Hey Guys, Try Another Racket

It is now a rite of January: Athletes of both genders are brought together for a major athletic competition in which the women overshadow the men in everything from charisma to Q ratings to number of Web site hits, although the men have taken the lead when it comes to outlandish costuming.

But we’ll have more about the Australian Open in next week’s editions.

You may have read how Pete Sampras dumped his agent, then rehired him, all within a matter of hours. Happens with figure skaters and their coaches all the time.

Andre Agassi dropped off the face of the tennis map for a couple years, then climbed 140 places in the world rankings to reclaim No. 1 weeks before his 30th birthday. Thursday night at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships at Staples Center, 30-year-old Todd Eldredge, who took two years off from world-class competition, returned to the winners’ podium with his sixth national championship, earning him a trip to his third Olympic Games.

Tennis and figure skating have more in common than either would like to admit. Tennis might find the concept of a kiss-and-cry area a bit strange, but have you ever sat in on a post-match interview session with Jeff Tarango? No male tennis player would be caught dead in a sequined pirate outfit at Center Court, but the so-called future of the American men’s tennis, Andy Roddick, routinely turns out in black socks, white shorts and a white baseball cap worn backward.

They’re mirror images at this stage, all the way down to the backseat they now share whenever the women are on the same marquee.

It didn’t used to be that way with tennis, but take a look at the defending French, Wimbledon and U.S. Open champions. On the women’s side, it’s Jennifer Capriati and Venus Williams. For the men, it’s Gustavo Kuerten, Goran Ivanisevic and Lleyton Hewitt. If you’re publishing a national sports magazine, which faces are going to grace your cover?

Figure skating has been this way for decades, and Thursday was just the latest chapter in a large volume.

In the women’s short program in the early afternoon, the top seven finishers skated cleanly, and Michelle Kwan discovered she doesn’t have enough shoulders over which to view all the legitimate challengers to her crown. Sasha Cohen here, Sarah Hughes there, Angela Nikodinov making a strong case for a four-women U.S. Olympic team. That’s one more than what’s permitted, setting up Saturday’s women’s free skate as a suspenseful, painful cut-down day.

The men? Eldredge won because he skated conservatively and managed to stay on his feet. The oldest man in the field, and he’s the only one in the final group who didn’t take a seat.

Last year’s national champion Timothy Goebel? Tried a quad, had a fall.

Two-time national titlist Michael Weiss? Tried another quad, had another fall.

Matt Savoie, Johnny Weir, Derrick Delmore? Fall, fall, fall.

They should have billed this one: Old Man Todd and the Legends of the Fall.

Afterward, once the many ice shavings had been swept off the many costumes, 2002 Olympians Eldredge, Goebel and Weiss gathered in the interview room.

Second question: “Todd, excuse me for raining on your parade at this moment. Is there anything that happened here these two days that should make the Russians even the slightest bit fearful of one of you challenging them for a gold medal?”

Tough crowd. But then, when you spend a half hour watching the best and brightest of American men’s figure skating resurface the ice with their backsides, it puts you in a kind of mood.

Eldredge paused to let the question soak in. He laughed and answered, no, not off this performance--although the potential, he added, was there.

Goebel conceded that none of the three qualifiers had “skated our best,” but promised to go back to the practice rink and work hard for the next month.

Someone else asked the group if they were “frustrated” by being overshadowed by the women who had preceded them onto the ice.

“I think we’ve been overshadowed by the women for years,” said Eldredge, smiling along with the obvious truth.

Weiss then leaned into his microphone and, mimicking a first-grader comparing lunch boxes, quipped, “But our program was on live TV. Where were the ladies?”

The ladies had been tape-delayed for prime time viewing on ABC Saturday, their short program serving as a scene setter for the decisive free skate--and isn’t this where we all came in four years ago, waiting and waiting and waiting for yesterday’s footage from Nagano tomorrow?

On the other hand, live television could be overrated. The U.S. men got their moment in the live spotlight Thursday night, and what did they do with it?

Probably inspired a lot of young American boys with gold medal dreams to throw away their skates and start to think seriously about taking a different track to the Olympics.

Tennis, anyone?