When I was young man, I put women’s figure skating on par with watching the Lawrence Welk orchestra playing a polka or replacing a dead battery in my car.
As a boy, I watched figure skating just long enough to see someone fall after turning a double axel into a two-day-old jelly roll, and that would satisfy me. Last night, the skating at the Olympics was filled with enough tension to keep me fixed on the sofa.
Really, we all witnessed a
full-on tragedy. Kamila Valieva, the
fifteen-year-old Russian phenomenon (presently entangled in a doping scandal),
crashed out of her long program. She was
expected to win gold, and was obviously crushed by the weight of the world put
upon her.
Kamila Valieva is not an
adult. She is a child—a child
manipulated, and now (in my estimation) abused by adult coaches.
This morning, I find myself
wishing I had changed the battery in my car last night.
—Mitchell Hegman
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