Galindo Is Not Simply Skating Through Life

He briefly changed the spelling of his first name from Rudy to Rudi so that it would match that of his figure skating pairs partner, Kristi Yamaguchi, and said that he would “check into a mental institution” if she ever left him. His costumes are often described as effeminate. His closet is filled with velvet and sequins. That’s the same closet he came out of four years ago, when he disclosed his homosexuality.

Rudy Galindo is one of the toughest men I’ve ever met.

I don’t mean tough in the traditional sense you read about in the sports pages, the toughness of a Jack Youngblood playing an NFL game with a broken leg, or Pete Rose colliding with Ray Fosse at home plate during an all-star game, or Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns exchanging punches in the middle of the ring.

I mean tough like this:

In a sport requiring enormous amounts of money, Galindo, a truck driver’s son, grew up with little. Through the kindness of anonymous donors and his sister, he could afford lessons. But, even in his 20s, he was living with his schizophrenic mother in a San Jose mobile home park and riding a bicycle to practices. He lost his partner, Yamaguchi, when she decided to compete alone and had to start over himself as a singles skater. Then he realized how insignificant that loss was when his father died of a heart attack and two of his coaches died of AIDS-related illnesses. When his brother was dying from that dreaded disease, Galindo nursed him to the horrible end.

Yet, he has taken all of the punches that life has thrown at him and remained on his feet. On ice, no less.

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Galindo, 30, learned March 1 that he is HIV-positive.

The diagnosis was more shocking to him than surprising. He began wheezing during a warmup for an ice show Jan. 31 in Wichita, Kan., then was forced to abandon his program when he ran out of breath only 40 seconds into it. He canceled the rest of his appearances on the tour, entered the Goodwill Games in mid-February and withdrew after one phase of the competition when he again had difficulty breathing. He checked into the hospital near his home in Reno, Nev., where doctors told him that he had pneumonia. He hoped that was all it was but suspected the worst.

When further tests revealed that he had AIDS, he “cried and cried and cried,” he said in an interview last week.

One of the first things he did after that was decide that he would fulfill his commitment this spring to the seven-week, 34-city John Hancock Champions on Ice tour. Doctors told him to go ahead. Afraid that his body might tell him otherwise, he tested himself while still in the hospital, practicing the steps in his program in his room at night. So far, so good. He, Michelle Kwan, Oksana Baiul, Dorothy Hamill and others will appear today at the Arrowhead Pond.

One of the next things Galindo did was disclose that he had the illness in an April 4 interview with USA Today’s Christine Brennan. Galindo outed himself in her 1996 book, “Inside Edge,” although he never really was in.

“I’m not a person to hide anything,” he said. “I was always out of the closet as far as my friends and I were concerned. But when the book came out, it reached a lot more people. I got a really positive reaction because it let people know they could be confident about who they are. I’m hoping now I can have the same positive impact talking about this.”

His first message is that people should avoid the mistakes he made.

He believes he contracted the disease during a rebellious period in the early ‘90s, after Yamaguchi left to train for her solo career, when he tried to fill the void with drugs, alcohol and sex. By that time, the man who coached him and Yamaguchi to the national pairs championship in 1989, Jim Hulick of West Covina, had died of cancer believed to be related to the AIDS virus and Galindo said he should have known better.

“You have to be safe out there,” he said.

His other message is that AIDS is not a death sentence. It might have been when it took his two coaches, Hulick in ’89 and Richard Inglesi in ‘95, and his brother, George in ’94. He shudders when he recalls his brother’s dementia and incontinence, the way he literally wasted away.

“Thankfully,” he said, “this is a new era.”

Galindo takes four pills a day as part of a relatively new treatment, antiretroviral therapy, that makes him feel a little lightheaded. He said it sometimes feels as if he’s trying to skate after taking a sleeping pill. Otherwise, he said he feels fine and that doctors tell him he should have a healthy, productive life as long as he takes care of himself.

“I haven’t spoken to Magic Johnson,” Galindo said. “But I hope that I can give the inspiration to others that he has given to me.”

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Outside the San Jose Arena, a monument was erected to honor local skaters, champions such as Peggy Fleming, Brian Boitano, Debi Thomas, Yamaguchi and Galindo.

Galindo created controversy by requesting that the caption under his portrait read, “It’s hard enough being a Mexican-American skater when the judges wanted an All-American boy.”

Left unsaid until Brennan’s book was that he also believed judges discriminated against him because he was openly gay. Certainly, there have been other gay skaters who have succeeded in the sport, but that is not an image that officials want to promote to fans or sponsors.

After his eighth-place finish in the 1995 U.S. championships, Galindo was so discouraged that he retired for eight months, returning only when he learned that the ’96 nationals would be in his hometown of San Jose.

No one expected the judges to reward him there, either. That had nothing to do with his heritage or his sexuality but with his inconsistency on the ice.

He proved everyone wrong, scoring two perfect scores of 6.0 in the long program and recording perhaps the most stunning upset in the history of the U.S. figure skating championships.

The 10,869 spectators inside the San Jose Arena gave him a 2 1/2-minute standing ovation. Officials and competitors were in tears.

“Thank you, Dad,” Rudy shouted to the heavens. “Thank you, George, Jim, Rick.”

Even before that day, he had requested that the caption under his portrait on the monument outside be changed. The new one read, “I guess I’m a survivor. I don’t know where it comes from.”

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Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: randy.harvey@latimes.com.

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GYMNASTICS AS GARNISH

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