struggling or something, I don’t want to share the struggle. I want to share the rainbow,” he said. “If I expose all the things in life that are challenging and tough and horrible, then what’s that for?”

Fame hit Hamilton quickly after he won Olympic gold in 1984, and he donned hats and sunglasses hoping people wouldn’t notice him. Cancer changed his mind about being shy.

“Now I kind of understand, lose the hat, open your arms and what you receive and what you can share are really special moments,” he said. “I’ve been through a lot the last few years. I think I’ve got better times coming.”