ST. PAUL - Johnny Weir has worn high heels and a
Maybe that's what it would take to get this country watching figure skating again. After Tonya Harding's hired thug whacked Nancy Kerrigan in 1994, skating-as-soap-opera produced boffo numbers. But in the six years since the Salt Lake judging scandal, the sport has gone into a slow death spiral.
The Champions on Ice tour, which once played to packed houses, is off, at least for the time being. This week's national championships don't have a title sponsor. And after ABC, which was skating's network for decades, opted not to renew its contract this year, the US Figure Skating Association had to cut a profit-sharing deal with NBC, which is paying no rights fees.
The good news is that skating will be back in prime time this weekend, with the dance and women's finals tomorrow night and the men's Sunday. The question is, will anybody be watching? "Can figure skating restart itself as a TV sport without a whack on the knee?" asks NBC producer David Michaels.
There's no shortage of reasons for the slippage. Skategate, which exposed the sport's seamy judging politics, convinced skeptics the results were rigged. The new scoring system, with its anonymous judges and complex math, is confusing. The emphasis on piling up points has created a skating-by-the-numbers mind-set that makes everyone look the same. And where are the stars? Anyone know who the world champions are?
"We had a lot of stars back in the day and things for people to grab onto," says ice dancer Tanith Belbin, who may be America's most popular skater. "Somewhere along the way we've missed that. We don't have the scandals and the celebrities anymore. We need to find a way to draw people back in."
During the glory days of the mid- and late '90s, big names abounded - Michelle Kwan, Tara Lipinski, Irina Slutskaya, Todd Eldredge, Elvis Stojko, Alexei Yagudin, Evgeny Plushenko. Now, they're scarce. The Russian pipeline has run dry and the American women don't stick around.
"Right now, we have babies competing in the ladies' division," says Weir. "They're all so young and it's very impressive what they do, but they don't have the star quality that a Katarina Witt or an Oksana Baiul did."
So young is the post-Michelle generation that three of the top contenders here - Caroline Zhang, Mirai Nagasu, and Rachael Flatt - won't be old enough to go to the world championships if they make the team tomorrow night.
What's missing is the sex appeal that once lured men away from college basketball. "The husbands and teenaged guys," says Weir, "who want to watch a hot girl skate around in a short dress."
Nor is the men's side producing American idols. Weir, the sport's most colorful and controversial character, is much more popular in Russia and Japan than he is here. "A lot of people see me as flamboyant, a little bit like a diva," he acknowledges. "Not everyone can relate to me."
It's telling that the season's biggest skating story was the death of Christopher Bowman, possibly from a drug overdose, in a cheap California motel room. Bowman was maddeningly inconsistent and tragically self-destructive. He was a skating Sybil, alternately "The Beau Man" and "Hans Brinker From Hell."
But Bowman won two US titles and two world medals with his Circus Vargas style and he practically dared you to tune him out. But skating's new scoring system, which demands robotic rigidity, would have stifled him.
"We are so focused on technical everything, we're lacking that flair, that connection with the audience," says Evan Lysacek, who begins defense of his men's crown tonight. "Because of the points, we only do what's rewarded."
Then the scores go up - 115.99 - and the spectators scratch their heads. As corrupt as it was, figure skating was more popular when the top mark was 6.0, when everyone knew who the German judge was, when it was Dueling Carmens and the Battle of the Brians and when Bowman could ad-lib his long program and still make a global podium.
"People still love skating," says Belbin. "It's just a matter of how we're presenting it and how we're packaging it and how we're selling it."
Right now, not enough people are buying it to keep a once-huge show tour going, to keep sponsors from bailing, and to keep networks paying $12 million rights fees. What can the kiss-and-cry crew do to get folks chattering about them again? "Have a fistfight?" Lysacek wonders.
John Powers can be reached at jpowers@globe.com.
