For all that the girls have the marquee event in figure skating, for my money, the most interesting spectacle has always been the guys. To the extent that pairs skating is interesting, it's all about the guys -- how high they throw their partners in the throw jumps; how high they toss her in the triple-twist. The guys are more interesting not because of superior athleticism; anyone who has ever skated even a little bit knows that what these kids do isn't easy. It's because the guys have a lot more leeway to do something interesting, and because the guys are allowed to have a personality, whereas the girls have to be kind, polite, generous, and always smiling.
This is not to say that the figure skating community always welcomes its unique characters on the male side of the fence either. The trash talking that you see in other sports just doesn't happen in men's figure skating. It's too genteel. Good sportsmanship is paramount. The Brians Boitano and Orser were best friends for all that they always competed head-to-head.
Enter Johnny Weir.
Weir, who was profiled in Salon last year, is a true American original, and completely uncategorizable. One wouldn't expect the word "cocky" to be used to describe a tiny, skinny, elfin kid with impossible hair and the smooth countenance of either a very pretty boy or a slightly homely girl. But Bode Miller only WISHES he had Weir's confidence.
That cockiness, which is based in confidence and not overcompenation, served Weir well, as he breezed through his short program, clad in an avian-inspired costume obviously designed by a particularly nasty dominatrix. He wasn't able to overtake the untouchable Evgeni Plushenko, indisputably the best male skater in a generation, but his huge jumps with their wonderfully soft landings and his compact if somewhat traveling spins, combined with a gift from Switzerland's Stephane Lambiel in the form of a triple axel popped into a double, were good enough for a distant second place, positioning him well for a medal.
America loves its macho men, even at Olympic time. The story in Torino has been all about Bode Miller, right up until he was disqualified from the combined yesterday. No one in the marketing departments in major corporations gave the little garden gnome in spangles a thought when endorsement contracts were being handed out.
But if the sports press has been gleefully and cruelly bludgeoning Michelle Kwan, these ink-stained wretches, who worship size and power and muscles, have all fallen madly in love with Johnny Weir.
Sally Jenkins, MSNBC:
Maybe there is a more appealing American athlete at the Winter Games than Weir, but it’s doubtful. This is a 21-year-old who mopped his own floor in the athletes’ village because he thought it was dirty. He looks like a sprite, a handsome elf. But he talks like he’s in the grip of truth serum.
For his long program, Weir hasn’t decided whether to attempt a quadruple jump. It depends entirely on his mood, how he feels when he gets out of bed that day. “I could very likely wake up and feel horrible, like Nick Nolte’s mug shot,” he said.
Tom Reed, Knight-Ridder Newspapers:
It's an area often located in the bowels of a venue featuring sweaty athletes fresh from competition and weary reporters fenced in like dairy cattle. The exchange is usually brief and unremarkable.
That is, unless, the competitor is a male figure skater wearing a sequined swan costume accented by a single orange glove representing a beak. Say hello to Johnny Weir - and goodbye to the trail of audio cliches.
[snip]
In a 12-minute mixed zone improv, Weir touched on the following subjects: Russian culture. Mopping his Olympic village floor. Rhinestones. The chances of motherhood for a Chinese skater who fell Monday night. A police mug shot of Nick Nolte.
Weir is as much a genuine article as the black and silver swan suit he calls "Camille." He is talented. He is insightful. He is funny. He is just what figure skating needs. Weir is a whoopie cushion placed on the Queen Mum's royal throne.
He makes the uptight figure skating community nervous every time he opens his mouth. And that's a good thing. The skater who called himself "princessy" upon his arrival at the Olympic Village a week ago renewed his grievances with the hired help.
"It's drab and it's dirty, no matter how many times I mop the floor," Weir said. "I mopped it and it's still dirty."
You would almost feel insulted if it wasn't coming from the same guy who thinks his butt looks big in his rhinestoned and sequined costume.
Greg Couch, Chicago Sun-Times, one of the few columnists to speculate on the "G" Factor, doesn't care, because Weir is such a character:
"I'm very princessy as far as travel is concerned,'' he said. "I hate carrying my own luggage. The beds aren't very soft. I'm roughing it. For me, it's the same as going out in the woods.''
You don't find many guys saying they like to be princessy, but that's Weir. Some of you won't care about that, and some will roll your eyes at figure skating.
But give Weir a minute here. It is his ability and willingness to express himself, through clothes, music, athleticism, that is making him America's best figure skater.
This is about honesty and artistry. Weir is a character, yes. But he might be the most honest person you will meet. He is honest with himself, honest about himself, about his feelings, his surroundings. And he is so well in touch, and so athletic, too, that it works to put him in contention to win a medal.
Let me address this head-on: This isn't about whether he's gay because we don't know that, and it's none of our business anyway.
But he is so openly flamboyant, so effeminate in a flaunting sort of way, that he's a test of the homophobic, not-that-there's-anything-wrong-with-that crowd anyway.
"It's over, it's done,'' he said after his routine. "It's Valentine's Day. I can go buy myself a rose and some chocolate now.''
AP Newswire:
"I'm roughing it," he said, chuckling some more. "It'd be the same as me going out into the woods, I think. Camping. Camping."
Outlandish remarks are not unusual for Weir, who describes himself as a "wild card" for a medal but is more likely to be left in the dust next week by Russia's Evgeni Plushenko.
Weir, 21, got into trouble with U.S. Figure Skating officials last month when he described the tempo of a competitor's short program as "a vodka-shot, let's-snort-coke kind of thing." He's also previously described his costumes to "an icicle on coke" and "a Care Bear on acid."
But he refuses to bow to any sort of self-censorship.
"I think people are definitely very wary of what's going to come out of my mouth and they're very worried about the kind of image I'm portraying for figure skating, as far as I've heard," he said. "That's cool. People should stay scared."
When a TV reporter asked him to say hello to his fans back home in Newark, Del., - an almost compulsory event at Olympic news conferences - Weir was gracious and thanked the "many people who have touched my life and enriched it and helped me get to the point where I'm at."
Then, as if to prove that there's no muzzling him, Weir went a little further. He also mentioned "a lot of people there, though, that didn't support me at the beginning, so all of a sudden, they are. And that's not something that I enjoy. I don't like two-faces."
"So, to those people, you know, you can - you can do your thing, and it just shows that with proper support and proper encouragement, you can go very far even if there are people that are detracting from everything."
Evgeni Plushenko is the kind of dominant skater that comes along only rarely. He's like watching a finely-engineered machine, a Lamborghini. But behind him, there's this little Mini Cooper, with fur seat covers and rhinestones on the front hood, and a pair of fuzzy dice in the rear view mirror -- tailgating him on the Olympic highway.
In this year, 2006, in which the obsession with gender roles and sexual orientation seems to be an ever-present theme in American life, and in which a film about two gay men may very well win Best Picture at the Academy Awards, Americans will sit in front of their television sets on Thursday night, enthralled and enamored of the most sexually ambiguous American male ever to hit the ice. In the days prior to the competition, his contention position will put him front and center -- and he will say something outrageous. On Thursday night he will wear something outrageous. Everything about Johnny Weir will shout, "This is who I am. Deal with it."
And if all goes well, all of America will not only deal with it, but embrace this otherworldly creature and be proud to call him its own.
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