Olympic Potential

When I was twelve, my mom came home from work one day, quite excited. “You know my friend Donna Boitano?” she said. “Well, her son Brian has been figure skating, and his coach thinks he has Olympic potential!”

“How old is he?” I asked. I’d heard her mention Brian before, and I was pretty sure he was several years younger than me.

“Eight,” she replied triumphantly.

I was skeptical. He seemed pretty young to be displaying that kind of greatness. “What does Donna say?”

At this point, my mom laughed. “Well, you know Brian’s the youngest of four. She’s heard this sort of thing before. She wanted to know how much it was going to cost.”

Turns out, Brian DID have Olympic potential. In 1988, he won the Olympic gold medal for men’s singles figure skating. By that time, I was, as you might imagine, much less skeptical. The night he won I was at a church retreat, and I talked several men into changing the channel on the only TV near enough to watch to men’s figure skating. They couldn’t say no to my enthusiasm, even though there was something else they’d rather have been watching.

Watching Brian skate in the final leg (excuse the pun) of the competition, I knew he’d beaten his rival, Brian Orser. So did Brian Boitano. You could see it in his face, the pure joy of victory. It was, by far, the most exciting moment of any Olympic competition I’ve watched.

My mom remained friends with Donna and her husband, Brian’s dad, Lew, for most of Donna’s life. Donna and Lew travelled the world with Brian, but unlike many Olympic parents, asked that their privacy be respected and the cameras stay off of them. This led some to speculate that the family wasn’t behind Brian’s skating career, but nothing could have been further from the truth.

So, to answer the question posed by today’s prompt, figure skating, men’s and women’s, remains my favorite Olympic sport. Even though I can’t balance on skates to save my life.

Image Credit: © Vit Kovalcik–stock.adobe.com