Mirai’s Year
Mirai Nagasu’s reign as US National Champion ends this Saturday. From the way she skated in the fall no one is expecting her reign to be extended. This is skating, the most unpredictable of sports, so anything can happen, but most likely Mirai will be replaced as National Champion in 6 days.
When Rudy Galindo won his one and only National Singles title in 1996 someone said to him “welcome to your new life.” That was when a National title meant fame and fortune. Rudy got 12 years of touring from that title; Mirai didn’t even get one. All of the shows and tours that once greeted a newly crowned US Champ were gone. So Mirai is as unknown as National Champion as she was before she won US Figure Skating’s highest honor.
Her victory was no default victory either. Mirai put together two lovely programs in St. Paul, loaded with musical choreography and the most difficult jumps. Under the soul killing rules of COP she managed to interpret the music of Gershwin and Delibes. But her programs like her have been completely forgotten. There have been National Champions that have deserved anonymity (cough Michael Weiss, cough), but because they came along at just the right moment the fame and fortune that Mirai deserved went to them. All through the 90′s some of us fans recognized that the professional skaters were killing the opportunities of the next generation of skaters. The Pro “competitions” in the 90s were like Social Security, sucking the money away from the future of the sport. Even before Cinquantta was given control of the sports scoring system, Scott Hamilton and Sandra Bezic’s Mugging Pop Stars On Ice was stealing the artistry that previous generations had infused into the spirit of figure skating.
So they gave Mirai Nagasu a shiny gold medal and a huge silver trophy and called her Champion. They just didn’t tell her she was Champion of nothing. Hail and Farewell Mirai, true lovers of artistic skating will never forget how you skated last year and you will ever be a champion in all the ways that count.
