As someone who grew up religiously watching women's figure skating in the sport's late-1980s/early-1990s heyday -- someone who could spell "Yamaguchi" by kindergarten -- it's both fascinating and sad for me to read this column from Mark Starr about the decline of the sport in the U.S. As he puts it, "This year's contingent at the worlds is U.S. Figure Skating's weakest since the early '60s, when it was recovering from the plane crash that killed its team en route to the 1961 worlds." Yikes. See also: Amy Shipley's Washington Post story on the same topic, from earlier this week, in which Michelle Kwan humorously both compares and distances herself from the "You're like Dara Torres!" refrain while facing speculation that she'll return to skate in Vancouver.
All of this inner-sport turmoil, of course, has had a devastating effect on its ratings. While some of those same competitions that I watched as a kid -- the 1994 women's short program in Lillehammer, for example, which leveraged a young Oksana Baiul onto the gold podium -- are among the highest-rated television programs in history. Not so much anymore. Read this piece from last winter about the "free-fall" in ratings that the sport has experienced since 2002.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
